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When Asa Aarons was let go last week, we had a gut feeling that WNBC’s 5:30PM consumer news and features based newscast News 4 You was getting a vote of no confidence. Now our gut feeling has been confirmed since the station will be replacing the newscast starting next Monday. It is also part of a late afternoon shuffle with the 4:30PM edition of Merv Griffin’s Crosswords being replaced by Access Hollywood, which also repeats in its current time slot at 7:30PM.
The replacement is a half-hour newscast with Sue Simmons and Michael Gargiulo that leads off with news and has features towards the end. In other words, it sounds like a condensed version of the old Live at Five.
This is the third change this year for WNBC's 5PM hour. First there was the 30 minute David Ushery and Lynda Baquero-anchored "Live at Five" and the creation of the 5:30PM Perri Peltz-anchored News 4 You in March, with Sue Simmons moving to the 6PM. The second was last month’s elimination of Live at Five in favor of the syndicated entertainment show Extra, the creation of the 7:00PM New York Nightly News with Chuck Scarborough, and Ushery and Baquero anchoring at six.
A spokesperson for the station said that, "Perri Peltz will continue to work with WNBC in a role yet to be determined." You may remember that Peltz was originally brought on board to co-anchor Live at Five with Sue Simmons as Jim Rosenfield's replacement in 2005.
We think that the move is a good one, since the station will be playing to its strength in harder news. However, their competition on 2, 5, and 7 has a half-hour head start in the late afternoon race (but the second half hour is usually reserved for softer news on those newscasts). So it'll be an interesting sweep months in November.
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Yay, Sue is back! But it sounds like management is freaking out at WNBC with all this reshuffling!
New York is one market where it's all sweeps, all the time due to Nielsen's "people meters"
numbers and demos at the tips of research's fingers all day and all night.
they saw the numbers and have applied pressure to try and stop the bleeding.
butt bongo dan and crew shot themselves in the kneecaps ... hell they don't even have a dr. max gomez to oversee the surgery anymore.
or an asa aarons to tell them they made a bad consumer decision.
but they have two political reporters.
and tim minton. old poodle head himself.
the lede-ins still are the worst.
and that crossword puzzle show with the name of the dead fanook in the title ... ugh.
wnbc's getting beat like almost everyone else by wxtv/41 ... as nbc's telemundo is a distant non-competitor.
nbc 2.0 is ruining the owned stations, as Brian Williams correctly points out in howard kurtz's new book.
Meh...
When the news starts reporting on actually newsworthy events, I'll pay attention.
I LOVE SUE!
I knew that they'd realize sooner rather than later, that she is one of the most valuable things they've got.
Can you believe Sue is over 60? I think this is a testament to the fact that "black don't crack" and making 3 mill a year working only a couple hours each weekday.
And Janice Huff is 40+, who along with Sue is the only reason I watch NBC these days. I'd hit Janice for sure, however with Sue - maybe after a few beers...
Remember, parts of Sue are much, much less than age 60.
Ok, is that a reference to her "orientation" - if true, that's a real shame for the African-American male community...
Check out the younger slimmer Sue on youtube - what a fox she was. Anyone remember Carol Jenkins? She was hot in a sexy librarian type of way with the glasses and uptight sounding presentation.
sue is the worst newscaster ever. she constantly makes mistakes on-air, and clearly does not seem very intelligent.
the only reason she has this job is because she's black, and the rest of the white folk at NBC feel sorry for her.