O.K., I admit it – I just don’t get what they’re trying to do at CityNews. The show, apparently in an attempt at being innovative, has gone down roads that increasingly make no sense to me.
 
It’s been obvious for a while that they’re working towards an anchor-less newscast. Many of them begin with a reporter standing outside the scene of some story, introducing themselves – “I’m Joe Schlabotnik outside the TD Bank branch where a man tried to enter the vault with his girlfriend in order to have ‘safe’ sex.” The next story, often completely unrelated, does the same thing.
 
In some cases you don’t see the nominal anchor (often Roger Petersen or Francis D’Souza – in fact I’m not entirely sure who anchors the 6 anymore) until midway through the show. I once timed it on the weekend and we didn’t see anchor Pam Seatle until eight minutes into the thing. Why bother having a front-personality at all if you’re just going to hide them away like that?
 
I strongly suspect it’s one of the reasons Gord Martineau left. He saw the writing on the wall and knew his role was being endlessly diminished with less screen time every day. Better to go out on your own terms than be told we’re not using you anymore and we can’t justify the salary.
 
But that’s not the only new thing that’s going on. Another strange change is stories where not a word is spoken by anyone – anchor or reporter. I saw one the other day on flooding in Peru. Instead of copy, they had some kind of bizarre pop-up video arrangement running while the viz aired, and a fact would be chyroned at the top of the screen, another at the bottom, a one sentence explanation of what the story was supposed to be about, and then it simply ended, before they moved on to another tale - with full copy! WTF?
 
My problem with this is that during the time the news is on, I’m very often not watching it in the literal sense. I’m doing stuff in the kitchen, taking care of family issues, feeding the dog or trying to finish something off before dinner. I’m more listening and glancing at the screen when something important comes on, than sitting there embroiled in every frame of video. A text-only story does me no good and frankly irritates me. That's a very busy time in many households and I suspect I'm not alone. 
 
I’ve commented before on their ongoing endless “sidebars” ("there’s more to this story…”) which run throughout the newscast, essentially rehashing what I’ve already seen, while adding a minor new angle that’s not particularly illuminating – and could easily have been incorporated into the original story. It makes it seem like a non-stop repeat of stories that have already aired. And it's not just me. I once had an out-of-town visitor watch the show and she asked me, "Didn't we just see that? Why are they doing it again?"
 
Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but there’s a reason news shows have always had an anchor and relied on the spoken word. Maybe it’s all those ingrained format lessons I learned in 40 years worth of TV newsrooms that I can’t shake. I’m not a huge fan of CTV News, but I find myself gravitating to it more often, since I can’t follow what City is doing anymore.
 
Like baseball purists, I guess I'm a traditionalist when it comes to news presentation. But endlessly trying to put the “new” in news is leaving me feeling uninformed and baffled – the exact opposite of what a news show is supposed to do.