Newscast

WJZ meteorologist Bernadette Woods is leaving the CBS-owned station to join a non-profit firm in New Jersey focused on climate change, she said Wednesday night. Woods, who has been with WJZ for seven years, said she will remain at the station helping with the transition for the next month. After that, she, her husband and their two children will be moving to Princeton, N.J., where she will join Climate Central as staff meteorologist. "I'm very excited about the opportunity in Princeton," she said.

WBFF Fox 45 is planning to launch weekend morning news programs starting Jan. 20, according to Bill Fanshawe, the station's general manager. The news programs will air from 6 a.m.-8 a.m. Saturdays and 7 a.m.-9 a.m. and 10 a.m.-11 a.m. on Sundays. Fox has a newscast from 9 a.m.-10 a.m. "I'm just working around the network schedule," Fanshawe said in an email, explaining the break in the local broadcast during the 9 o'clock hour. As for anchors, "We haven't named any talent yet," Fanshawe said.

The answers to our questions about Channel 45's new ''News at 10'' indicate that viewers are very much in favor of earlier late news.Seventy-four percent of 686 callers said they watched Monday night's debut broadcast. A whopping 88 percent (598) said the idea of a newscast at 10 p.m. appealed to them.Your Call" represents a sampling of opinions from certain segments of the community, but it is not balanced demographically as would be done in a scientific public opinion poll.

WBAL-TV, which has seen a drop in its year-to-year news audience, is adding another newscast on its WBAL Plus (digital channel) starting in March. Baltimore's NBC affiliate will add a 10 p.m. weeknight newscast anchored by Kate Amara on March 5, the station will announce Wednesday. In October, the station added a 7 a.m. newscast on WBAL Plus. So far, the ratings have been minimal, according to Nielsen data. But Dan Joerres, station general manager, says the newscast is beating some of "the cable channels" in that time period.

WMAR-TV evacuated its Anneslie offices and went off the air for a half-hour during yesterday evening's newscast after smoke billowing from a car parked outside was sucked into the building, triggering fire alarms and sprinklers. None of the 80 employees inside Baltimore's ABC affiliate was injured. Drew Berry, the general manager, said props, file footage and electronic equipment may have been damaged by the smoke and water, and the station lost revenue by not being able to show commercials.

WBAL-TV, which has seen a drop in its year-to-year news audience, is adding another newscast on its WBAL Plus (digital channel) starting in March. Baltimore's NBC affiliate will add a 10 p.m. weeknight newscast anchored by Kate Amara on March 5, the station will announce Wednesday. In October, the station added a 7 a.m. newscast on WBAL Plus. So far, the ratings have been minimal, according to Nielsen data. But Dan Joerres, station general manager, says the newscast is beating some of "the cable channels" in that time period.

WBAL-TV (Channel 11) has hired a new anchorwoman and shuffled its first-string lineup in a way that makes her almost as visible at the 11 o'clock anchor desk as Rod Daniels and Pat Minarcin. Carolyn McEnrue, 30, joined Channel 11 in September and is now anchoring the station's top newscast three nights a week -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (She also serves as a reporter on her non-anchor work days.)The Friday broadcast makes her more than a new weekend anchor. The pairing of her and Daniels on an expanded Sunday newscast is a dramatic change from the way local television news has traditionally been presented in Baltimore.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- They've been rehearsing for a week now, shuffling in each night about 9:30 and working -- on lighting, script-reading and a thousand technical things -- until 6:30 in the morning.The country, or at least the night owls and insomniacs among us, will see the results of all this labor at 2 a.m. Monday, when NBC finally launches its overnight newscast from Charlotte. (Channel 2 in Baltimore will air only 85 minutes of four-hour program, from 3:05 a.m. to:30 a.m.)"NBC Nightside" will feature anchor Sara James and two others reading news updates and introducing taped reports.

Starting this Monday, the NBC television station in Washington, Channel 4, will start a weeknight newscast at 7:30 -- but on a rival station, Channel 50.In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Channel 16 has already expanded its news operation to provide a half-hour newscast each weeknight at 10 -- on Channel 38.In effect, each station is competing with itself, and the moves indicate how drastically television is changing at the local level as stations try to respond to...

NEW YORK AIDS activists rushed onto the sets of the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" and PBS's "MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour" last night, disrupting the live broadcasts with their protests about the lack of news coverage of AIDS during the Persian Gulf crisis.As Rather was beginning the CBS evening newscast, one protester jumped in front of the camera, shouting, "Fight AIDS, not Arabs!" The camera shifted off Rather and then momentarily went to black.Rather later mentioned the incident on the air, saying, "I want to apologize to you for the way the broadcast came on the air tonight.

Local TV news ratings in Baltimore are rarely news. The market has been dominated for a long time by a back-and-forth battle between WJZ and WBAL. Since the mid-1990s, most years ended in some version of a split decision, with both stations claiming victory. It was all mind-numbingly predictable. Then, last week, came a set of Nielsen numbers for January showing WJZ (Channel 13) scoring a clean sweep over WBAL (Channel 11) - winning every competitive news time period. That defines dominance.

WJZ -TV enjoyed one of its most successful ratings books ever in January winning all competitive weekday news time periods with viewers 25 to 54 years of age, the demographic on which most TV news ad sales are made. WJZ also won in total viewers in those time periods. The CBS-owned station was Baltimore's leader at 5 and 6 a.m. in the locally-produced newscasts that precede network morning shows. WJZ was also number one at noon, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. The last time that happened was in 2008, when WBAL, WJZ's long-time rival, topped all newscasts.

It was deja vu all over again for viewers of WJZ-TV's 11 p.m. news who had watched the "CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley" earlier Tuesday. Instead of seeing the Baltimore faces of Denise Koch and Vic Carter at 11 p.m. after a night of CBS new-season programming Tuesday, viewers found the station running seven minutes of Pelley's network broadcast that had aired at 7 p.m. How does that happen at a network-owned station? Here is the explanation from K.C. Robertson, WJZ spokesperson: “The station's main production switcher experienced a critical failure late Tuesday evening," Robertson said in an email response to the Sun. "The equipment failure prevented the news broadcast from starting on time at 11p.m.  Between 11p.m.

Baltimore viewers will have an extra hour of locally produced news available starting Oct. 3 when WBAL-TV adds 60 minutes to its weekday morning newscast. The newcast will air on the station's digital Channel 11.2, while NBC's "Today" airs on Channel 11. WBAL is the NBC affiliate in Baltimore. Here's the email to WBAL staff from Dan Joerres, station general manager and president: As another testament to WBAL-TV's news leadership in the market, we are thrilled to announce the addition of a 7am newscast to WBAL- Plus Monday through Friday starting on October 3rd.  By continuing our morning news on WBAL Plus, we are able to offer the best of both worlds in local and national news, with viewers having access to both the Today Show and the market's number one morning news team.

When Scott Garceau was forced out of the sports anchor chair at Baltimore's ABC affiliate, competitors said it was a desperate move by a station trying to cut costs. But since 2008, many stations across the country have scaled back on sports in their late newscasts as well. And this week, Baltimore's WBFF-TV — known for its extensive sports coverage — will consider joining their ranks. The Fox affiliate will experiment with dropping its 15-minute "Sports Unlimited" segment in favor a shortened sports report within the body of the show.

Each new morning paper and evening newscast describes congressional activity that more and more resembles the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. At the same time the mantra is "jobs," they propose to cut thousands and thousands of government jobs, especially if they relate to such nefarious liberal causes as the environment, education and social services, all of which relate to the natural resources and the grassroots people who have added the word "great" to...

Baltimore area viewers want their early evening local news. And WMAR-TV (Channel 2) has what they want.That's one of the messages that came through loud and clear with release of the advance local ratings for January, from A.C. Nielsen. Channel 2's audience at 5 continued to grow last month and is now twice as large as the audience for reruns of "Golden Girls" and "Who's the Boss?" on WBAL-TV (Channel 11). Channel 11 canceled its 5 o'clock news in September and replaced it with the entertainment programs.

More changes were announced on the local television scene yesterday, as WBFF-TV named a new general manager and WJZ-TV said it was adding a half hour of news weekday at 5:30 a.m.Steve Marks, 34, is the new general manager at Channel 45, replacing Bruce Lumpkin who was fired last month shortly after the launch of the station's 10 p.m. news show."

TV news has mostly been defined by downward trends the past decade. Shrinking audience. Aging audience. Fragmented audience. But there's been one very bright spot amid the economic and ratings gloom for stations in Baltimore and across the country — the morning news. Mirroring the success of network shows like "The Today Show," and "Good Morning America," local morning news programs are steadily expanding airtime, staff and revenue. Now, some local morning news shows are bringing in more money than the late newscasts — once the cash cows for stations.

The economy is still on shaky ground. The state has few major primary showdowns. And by the general elections, there will likely be only a handful of top-dollar, hotly contested races here. Yet political ad spending on Baltimore television could break the 2006 record of $17 million by the mid-term elections on Nov. 2. Local radio is going to have a banner year as well, analysts say, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling opening the floodgates on advocacy advertising. Meanwhile, deep-pocketed Democrats will be spending big over the airwaves to counter anti-incumbent sentiment in these contentious times.