Because I missed the CHEK supper hour news a couple of times this past week I had occasion to watch CHEK News at 10. And I was very disappointed the first evening to find the sports had been taped earlier, and CHEK did NOT have the Vancouver Canucks score, although the game from St. Louis had ended almst three hours earlier!
It was also blatently apparent that Ed Bain had taped the weather earlier, and didn’t know for sure who would be anchoring at 10, so the “throw” was completely impersonal.
The second night later in the week the sports WAS live and up-to-date, and Ed Bain & the late night anchor were both present when the weather was pre-taped, so the package had much more of a live feel to it.
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Because somebody on this board has been nominating Monica Martinez as anchor on the prime 5 and 6:30 slots, I am compelled to make this observation. The young lady is getting much better in terms of gravitas, and she reads quite adequately from the teleprompter, although her interpretation and proper emphasis could improve.
However, IMHO she is not yet as professionally competent as say Stacy Ross or Tess Van Straaten, or Skye Ryan, for that matter.
What are the rules for pre-taping sports reports on TV? I know a number of stations like KING 5 Seattle have the late night guy tape the overnight scores for airing the following morning. That would seem to be a sound practice when all the games are over and the scores are all known. But in a hockey-mad region such as BC and the Island, not having the Canucks’ game highlights or even the score in the late news was BUSH.
It is this sort of judgement, together with the fact a junior person with only a couple of years experience as a reporter, let alone any prior anchor experience, is the regular 10 pm anchor person, it is this sort of decision which will, sad to say, see CHEK continue to lose ground to CTV Vancouver Island.
And another CHEK policy is even more bush .. NO NEWS ON STAT HOLIDAYS!
On Good Friday, when every other TV station in the immediate world has normal weekday newscasts, CHEK News takes the day off!
I guess when all the workers are also owners, they get to come up with stuff like this.
People on this site spend way too much time worrying about why and how CHEK is lousy. The fact is it’s lousy because … it’s lousy. No further analysis required.
And it’s not going to get any better.
If owning a television station in Victoria was a viable business, a shrewd company would have taken it over by now.
The fact is local television is a sunset business. Stations across the country are shrinking into oblivion…. unless they’re in a large market (Vancouver) or a region with a strong economy (Alberta).
And lets stop this handwringing about staffing/pre-taping newscasts. There are no “rules”. If your dry cleaner can’t afford to pay staff to come in on a stat holiday, the place is gonna be closed . Get over it. Standing outside weeping isn’t going to change anything.
CHEK is what it is. It seems to me people in Victoria should be happy that place is even open 7 days a week.
Neither CTV nor Global had morning news this Good Friday. None at noon either. Guess these two are not in the immediate world. Just sayin’…
BTW, that’s CTV and Global Edmonton
CTV Victoria’s weekend news isn’t live at all. The whole half hour is taped. The whole show is put together by maybe 4 people and has been for years.
CHEK probably pre-empts news on stats to cut costs by not having to pay a full crew time and a half.
Is this really news??? We all know CTV VI tapes it weekend show, for CHEK to do what they do is no surprise either…… In the end it is consumers that will decide what they want to watch as well as advertisers.