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ABC News Radio DC Bureau Closes

K

KMan

Saw posted on a couple of Facebook groups that as part of a reorganization, the ABC News Radio DC Bureau is closing this weekend.

There will no longer be an dedicated radio reporters, producers, or editors in DC. The entire DC Bureau is being reorganized, and all staffers are supposed to report for all platforms, TV, Radio, and Internet.

I suspect this will not go well for the radio product.

The writing has been on the wall for a while ... ABC never replaced Vic Ratner at the Capitol or Ann Compton at the White House, then Steven Portnoy jumped ship to CBS.

With the heavy reduction in stations carrying the ABC product, do they even still have three anchors on duty for three different top of the hour newscasts as they once did?
 
I suspect it won't make much difference. Radio will still have access to TV's audio. And TV air talent can do voicers and de-briefs for radio (probably not full reports, but ABC hardly ever used those any way on radio). Actually, radio news was split from TV news when the suits decided radio wasn't important enough to worry about, and TV air talent didn't want to be bothered with radio. Monitorbeacon.net has audio of NBC's still combined radio-TV news from the 50s and 60s.
 
The fact is that the market for this kind of news, especially out of Washington, is dying. The mostly-AM stations that run TOH news either carry CBS, Fox, or Westwood One/CNN. Then you have Salem or AP. Very small number of stations left. ABC's more popular service is ePrep, which is entertainment news, mainly for FM stations.

The irony here is there was a time when the ABC DC Bureau was very strong. Back in the day, ABC put together a pool feed for the other radio companies, because they were suffering from cuts and couldn't cover all of the DC area news events. It was a way to get sound from a less important committee meeting or press conference without committing a reporter.
 
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When Cumulus dropped ABC News from TOH, they lost a great deal of carriage. This is the first major consequence of that.
 
I don't know about all stations, but Doug Limerick still does news on the hour in the morning on the station I listen to. I still hear Karen Chase some afternoons. I can't remember whether Steven Portnoy is still doing newscasts.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I don't know about all stations, but Doug Limerick still does news on the hour in the morning on the station I listen to. I still hear Karen Chase some afternoons. I can't remember whether Steven Portnoy is still doing newscasts.
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I heard Doug Limerick this morning, so he's the lone radio survivor of the DC bureau cuts. Karen Chase does ABC News Now (formerly the direction network) newscasts most of the time ... when those started a few years back they focus grouped her and Daria Albinger onto those newscasts. Its too bad, because I think Karen Chase is the best sounding female anchor in the business, hands down, and would love to hear her back on the lead newscasts more often.

Voices I Still Hear At ABC:
Doug Limerick
Cheri Preston
Richard Cantu
Michael Barr (? - did he leave for Bloomburg?)
Todd Ant
Joan Bennett
Chuck Sivertsen
Daria Albinger
Karen Chase
Deirdre Bryant
Dave Packer
Scott Goldberg
Jason Nathanson
Aaron Katersky - NY Reporter
Alex Stone - LA Reporter
Jim Ryan - Dallas Reporter

Recently Retired:
Vic Ratner
Ann Compton
Richard Davies
Larry Jacobs

I haven't heard an Entertainment Network newscast in years... I have no idea who is anchoring them these days ("Here's the latest from ABC News...), though I suspect it is the ABC News Now / Direction anchors pulling double duty.
 
Doug was not there this morning. I thought it was Ann Compton doing news instead but maybe it was Cheri Preston. I know it was a woman.
 
I just heard Daria Albinger. At least I think it was her. The last name sounded shorter than that.

I have a clock radio that used to come on for Mike Huckabee. Now, with his show no longer on, it alerts me that it's time to clean up on Saturday.
 
A couple more voices that have left ABC over the last few years that I forgot to note:

Bill Diehl
Jim Hickey
Brad Wheelis

ABC News Radio now has a 24/7 feed available on Slacker Radio. It is interesting to listen to, mostly to hear all the reports they offer to their affiliates. The "Wall Street Now" segments are among the better ones, though I don't know if they are fed often enough to be a substitute for the recently departed WSJ updates.

Also, I had no idea they were still offering "ABC Sports" updates. ABC Sports as a brand has been effectively dead since 2006 (replaced by ESPN on ABC), so its interesting to hear that service still offered on a pretty robust basis. Longtime anchors John Cloghessy and Todd Ant still cover quite a few of the sports casts, but on duty news anchors a bunch of ABC Sports reports as well.

There seems to be very little continuity on those ABC Sports updates ... Some anchors open with "From ABC Sports," others with "With ABC Sports" and finally John Cloghessy alone still opens with "With ABC's World of Sports." That branding has been gone for ages from ABC's Sports Product, I'm surprised he's able to use it on the air.

Back to the DC Bureau, no sign of Johnny Holliday on these ABC Sports updates. He's getting up there in age. Did he retire before the bureau closed or ...?
 
TheBigA said:
You're right...he's 77. He primarily works for the Washington Nationals baseball team.
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I don't know how long its been since I heard the ABC Sports updates. Maybe five years (a station in Alaska used to play them - a music station!). It used to be only Johnny Holliday, John Cloghessy, Todd Ant, and occasionally news anchor Richard Cantu (who went by "Rich Cantu" on the sportscasts).

Johnny Holliday was the primary voice. If he retired from doing the ABC Sports updates in those five years, I wouldn't know.
 
KMan said:
I don't know how long its been since I heard the ABC Sports updates.
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I suspect that when Disney sold ABC Radio to Citadel, there was something in the deal about ABC Sports updates, so to differentiate it from ESPN Radio, which Disney kept. Now that ABC Radio News is back in the fold, they're free to bring them back.
 
So just a follow up a few months after the bureau closure.

I spent most of the summer at work splitting an office with a coworker who was on the phone pretty much *all day long.* Thus, I kept my headphones in, and cycled between Pandora, and the online streams of a number of radio news services.

With ABC's easy to use Slacker Radio station, I spent quite a bit of time listening.

So far, the promise that these "digital journalists" would report for *all* platforms has not come true. It is very rare to hear one of these voices from the DC bureau file even a canned report on an I-Net newscast, never the less do a live one. They're getting their stories filed for online and the TV affiliates, but aren't doing anything for radio. Just the other day I heard Mary Bruce, one of these journalists, actually open a newscast live from the White House. I hadn't heard a reporter live from the White House in months.

To make up for this, ABC Radio is using a lot of repurposed audio from GMA and World News Tonight (which, as expected, sounds awful). They are also leaning heavily on their remaining correspondents ... Aaron Katersky in NY, Alex Stone in LA, part-timers Jim Ryan in Dallas and Ryan Burrow in Chicago. Andy Field, a long time freelancer in the DC Bureau is on all the time. How much play are these guys getting? I heard Jim Ryan open a newscast today, live in Philadelphia, covering the pope's visit. It would seem they couldn't get the coverage they wanted from the digital journalists in DC, so they shipped Jim Ryan in all the way from Dallas.

How far they've fallen.

I'm not saying that CBS and AP haven't taken hits to their talent over the last few years. They have. But ABC's downsizing is quite drastic, and for a former industry leader, their ability to cover a big event on radio is serious diminished. I heard a montage of their live 9/11 coverage the other day ... the resources they had available in 2001 ... they're probably about a quarter of the size they once were. I know ... I know ... radio is changing industry, and news media is having a hard time adapting to the new digital age. It's just so hard to watch happen.
 
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