V&W: Western Edition Comes At A “Considerable Price,” Including Dinner & Family Time

By broadcasting WNT live for the West Coast, ABC is being more proactive than its competitors, EP Jon Banner tells the L.A. Times. He says: “I think what we now realize, after spending just a couple of days looking at this, is that there are increasingly things we can do to make that broadcast more up-to-date.”

But “the new initiative comes at a considerable price…Producers are planning to set up a rotation to staff the later broadcasts, but for now, much of the staff has been working from about 8:30 in the morning until after 10 every night. (Another cost of the Western edition: delivering dinner to the newsroom every night, a step the network began on Thursday with a taco buffet.)”

Also notable: “Although network officials have said that both anchors will appear on all the broadcasts, Woodruff suggested that it may not be feasible for him and Vargas — who each have young children — to regularly work until 10 every night.” Quoting Woodruff: “What’s going to happen, I think almost certainly, is that we will work out some kind of schedule where we’re both not going to have to be here every single night and never see our children and never see our families. I think that would be recipe for burnout.”