Bell Media‘s CTV Edmonton has decided not to fill Carrie Doll‘s 6:00 anchor position after all. An in-house announcement was made last Friday by the stations GM, telling the crew Daryl McIntyre will be the solo anchor on their 6PM newscast. What’s interesting is they had posted the job in December, accepting applications from all over the country.
It’s also noteworthy, CTV Calgary never filled the vacancy left by Darrell Janz, leaving Tara Nelson as the solo anchor.
Has this become a Bell Media pattern, or just the decline of TV in general?
Is Vancouver next?
I doubt it will be network wide. I am guessing it is an Alberta thing for costs. Both Calgary and Edmonton have news at 5, 5:30 and 6, which are separate news cast and separate anchors. So when you think about it, that is 3 news anchors for 2 hours. In Vancouver, they have 3 news anchors for 2 hours (1 for 5 pm and 2 for 6 pm) and the reverse for Atlantic Canada. I can’t see Regina having a 5 pm news to split the anchors.
I also don’t understand why, if CTV Calgary and Edmonton are going with solo anchors on the weekday 6pm news, both stations have 2 anchors for their weekend 6pm news. Also consider that CTV Edmonton has a different anchor for their weekend 11:30 news.
Personally, I wouldn’t call it a decline. Indeed, I hope it becomes a trend. I’ve never understood the rationale behind having two people take turns telling or introing a story … or the built-in “chat” time that seems to be part of the package these days.
Those resources and time are better spent on content. But now I’m really dreaming. The budget for that position is probably long gone.
Having been brought up on the west coast with BCTV, now Global, they’ve always only had one anchor. Remember Tony Parsons ? now of course Chris Gailus has been carrying the torch since. Meaning Global out of the Burnaby studios continues to run a tight ship with only one anchor at a time, at the helm.
Can CTV Vancouver be far behind on adopting the single anchor format?
They’ve been chasing Global a long time. Perhaps they could make some inroads by adopting the oppositions format?