KOLD ADDS GIMINO TO BOOST UA SPORTS COVERAGE
Long-time UA sports writer Anthony Gimino has joined KOLD TV 13, but not in a capacity related to the TV product. Gimino is providing content for the station’s web site, KOLD.com. As such, it’s the first effort by one of the market’s television outlets to attempt to provide original content from an outside local source for the purposes of drawing viewers, and therefore, better numbers to the online product.
Some television stations in larger markets have implemented this strategy, plucking former newspaper writers who were victimized by cutbacks in that industry, and hiring them on a freelance basis to try to give viewers another reason to access the site. Why? Well, as outlined in the following email correspondence, it’s not hard to read between the lines that local news is no longer just about putting together 30-minute blocks of content at noon, 5, 6 and 10. It’s about hoping to be relevant in a social media world, and utilizing those outlets to get eyes on any platform available.
“We’ve had Anthony on-air providing his analysis for some time,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, the station’s director of digital media. “Now we feel we have the most complete Wildcat football coverage in town, between our existing on-air sportscasts, the Wildcat football section on our website and on our mobile news app, daily tweets and Facebook posts, our pregame show on Facebook, our live game commentary and discussion board, and back to TV for post-game wrap-ups and highlights.”
Gimino is one of the city’s most experienced sports reporters, and the majority of his extensive journalism career has involved covering UA athletics. His resume includes stints with the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen—he was also tucsoncitizen.com‘s online editor prior to Gannett’s closure of the blog aspect of the site earlier this year—and is an editor for Lindy’s college football publications.
“Anthony is well-known to Wildcat fans, and they respect his insight and perspective,” Fitzpatrick said. “Partnering with Anthony allows us to provide our audience with much deeper analysis than we have time to do on-air, and introduces (on-air sportscasters) Damien (Alameda), Dave Cooney and David Kelly to an even wider audience for our Wildcat football broadcast coverage. Wildcat fans get their football news from a variety of media sources, but many are digital first. We want to make sure we have the widest and deepest Wildcat coverage on every platform to build on the broadcast leadership of our sports team.”
A STINKER BY ANY OTHER NAME …
Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio conglomerate in the country, has changed its name to iHeartMedia. The move, according to the company, is to try to reflect its strategy as radio continues its transition as an online medium.
In many ways, the name change is the result of an approach that has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s the company saying terrestrial radio is dead, while online is where the model continues to move. The Clear Channel name is a pariah in media parlance. The company has done a remarkable job largely gutting its 859 stations while providing bare-bone staff and cookie cutter radio options on the terrestrial plain. Online, however, it’s had success with the iheartradio app, which the company claims it has in the neighborhood of 50 million registered users.
So the former Clear Channel hopes listeners, or downloaders, will “heart” the product as it continues to transition, but given its track record as a radio behemoth, it’s probably safe to say there won’t be much “hearting” among terrestrial radio listeners or the select few employees who have managed to weather years of cutbacks.
JOHNJAY DOES NOT “HEART” PHOENIX FLOODING
JohnJay Van Es, the host of the syndicated JohnJay and Rich Morning Show, broadcast on iHeartMedia top-40 station KRQQ 93.7 FM, did not do a very good job weathering the recent flooding that ravaged the Valley.
“I just coasted into the flood,” JohnJay told reporters as a result of driving into one of the city’s many waterlogged areas en route to his morning show, based out of Phoenix. As a result, the host broadcast much of the program from his stuck car as a mini-river raced past. He was rescued by his co-host, who had to step up and save the day because iHeartMedia has not yet created offshoot venture iHeartRescueHelicopters, which is a good thing because, just as with their radio operations, they’d cut their pilot staff to the bone.
IT WASN’T A GOOD WEEK FOR WEATHER IN TUCSON EITHER
Those poor meteorologists. They’re one of the few positions in local news that still get paid well, and what happens when their services are truly needed and we’re glued to their sage understanding of weather patterns? The darn computers let them down and the great flood of 2014, or as I like to call it, Nora 2.0, decided that even though Erin Said it Would, the storm preferred to bash areas further east instead, bypassing Tucson almost entirely and leaving local meteorologists to wonder if they should try to pitch to station management yet more updated weather equipment that will cost well into six figures.
In fairness, national prognosticators missed on the storm that wasn’t as well. Even Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel, who is basically the pale rider of apocalyptic natural occurrences, spent some time in Tucson anticipating the looming flooding carnage. KVOA TV 4 took the opportunity to head to an area riverbed to cut a promo alongside chief meteorologist Matt Brode.
In said promo, the KVOA camera operator does a nice pullback shot that also shows off Cantore’s production crew, which included a camera operator and sound person. The local camera operator must have felt at least a twinge of envy. You mean they still have production crews at other outlets? Brode is lucky. He gets a separate camera operator when he’s in the field, whereas pretty much every other reporter in the building has to handle those responsibilities themselves.
On an unrelated note, anticipation for the storm allowed everyone on Facebook to act like armchair weather experts who had spent the last six years in pursuit of their recognition by the American Meteorological Society. At no other point in social media history had more Tucsonans typed the phrase “computer models” in their attempts to project for the masses the exact trajectory of our impending Armageddon.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2014.
What everybody forgot with the ex-hurricane Odile event was the “upstream kicker” off the Pacific Coast. WSW winds from the bottom of that fall-like trough will always force a smaller system off to the NE. Not just the TV kiddies….but EVERYBODY missed that important behavior. (These dominant features have only done this sort of things to small system in the SW for a few millennia…). But the forecast models and younger, less experienced humans in the weather business relied too much on the computer models and forgot about watching a few water vapor satellite loops, and how the trough was already digging southward and beginning to shove Odile out of the state….
respectfully,
Michael Goodrich
(former Tucson TV weather broadcaster)
I was truly disappointed in following what little news Jim Cantore could report from here. I hope he at least got the chance to sample some of the local cuisine before heading out to the next natural disaster. He also needs to “friend” the commentator above. As I learned DECADES ago from that weekender at 1490 KAIR…”Michael Goodrich said it would be like this”
At least I didn’t need to bother filling sandbags at home. Whoopee.
Weather hype versus weather report.
“The darn computers let them down and the great flood of 2014, or as I like to call it, Nora 2.0”
Very much agree: I was on the air at the time and did go along with the “models” and the “experts” including the PHD level man who was my tutor and called me from his job in California to add his opinion that Nora was going to be a hurricane when it got to Tucson. Wrong, wrong wrong.
I and others on the air at the time got the requisite 40 lashes from the viewing public for that forecast bust.
Turned out the since Nora was a relatively small hurricane system, and after just grazing SE Arizona, it was then easily steered back up thru central Pima County and then up the Colorado River Valley (path of least resistance) and all the way up into Prescott and Southern Utah, as hurricane remnants.
(see the Weather Service summary from that era below-)
From:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ftp/pub/forecasts/discussion/MIATWSEP
“ZCZC MIATWSEP
TTAA00 KNHC 011409
MONTHLY TROPICAL WEATHER SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
8 AM PDT WED OCT 01 1997
FOR THE NORTH PACIFIC…EAST OF 140 DEGREES WEST LONGITUDE…
…SUMMARY OF TROPICAL CYCLONE ACTIVITY DURING SEPTEMBER…
DURING THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER…THERE WERE FIVE TROPICAL
CYCLONES…THREE TROPICAL STORMS AND TWO HURRICANES.
TROPICAL STORM KEVIN FORMED ON 3 SEPTEMBER ABOUT 500 NAUTICAL MILES
SOUTH OF THE SOUTHERN TIP OF BAJA CALIFORNIA AND MOVED TOWARD THE
WEST AND WEST-NORTHWEST. IT DISSIPATED OVER COOLER WATERS ON 6
SEPTEMBER AFTER REACHING MAXIMUM WINDS OF 50 KNOTS.
HURRICANE LINDA FORMED ABOUT 650 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF
THE SOUTHERN TIP OF BAJA CALIFORNIA ON 9 SEPTEMBER. IT MOVED TOWARD
THE NORTHWEST AND DEVELOPED INTO AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL CATEGORY 5
HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR/SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE. LINDA BECAME THE
STRONGEST HURRICANE ON RECORD IN THE EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN ON
12 SEPTEMBER WHEN MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ESTIMATED FROM SATELLITE
REACHED ABOUT 160 KNOTS. THE HURRICANE WAS THEN CENTERED ABOUT 120
NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHEAST OF SOCORRO ISLAND. AT THIS TIME…THE LONG
RANGE GLOBAL MODELS SUGGESTED THAT LINDA COULD EVENTUALLY BECOME A
DIRECT THREAT TO THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COAST. IN ORDER TO BETTER
DEFINE THE STEERING FLOW IN THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE HURRICANE…THE
NEW NOAA JET AIRCRAFT TOOK MEASUREMENTS AROUND LINDA ON 13 AND 14
SEPTEMBER. WHILE THESE DATA MOST CERTAINLY IMPROVED THE
INITIALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL MODELS…THE IMPACT ON THE MODEL
FORECASTS HAS YET TO BE EVALUATED. BECAUSE OF THE POTENTIALLY
UNIQUE THREAT TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA…AN AIR FORCE RESERVE AIRCRAFT
FLEW INTO THE EYE OF LINDA FOUR TIMES ON 14 SEPTEMBER TO OBTAIN
MEASUREMENTS FROM THE CORE OF THE HURRICANE. LINDA TURNED MORE
TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST…EVENTUALLY MOVING OVER COOLER
WATER…AND WAS DOWNGRADED TO A TROPICAL STORM ON 15 SEPTEMBER AND
TO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION ON 17 SEPTEMBER. THE LAST ADVISORY ON LINDA
WAS ISSUED LATE ON 17 SEPTEMBER WHILE THE TROPICAL CYCLONE WAS
CENTERED ABOUT 1000 NAUTICAL MILES WEST OF THE SOUTHERN TIP OF BAJA
CALIFORNIA. A WEAK SWIRL OF LOW CLOUDS PERSISTED FOR A FEW MORE
DAYS. THE ONLY IMPACT TO THE UNITED SATES WAS HIGH SURF ALONG THE
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COAST AND AN INCREASE IN SHOWER ACTIVITY OVER
PORTIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST.
TROPICAL STORM MARTY FORMED ON 12 SEPTEMBER FROM AN AREA OF
DISTURBED WEATHER NEAR 11 DEGREES NORTH…HALF WAY BETWEEN BAJA
CALIFORNIA AND THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. MARTY DRIFTED WESTWARD AND THEN
TOWARD THE WEST-SOUTHWEST FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS AND GRADUALLY
DISSIPATED DURING 15 SEPTEMBER.
HURRICANE NORA FORMED ON 16 SEPTEMBER ABOUT 250 NAUTICAL MILES TO
THE SOUTHWEST OF ACAPULCO…FROM AN AREA OF DISTURBED WEATHER THAT
HAD DRIFTED WESTWARD OVER THE PREVIOUS FEW DAYS. THE CYCLONE MOVED
SLOWLY TOWARD THE NORTHWEST…PARALLEL TO THE SOUTHWEST COAST OF
MEXICO…AND WITHIN THREE DAYS IT HAD INTENSIFIED TO A 90-KNOT
HURRICANE. NORA THEN STALLED FOR ABOUT TWO DAYS AND WEAKENED BACK TO
65 KNOTS….PRESUMABLY IN RESPONSE TO THE HURRICANES PROLONGED STAY
OVER WATERS COOLED BY UPWELLING BENEATH THE STORMS CIRCULATION.
NORA RESUMED ITS NORTHWESTWARD TRACK ON THE 21ST AND RESTRENGTHENED.
ITS WINDS PEAKED NEAR 110 KNOTS…JUST BEFORE NORA MOVED OVER THE
COOL WATERS LEFT IN THE WAKE OF HURRICANE LINDA. MORA THEN TURNED
TOWARD THE NORTH AND ACCELERATED ON THE 24TH AND 25TH WHEN AN
UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH DEVELOPED TO THE NORTHWEST. NORA PASSED OVER A
WARM WATER ANOMALY JUST WEST OF BAJA CALIFORNIA AND THEREFORE DID
NOT WEAKEN AS RAPIDLY AS MOST TROPICAL CYCLONES IN THAT AREA. IT WAS
STILL A HURRICANE WHEN IT MADE LANDFALL EARLY ON THE 25TH ON THE
NORTHERN BAJA CALIFORNIA PENINSULA…FIRST NEAR PUNTA EUGENIA AND
THEN AGAIN ABOUT 100 NAUTICAL MILES TO THE NORTH. ABOUT 12 HOURS
LATER ITS CENTER CROSSED INTO ARIZONA…NEAR YUMA…WHERE SUSTAINED
TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WERE OBSERVED…A RARITY IN THE UNITED
SATES FOR EASTERN PACIFIC TROPICAL CYCLONES. THE SURFACE CIRCULATION
CENTER DEGENERATED DURING THE FOLLOWING 12 HOURS…BUT NEAR-
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS OBSERVED OVER THE MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHWESTERN
UTAH WERE LIKELY ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANT CIRCULATION ALOFT.
LOCALLY HEAVY RAINS ALSO ACCOMPANIED NORA OVER NORTHWESTERN MEXICO
AND THE U.S. SOUTHWEST AND CAUSED SOME FLOODING. DAMAGE TOTALS ARE
INCOMPLETE AT THIS TIME BUT MEDIA SUMMARIES OF NORA INCLUDED A
PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE OF AGRICULTURAL LOSSES OF SEVERAL HUNDRED
MILLION DOLLARS. THE NHC HAS NOT RECEIVED ANY REPORTS OF DEATHS
DIRECTLY RELATED TO NORA.
TROPICAL STORM OLAF FORMED IN THE GULF OF TEHUANTEPEC ON 26
SEPTEMBER AND REACHED MAXIMUM WINDS OF 60 KNOTS. OLAF MOVED SLOWLY
NORTHWARD TOWARD THE COAST OF MEXICO BY WAY OF THE GULF OF
TEHUANTEPEC. THE CENTER OF OLAF BARELY MOVED INLAND JUST EAST OF
SALINA CRUZ…PROBABLY PRODUCING HEAVY RAINS AND GUSTY WINDS OVER
PORTIONS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF MEXICO. THE CIRCULATION
INTERACTED WITH LAND AND IT WAS NO LONGER IDENTIFIABLE ON 29
SEPTEMBER.
SUMMARY TABLE
MAXIMUM 1-MIN.
NAME DATES WIND (KNOTS)
______________ ___________________ ______________
T.S. KEVIN 3 – 6 SEPTEMBER 50
H LINDA 9 – 17 SEPTEMBER 160
T.S. MARTY 12 – 16 SEPTEMBER 40
H. NORA 16 – 26 SEPTEMBER 110
T.S. OLAF 26 – 29 SEPTEMBER 60
AVILA/MAYFIELD/RAPPAPORT
NNNN”
Nice shot, “Jose”…… did you enjoy your little ambush? Did it make you feel all puffed up and warm inside?
– M Goodrich
These weather people are not meteorologists. They took a short course to get certified to read the weather properly without sounding totally stupid. They get their weather forecasting from the National Weather Service. Talking heads and bimbos.
Some TV Mets are actual meteorologists… just none in Tucson. I worked in the South for several years (where they get actual weather on a regular basis) and the majority of the folks who report on weather there hold at least a Master’s degree from reputable schools such as Mississippi State, when I mentioned that a certain chief meteorologist here bragged about getting her degree from MSU’s correspondence program they all laughed and said “She’s not a real meteorologist, that program is for simpletons.” Suffice to say I wasn’t surprised the Tucson media blew it on Odile.
Can’t help noticing there is no byline on the column this week.
Are we to ASSUME John Shuster wrote it by the familiar stench?
The fact that this column opens with Kudos to KOLD and then later on takes swipes, by name, at KGUN and KVOA but NOT KOLD for weather forecasts speaks volumes.
I suppose the KOLD weather team was telling THEIR viewers “No worries, folks.”…?
Why don’t you just get some pom-poms and a KOLD cheerleader sweater John?
Oh? You already HAVE them?
John Shuster would have to IMPROVE just to be considered a LAME excuse for a media columnist.