KUAT UNVEILS METRO WEEK, MAKES MASSIVE REVAMP TO ARIZONA ILLUSTRATED
PBS affiliate AZPM is adding a weekly local public affairs program and is in the process of dramatically retooling Arizona Illustrated.
Andrea Kelly will host Metro Week. The debut is June 6. The half hour program, which will air Friday nights at 8:30 and Sunday mornings at 10:30, focuses on topics of local interest.
“This will be a local metro-focused show,” Kelly said. “It’s a real opportunity to go deeper into some of the stories we’re talking about. Some of our viewers will know there’s an issue really popping this week, but we’re going to go over different angles and through different sources to talk about it more than viewers would otherwise get in the other local mediums we consume every day.”
Metro Week pushes Arizona Week, hosted by Lorraine Rivera, to 9 p.m. on Fridays.
“We’ve had great success with Arizona Week over the last three and a half years,” said AZPM news director Michael Chihak. “Having seen the model of covering statewide issues a half hour a week, we’re seeing the same opportunity to cover local and regional issues, thus the addition of Metro Week. News and public affairs is why we have a strong audience, and we need to maintain and expand on that kind of coverage, so Metro Week gives us the opportunity and vehicle to do that.”
The format will include a lead-in field report covering the week’s focus followed by in-studio discussions with decision makers and a journalist’s roundtable delving further into that issue and other pertinent topics.
As Metro Week premiers, the PBS affiliate’s local flagship program comes to an end, at least in the form most familiar to viewers. The last nightly version of AZ Illustrated, formerly Arizona Illustrated, aired last Friday. The evening news and public affairs program has been a fixture in the KUAT lineup since 1980, and enhanced its notoriety with Bill Buckmaster at the helm.
Buckmaster hosted the program for a quarter century, and when he parted ways with the organization (he now hosts a radio show noon weekdays on KVOI AM 1030 that is among the most successful brokered programs in the market), Arizona Illustrated seemed to lose its cohesion. Even though the format was the same in the early stages, the program borrowed much more frequently from package repeats and produced stories emanating from Phoenix PBS affiliate KAET.
Viewers noticed.
Shortly thereafter, the format became theme based (Monday: Nature; Tuesday: Science; Wednesday: Metro; Thursday: Arts; Friday: Politics) and featured a rotating cast of hosts, and the show even tweaked its name, dumping the Arizona in favor of AZ, a likely branding effort to parlay the title with the name change of parent organization AZPM.
While Chihak argues the theme-based version was well received and improving viewer numbers, AZPM has decided to jettison the model in favor of another approach. Starting in September, a new Arizona Illustrated will air not nightly, but in a variety of available time slots throughout the course of the week. The revamped model will be much more visually focused.
“I came here seven months ago, looked over the portfolio and was given one job: raise the quality of programming,” said AZPM executive producer John Booth. “I think the best shooting and editing and producing core in Arizona is here, and I look at that crew and say how can I put them into a position where they can, in fact, do their best work over and over again. The new Arizona Illustrated (the program is dumping the AZ moniker) will afford them that chance. By keeping Arizona Week and adding Metro Week, I’m looking for a vessel to tell stories in more visual ways, gorgeous ways, character driven ways, so I’m looking at creating a format that allows photographers, editors, writers, producers, to tell deeper stories, and I think that can be done better in the field.
“The predominant number of minutes on (the program) on any given night are in the studio, and so we looked at it and thought what if we gave our folks a chance to do those top-notch stories we were doing, but instead of having them on any given night surrounded by minutes in studio, only at 6:30, how about we put together a weekly that has three or four or five of these mini-docs and air it up to nine times a week in different slots that allows you to attract many different audiences that may not be sitting there at 6:30 every night waiting for News Hour (the nationally syndicated PBS evening news program that airs in Tucson weeknights at 7). That is an old era. In times past, when you only had four or five stations to compete with, you could present everything you did that way. Now people are coming up through media in a hundred different ways, and the only way we’re going to compete is really producing quality material that cannot be ignored, that creates conversation, and that people want to see again. The new Arizona Illustrated allows us that kind of format.”
Booth says staff met this week to begin the story brainstorming process, and the organization will spend the summer putting many of those features together. Instead of airing five separate shows a week, the new Arizona Illustrated will be one 30-minute program a week that airs in a variety of as-yet-to-be-finalized availabilities on the schedule.
“I’ve had shows in the past where the fourth or fifth time it aired in the week was the highest rated airing,” Booth said. “What we can do now through strategy programming is find audiences, instead of laying it out there the old way and hoping they’ll come. We have doubled down on public affairs. The new Arizona Illustrated will not abandon public affairs. You will see a story that delves visually and is character driven that is a public affairs story on that show, but it’s not going to be 6:30 every night. We could start shooting a story this week that gets finished in October and airs in November, whereas if we’re chasing the night we could never do that.”
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2014.
I am sorry!! The original AZ Illustrated was excellent!!! Mainly due to the professionalism of Bill Buckmaster! Right now you have chaos and no direction at all! What is Chihak talking about great success? This article demonstrates the lack of focus and professionalism. I am just so sorry to see the original AZ Illustrated gone!!!
Bill Buckmaster is a class act. AZ Illustrated lost a lot when it lost him.
What a mess. First a THEME of the day? Now it’s going to be a floating show when there is space available? Oh sure, THAT’s going to get a following. Not.
After Bill Buckmaster lwft Az Illustrated became terrible! The hosts were terrible and the format change was terrible. I have stopped watching it. It deserved to die a horrible death. No mercy.
sorry about typo. “left”
First, let me admit that I was a frequent guest on Arizona Illustrated and really enjoyed it both while I was the Democratic Party Chair for four years and even in the past year after my second term ended, so I certainly have my biases. I do want to thank both Jim Nintzel and Bill Buckmaster for having me on the show.
I’ve been here since 1979 so I saw both the birth and death of Arizona Illustrated and, being a total news and information geek, I watched it faithfully for over 30 years. When Bill was the host, it was excellent every night of the week. It was just amazing how he could interview an author and you knew that he had read the book that was being discussed. Or a scientist, and he was completely up to speed. It was one of the best public broadcasting television shows I’ve ever seen. It rivaled the national PBS news shows. And I loved the local focus on news, arts and entertainment. It was truly one of a kind and many of us will miss it dearly.
After the piss poor stupid management ran Bill Buckmaster off, the program foundered and the only watchable night was Friday when Jim Nintzel took it over. Jim’s knowledge of the politics of this town is remarkable. He’s a Tucson icon.
I remember when Jim told me, that if Frank Antenori lost his House race, he would start having him on as a regular guest. I told Jim he was nuts and I was completely wrong. Frank was a delight to do the show with. He’s smart, funny, well informed, and deeply believes in his brand of conservatism. I think he’s completely wrong and crazy, but I really do like Frank personally. I think he’s a great father, husband and man – even if his political views are completely crazy. Yeah, there are people out there that we can almost completely disagree with, but can like and respect – and yes even work together for the common good of our community and state on some issues. I would have never got to know Frank if it weren’t for appearing on that show and for that I’m thankful.
I think Jim was a great host and the Friday program was an excellent source of news, opinion and entertainment.
After the first of the year when Michael Chihak took over as news director, that was pretty much the end of me appearing on the show. He kind of black balled me and some other guests that Jim would have on the show. It also appeared to me that he was jealous of the Friday Roundtable’s success, particularly because that show he did at 8:30 pm was so poorly received and no one ever watched it because he and it was boring. It also appeared to me that he began to interfere with Jim’s running of the program.
Once I was banished, I knew the end was in sight for Jim Nintzel. I ran into the President of the KUAT Community Advisory Board at a political fundraiser and I told him and his wife that I believed Chihak was going to destroy the show and get rid of Nintzel. He said “no way that is going to happen.” Well it did happen. A 30 year old iconic television show was run into the ground and killed by GM
Gibson and Michael Chihak, the same man who drove the Tucson Citizen into the ground.
In my opinion, there needs to be a house cleaning and a lot of heads need to roll, including Gibson and Chihak. They are absolutely incompetent. But, the production staff are all excellent and so are Andrea Kelly and Chris Conover. This is OUR KUAT and people need to speak out about this outrage. Bring back Bill and Jim and fire the ones who destroyed this television show.
Jeffrey J. Rogers, former Chair of the Pima County Democratic Party
I used to look forward to Arizona Illustrated when Bill Buckmaster was the host — the only local TV news source we watched. It was thoughtful and educational and had a warm feeling to it. I tried to watch what followed with each of the changes, but it never worked, and by now I’ve given up. I listen to the Buckmaster show on radio.
Also, after I had given up being interviewed for sound bites by local network news shows, the one place I liked to appear was on Arizona Illustrated. It was an opportunity to have a discussion with an informed host.
To Jeff Rogers:
Great post!! I agree with everything you stated. When you were on I would boo you and throw stuff at the TV! What a flaming Progressive Liberal Hack. But this is a democracy and I loved the Friday night show. Never missed it.
I am happy you stated those facts about the show. I will not miss the recent hosts.
Thanks Jeff….Bill Buckmaster made that show great…it has spiraled downhill since he left..
The inaugural show on the city budget was underwhelming.
Michael Chihak is a boilerplate idiot who was profoundly ignorant and insular about HIS stewardship of the Tucson Citizen. I found it to be stunning that he was able to fellate his way into KUAT’s news mechanism and convince their management that he, as print luddite, could possibly move a television outfit forward. PROFOUNDLY UNBELIEVABLE!
I could not agree more with what Jeff Rodgers has written. AZ Illustrated started down hill the day Buckmaster left. Personally I thought Nintz was ok, but not a Buckmaster. I got distinctly tired of some guests. I have never been able to listen to Chihak’s mealy mouthed presentations. Now when those endless appeals come in the mail from AZPM they go directly in to re-cycling. Why support mediocrity (at best). Is it possible that the senior management at the university has no idea how bad things have gotten.