KSTW Layoffs

[airwaver]

It's TV, but what the heck:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/291804_tv10.html

[TexasTom]

Sad to see what has happened to a station that was once one of the foremost independent stations in the nation.  Unfortunately, the national homogenization of television broadcasting doesn't leave much room for "stand out" stations anymore.

From that article, this quote sums up what is wrong at channel 11 and so many other stations:

> "There will be no difference at all in the on-air product at our station."

Um, yeah.  Once upon a time, the content and programming on a TV station was thought of as something more than just product.

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

...or bouncing the senior people and keeping the "assistants".  Good news is we'll get to have another station where we can watch for banner-hangings. 

I think what keeps troubling me most of all is that these corporate wee-wads keep believing their own press horsecrap.  "We will have NO difference in the throughput of our morale and the quality of out whit-wash will continue to hold the dwellups of our yip yip".  Only people who SEEM to believe that are the 18 year old market analysts on wall street who perk up with the "oh yeah...more PROFITS baby!!!!"

On one hand I want to continue to be horrified that no one seems to care that broadcasting is no longer an art but simply a collection of networks of "repeaters" .  On the other hand, I look at the emerging media and think that it has all the potential in the world to pick up the void and launch new artists, expose music that doesn't have to be "researched", provide as much in-depth coverage as people have time to write and so forth.  So at least reassuring that we won't be without the content ... it's just sad to see that the opportunity will slip out of the hands of the bigger players because they LET it and wanted the profits more than the bigger brass ring of longevity.

[TexasTom]

While I agree that the new media are going to be filling some of the gaps (and already are) left by the poor job that the mass media are doing, it is still sad to watch what has happened to broadcast radio and television.  There is still a kind of magic associated with picking a signal out of the air and being able to listen to or see the programming carried on that signal...and with that magic came a sense of excitement that must have carried back to many of the people working behind the scenes, because it was obvious that there was a high level of passion amongst the people at the better stations.  Now, I suspect that most of the people in management positions at these stations think of their transmitter as being little more than a back-up for when the cable goes out.

I also remember the days when TV stations were a major part of their communities...and what happened to those stations was big news.  I really saw that as a kid in Tacoma in the mid-to-late seventies.  When channel 13 (then KTVW) was forced off the air in 1974, it was on the front page of the News Tribune.  When it was sold back into commercial operation five years later, that too was front page news...as was the battle to stop the sale by those who wanted it to remain a public TV station.  Can anyone imagine large numbers of people get that excited over a local TV station (or a cable network) today?  But then why would they, when those stations are just one more cookie cutter choice amongst a 100 that are churned out by a soulless corporation somewhere back east? 

(Yeah, I know that a new station was a bigger deal back in the days when most of us were receiving only five or six channels...but I think that is only part of the difference)

[Jackson Dell Weaver]

The firings will continue until morale improves!