No Ticket Teasing, WAVE! and What’s Coming on TV

There was a minor flap over at WAVE’s 725 Live show Friday when the station mistakenly advertised it was giving away tickets to the George Strait show at the Yum Center April 9. It didn’t have the tickets yet. But the station’s Doug Garrett, who posted the message on WAVE’s Facebook page, tells me it was his mistake and that the tickets will be given away this week.

The episode gave some viewers a chance to vent publicly about the 725 show, with many commenting that the station should go back to News during the 12:30 hour.  Garrett told me, however, that despite the two dozen negative comments on the Facebook page, John Ramsey’s is getting good reviews from the public, and is pulling in quality guests.

I think it’s a good move by WAVE. There’s really not an hour’s worth of relevant news at Noon, and it seems that up against hour-long newscasts on WHAS and WLKY, 725 Live should do well. I guess we will get some answers from the public during February sweeps.

And let’s give some credit to WAVE for leaving all the negative comments up on its Facebook page.

More and More News: It’s no longer an isolated move, like Fox41’s decision to launch a 6:30 p.m. newscast. Station executives are moving toward more news, and less syndicated fare. Yesterday, the C-J had a story on the move by local stations to start their broadcast days at 4:30 a.m., which seems really unnecessary.  But they’re all doing it.

But the big news in the market is coming this fall. Though WHAS-TV news director Mark Neerman says the station is still deciding what it’s going to do with its afternoons when Oprah Winfrey’s show leaves, word on the street is that the station is selling advertisers on a 4 p.m. newscast. I wouldn’t be surprised to see WHAS-TV add to its local programming fare in the mornings, possibly replacing game shows with a local talk show to challenge WAVE 3 Listens.

The station has not committed to syndicated programming to fill the airtime in that hour. The ratings leader in that hour is the soap opera on WLKY, but WHAS would be taking on Fox41’s news product at 4.

Meanwhile, WLKY added a half-hour to its weekend news schedule, expanding to an hour at 11 p.m. on weekends. The station is expected to announce a permanent weekend host soon.