She won’t brag, but Karen Vigurs-Stack predicts it. The Boston-based television consultant forecast some time ago that local news shows will pare their sports coverage.
“It’s a trend around the country,” she says. “It’s a trend because viewers are getting their sports from ESPN and ESPN.com. There’s less of a need.”
She can’t be talking about sports-crazy Denver, where stations fall all over themselves to cover the Broncos, not to mention the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rockies and college football.
“In such a sports market, it makes sense to have local sports in all newscasts,” says Patti Dennis, news director at KUSA-Channel 9. “We are the only station, maybe in the country, that has a sportscaster in the a.m. shows.”
“Are you kidding?” asks Tim Wieland, KCNC-Channel 4 news director. “We’re the Broncos’ station, and we have the largest sports staff of any outlet in Colorado. It hasn’t been diminished in our newscasts.”
He conceded, however, that “by the time the evening news comes on, people know the scores of the games their teams were in. On the local level, our goal is to tell good stories and analysis. The name of the game now is storytelling and, hopefully, inside information.”
Local sportscasters have cut back on giving scores, letting a “crawl” at the bottom of the screen handle that chore.
The other news from Vigurs-Stack: We’ll always have the weather segment. “Weather is never going to go away.”
Join ‘The Party’
It’s a whole new party. KMGG 95.7-FM flipped to a new format Monday morning, leading off with multitalented Whoopi Goldberg.
“The Party” replaces “Mega,” the bilingual station that played a heavy rotation of Latin music. Mega’s numbers slid in the last Arbitron ratings. On first listen, the new format has a lot of elements of the old “Jammin’.”
Goldberg’s nationally syndicated celebrity-chat-and-music show airs at 5-9 a.m. weekdays. Also in the lineup are Joe Bevilacqua, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., and former Mega personalities Issa, 2-7 p.m., and Rafael Medina, 7 p.m.-midnight.
Around the dial
Aurora Cinema Grill hosts a screening of the new NBC series “Friday Night Lights” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Area high school students can download free tickets at nbc.com/fridaynightlights. The NBC series, based on the book and movie about high school football in a small Texas town, premieres Oct. 3 … Peter Boyles and Kelly, Jonathan & Mudflap are among the nominees for the large-market personality of the year in the NAB Marconi Radio Awards Thursday night in Dallas … The CW (KWGN-Channel 2 in Denver) has been added to the Nielsen Media Research ratings … Quotable: “I’m tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.” Shaquille O’Neal.
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-954-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
