News

10 is a milestone for 9

Pooh-poohed by competitors at the beginning, Bay News 9 celebrates a decade of 24/7 news.

By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic
Published September 24, 2007

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Ten years ago, Bay News 9 general manager Elliott Wiser sat in a temporary office at the north end of St. Petersburg and picked through stacks of videotapes. He was choosing staffers for a project which then was mostly in his head: Tampa Bay's first 24-hour local cable news channel.

Competitors who had heard of the project had lots of criticisms ready: The TV news market was saturated with five broadcast stations. There wasn't enough local news to fill a 24-hour station. And, thanks to the lower pay in cable news, Bay News 9 would be staffed by the young, inexperienced or washed out.

A decade later, Wiser remembers the naysayers. And he's having a grand time laughing at how wrong they were.

"We do know for a fact that affiliates have spent a considerable amount of research looking at Bay News 9," said Wiser. "And that's pretty terrific when you think about how, 10 years ago, they were laughing at us."

Of course, there have been bumps along the way. Days after the channel went on-air - at 6:59 p.m. Sept. 24, 1997 - Bay News 9 was caught flatfooted during the first big rainstorm of its tenure, unable to break out of its regular cycle of reports.

And its initial strategy of using a single person as an on-air reporter and camera operator, called "one-man bands" in the industry, was phased out to help upgrade the channel's look.

Now Bay News 9 has become a multiplatform news outlet, with a Web site, on-demand entertainment and news stories, a full-time sports channel Catch 47, a full-time digital weather channel, a Spanish-language news channel and news-sharing agreements with a host of newspapers, including the St. Petersburg Times.

It's a long journey for a channel once built as a way to keep customers subscribed to corporate parent Bright House Networks then Time Warner cable services.

To take a look back at the decade, I sat down with four folks who have worked at Bay News 9 since the beginning: Wiser, daytime anchor Al Ruechel, morning anchor Jennifer Holloway and meteorologist Mike Clay.

Here are 9 questions on the 10th anniversary of Bay News 9. 

When did you know it was working?

Holloway: For me, it was definitely (the shooting of three police officers by escaped criminal Hank Earl Carr, who later killed himself), up on State Road 54. Because I was the transportation reporter and I covered traffic and I knew the area, I was thrown on the air. And having worked with so many troopers and the highway patrol for my transportation stories, I felt that story personally. I had met that guy before and, wow, that hit home for me. Until then, Tampa wasn't home.

Clay: I was at Gold's Gym. All the muscleheads are in there lifting weights and stuff. You know, they've got the TVs on and the tropical update came on and they all put down their weights and they all put down what they were doing and they walked over and they watched. And then they went back. And I was sitting there, I was watching, I was like, wow, we're like a habit, you know? We've got 'em trained. 

Your competitors have sometimes said weather coverage is the main reason people watch you. What do you think about the idea that people are sitting there because they know the weather's on every 10 minutes?

Ruechel: The joke is, of course, that every lightning bolt is shaped like a 9. . . . I truly have never, ever seen the distinction between weather and news. This is just what we do.

Clay: It was crazy. The first few months we were on the air, there was severe weather all the time because of El Nino. You know, I come from Texas and I got here and I'm like, what the heck is going on in Florida? This is like Oklahoma in May.

The weird thing is when you run into a 20-year-old and they go, "Yeah, I grew up watching you." 

How has Bay News 9 changed the local news cycle?

Wiser: Ten years ago, the stations covered St. Pete, they covered Tampa and they occasionally went to Sarasota. We opened all these bureaus and now we have a bureau in every county we cover . . . to show that not all the news was in two cities. The fact that Jen was hired as a traffic reporter . . . 10 years ago there weren't on-camera traffic reports. She was the first. Now everyone's doing it.

Holloway: My bargain with him, because I did not have reporter experience, (was) if you let me, I will do your traffic reports, but I also want to be a reporter. So he came up with the marketing concept. Fine, do the traffic reports, but you want to report on something, it's got to be a transportation issue. I'm, like, greeeaaat. But, you know, it's like weather. It affects every person in this market. 

One thing the local news establishment doesn't necessarily see you guys doing is breaking big stories. Do you agree?

Ruechel: If the affiliate stations have to, in quotes, break the big stories, it's because they have to attract an audience. I mean, they have to think about all their newscasts individually attracting viewers. You know, I wish we could have, in quotes, an investigative unit, but is that what we do? Is that the best use of our people? And is that what our audience expects? I don't know if that's necessary. 

Ten years is a long time for an on-air personality to be anywhere. Why did you stick around so long?

Clay: For me, my family found a home and they like it. And as I got older, I realized you really need the experience in a market. You really need five years to catch on to forecasting the weather. I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago when I started, but . . . as a meteorologist, you need to see the weather in one place for a while. 

What do you know now that you didn't know 10 years ago?

Clay: After 10 years, I realized, there is no normal summertime (weather) pattern. A lot of people moved here from up North and they don't realize that they're living in the tropics six months of the year. So they move here from Michigan and it rains across the street and it doesn't rain at their house, and they can't figure that out.

Holloway: To be truly embraced in a community as a news anchor, you have to be a part of the community. You can't just get up and read scripts every day. I have 27 things I have to do in the community between now and Jan. 1. Embrace them and they'll embrace you.

Ruechel: I do not shy away when covering live events, from letting people know what's going on internally. I mean, when you're watching the funeral of an officer who was tragically shot and there's no way to make any sense out of it . . . you feel it from the heart. I've been here 21 years. And I feel like . . . with every story, I can pull a tidbit out because I've been there. But I do wear shoes now, I'll tell you that. 

Your biggest blooper?

Holloway: I busted the first camera here.In Largo, at an intersection, covering a story about crosswalks, shooting my own standup (report). Here comes a gust of wind from a big semi that came by . . . It was like falling over in slow motion.

Where's the future of this industry?

Wiser: What 24-hour news has been able to do is go from mass media to specific media to niche media. Bay News 9 10 years ago was everything to everyone. We did sports, we did weather, we did entertainment, we did traffic, we did medical. Now, you're able to really specifically serve certain audiences with each platform and each channel.

When you guys first debuted, there was a controversy because the cable tuner would start on Channel 9 when you turned it on. Now my cable box is doing that again, which must help your ratings. (It's a preference the user can set.)

Wiser: We've been doing that for a while. You know, there are advantages being owned by the cable company.

Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com. See his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media. Transcription by Barbara Moch.

[Last modified September 21, 2007, 17:35:09]