The 10 p.m. hourlong newscast will include local news and sports, as well as national and international news from WTTA owner Sinclair Broadcast Group's NewsCentral broadcast.
By JACKIE RIPLEY
Published May 30, 2003
TOWN 'N COUNTRY - WTTA-Ch. 38 has been in Woodland Corporate Center on W Waters Avenue for several years, but it took adding a local news department to put it on the map.
"The set arrived two weeks ago," said news director Teresa Mallea during a recent tour of the on-air studio and newsroom: a bullpen filled with reporter work stations but made spacious by a window that covers the entire length of the outside wall. "Most newsrooms are like dungeons."
That's just the start of how Ch. 38, the local WB affiliate, will differ from the five other news outlets already in the Tampa Bay market.
There will be one anchor instead of two. The news will have been gathered by three or four reporters and about half a dozen photographers - a fraction of the usual television reporting staff. And the national and international news will be part of WTTA owner Sinclair Broadcast Group's NewsCentral broadcast, created largely from the corporation's Baltimore headquarters.
"We'll do nine minutes of local news, break and do 12 minutes of national and international, almost a mini-network," Mallea said. "We'll produce a quality product to viewers with as much or more local news (than the competition) and save the company money down the line."
The newscast also will include a locally generated sportscast.
Technology, Mallea said, has made it possible to centralize individual weather forecasts for each market as well as such things as graphics for stories.
Sinclair, which owns 61 stations, plans to bring this NewsCentral format to half of its stations over the next few years. Its Flint, Mich., station was the first to adopt the NewsCentral format. Tampa's WTTA would be the second.
Critics of the format claim Sinclair is interested less in what it can bring to the viewers and more in the amount of advertising revenue newscasts can generate.
"This project allows (Sinclair) to fly the news flag without having nearly the commitment the serious players do," said Forrest Carr, news director at NBC affiliate WFLA-Ch. 8.
Another news director, Philp Metlin with Fox 13-WTVT, is reserving judgment until he sees the newscast.
"We're going to have some competition at 10 o'clock," Metlin said. "Let's see what they do."
WTTA has an answer for the critics.
"Watch," said the 33-year-old Mallea, who helped start up Central Florida News, a 24-hour cable news operation in Orlando. Before that, she worked as a producer and assignment editor at WTSP-Ch. 10. "Watch the product."
Mallea said nearly 1,000 people have applied to work at the station, which plans to kick off its 10 p.m. hourlong newscast by late June or early July.
- Information from Times files was used in this story.
