YouTube vs. The Talking Heads

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The Dave and Lois Show
Watching the king and queen of Sacramento news, Dave Walker and Lois Hart, in the KCRA 3 newsroom explains Troshinsky’s reluctance to gush over the upcoming changes in TV news. The newsroom itself is a pin-striped, corporate affair, subdued, quiet, all ties and white shirts and a huge, impressive sign on the wall that proclaims: Where the News Comes First.
    The place has the feel of a front-runner, an organization that still leads in the Nielsen ratings in almost every category of news in almost every time slot. A question comes to mind as you look around the orderly newsroom. If you were the industry leader and had been for 50 years, just how eager would you be to change?
    How would you like to be known as the general manager who made the changes that cost the station its half-century of dominance? Troshinsky’s position is potentially a treacherous one. He faces tremendous changes in the industry, yet in trying to change with it, he risks all. 
    For the moment, though, he is insulated from the risk because of Dave and Lois. Husband and wife in real life, they are the last of the news royalty in Sacramento. Their pedigree is impeccable. They anchored CNN’s initial broadcast and they are the lineage of Walter Cronkite, Eric Severeid, Dan Rather, Ed Bradley and Sacramento’s Stan Atkinson. They fit perfectly in the library-quiet and hospital-clean newsroom of KCRA 3.
    Unlike Burrous, who is a flurry of kinetic energy and rumpled clothing, Walker is calm, avuncular and
immaculately dressed. Hart is the talented first lady of news. She is graceful, unflappable and eminently professional. Unlike the efficient chaos that reigns on Burrous’ show, the set at KCRA 3 is so measured and isolated that the cameras, automated, move themselves. 
    Of course, their newscasts come across warm and inviting on your screen, but that’s Dave and Lois and the mirrors of technology. Dave and Lois are, without question, the two highest-rated anchors in the Sacramento region. Nobody else is even close. Yet the question lingers as they near retirement are we seeing the end of an era?
    For all his consummate skill as an anchorman, Walker is the first to admit that he could not do what Burrous does technologically. Dave and Lois have little control over their broadcasts; Burrous is the master wizard, fully in charge of his show. Nightly scripts are written for Dave and Lois; Burrous is mostly impromptu. KCRA 3 broadcasts are carefully ordered and rarely changed mid-show.
Continued...

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