It wasn’t a TV sweeps stunt, but viewers were likely still stunned.
WDAF-FOX4 did its entire news Monday night commercial-free.
It wasn’t because the station wanted to do the news for nearly 90 minutes without interruption, but it was forced to due to a technical glitch.
Last night the station alerted Facebook followers with this note:
“So this is interesting…we’re doing a newscast without commercials…our system that runs commercials crashed so we’re just rolling through the news tonight and combining 90 minutes of news into about 45 minutes or so. We’re waiting for the computer to come back! Another night of live TV for you!”
According to TV Spy, the main anchor team of Phil Witt and Abby Eden anchored uninterrupted from 10:30 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. with Joe Lauria doing the weather.
“By the way, props to everybody in the control room,” meteorologist Mike Thompson said at the end of the newscast. “That’s kind of tough to do, to all of a sudden slam together an hour and 20 minute newscast.”
Facebook commenters seemed to enjoy commercial-free news:
“I’m loving the no commercials, I don’t watch them anyway…I usually either turn the sound down or change the channel until they are over. Wish it was like this all the time.”
“How about you try acting out commercials. First up: Geico caveman…Joe, you’re up.”
“Love it! at least there was a break from all the Political Ads! it’s too bad that you cant keep doing this till Election Day!!”
“No commercials?!? How refreshing.”
“Love no commercials … Now I don’t have to flip back and forth during commercials …”
MIKE
Mike wasn’t working Joe was.
IT’S FREE IS A STUNT
Maybe they can’t sell their product enough so that to say “ITS FREE” is a stunt.
Lets face it, if Fox COULD sell it, they WOULD! And make money, which is what they do for a living, as all successful TV stations do.
Lets not let them suck us into their ruse. Let’s face it, Fox news, most especially on weekends, is not so popular. Too bad. We have too many TV stations (4) basicly showing the same urban crime news.
I think one or two TV News candidates in KC need to find something ELSE to program! NCIS? Or Just give it up and go dark!
I can’t imagine them ALL making money chasing the same hundred murders a year…and showing basically the SAME WEATHER METEOROLOGISTS saying the same thing. Each, for a couple hundred thousand dollars a year!
NEWS OR HAPPY TALK?
Extended on-the-air coverage is good practice for later this year when the world’s supposed to end. This’ll keep ‘em sharp down there! OK, so they were on the air for 80 minutes on Monday night. How much of that was actual news, weather and sports, and how much of that was “happy talk” as another blogger refers to the chit-chat between anchors and other members of the crew? Given the amount of information that’s potentially available to them to share with viewers during a typical 30-minute show, there’s no room for any chit-chat while on the air.
ZERO REVENUE
Maybe consider the fact that, when no commercials run, the station is making ZERO revenue. In a political season, that alone will cost them thousands in make-goods.
GREAT IDEA
This was Great !!!! Really liked it !!!
The only drawback was the talking among the onset people which gets SO boring, after all, WE are the ones watching !!!!
But great idea by #4 !
NOT MISSING COMMERCIALS
The system was probably worn out. On a typical day, they run 2 stories then commercial over and over. Evening sportscast is a joke. They run a couple of stories, go to commercial, then finish up with 1-2 sports items. They used to anyway. I don’t watch them like I used to.