It was supposed to flip the proverbial script on local TV news. Fox-owned WJZY in Charlotte tossed its anchor desk–and its anchors–and even went cold turkey on crime news. All in an effort to lure younger viewers with a new kind of newscast. The product, however, was questionable, and the viewers never came–and now the experiment is over.
“Eighteen months after launching a bold corporate initiative to re-engineer the traditional TV newscast, WJZY (Channel 46) has retreated to the formula it once mocked: chasing fire trucks and illustrating the police scanner,” writes Mark Washburn in the Charlotte Observer.
Washburn says the “newscast of the future,” which made its debut in January 2014, never clicked with viewers. “Plagued by technical problems and relying on journalists with little experience, it had an amateurish quality.”