WJAR's Decline

There's a new general manager at NBC's local affililate in Providence, and apparently he's not very concerned about the news. He's taken East Greenwich's estimable Gene Valicenti off the 11 p.m. broadcast, which is a major loss in terms of quality and insight.

He also seems not to watch his own newscasts or doesn't understand the language. On Saturday evening, his anchor, Audrey Washington, notorious for mangled language, managed to pronounce the rather famous French city, Cannes, as "Kanz." Her reporting is usually succinct because she drops endings: "Is somethin' wrong here?" On that same evening, a graphic on the screen had punctuation errors (e.g., "His friends stated..." was written as "His friend's stated...").

The problem, of course, is that these people are supposedly role models. Their language skills should be excellent. How you create a story, put it on a teleprompter, and have it rehearsed and read with no one catching pronunciation and spelling errors is amazing — and amateurville. 

I guess the new guy in town has to make changes to prove himself, but they ought to be improvements. It's a good thing NBC got here first in the late 40s, people turned it on, and haven't turned it off. 

Come back, Gene, we need you!

For my blog on A Rhode Island State of Mind, visit here:

http://www.contrarianconsulting.com/a-rhode-island-state-of-mind/