blogs: Rick Redding 

It's hard to sugar-coat the numbers for the crew at The CW Louisville, which is enduring a horrible sweeps month so far. The station, since being bought by an Iowa company this spring, has re-branded the station -- incorporating its garish green-and-gold color scheme into its broadcast of WHAS-TV's 10 p.m. News. They've produced their own stories for that broadcast with their own reporting personnel. The station has moved to a new studio in the Kaden Tower, and hired Julie Smith, the ex-Southern Belle, to co-host is Live Morning Show with Craig Hoffman. It has launched a 5:30 national newscast called the CW World Report, and airs plenty of local shows, like Secrets of Louisville Chefs and Louisville at Home with Cheryl Case. Still, nobody's watching. The Louisville Live morning show barely registered in the first 10 days of sweeps, avoiding a chicken scratch with a 0.2. That's the lowest number of any show on its entire schedule. Consider that the Louisville market consists of about 671,000 households. Taken literally, a 0.2 rating means the show is being watched in 1,342 households. Or look at it this way. The 4 a.m. rerun of Insider gets a better number. The news isn't much better for the CW's flagship, now called WBKI News @ 10. It's doing a 1.97, getting trounced by Fox 41's competing newscast, which is at 5.18. A year ago, WBKI was doing a 2.7. Finally, the 5:30 newscast on the CW is pulling a .24. Many of us following local media like the concept of a local station offering local shows and want it to succeed. Yes, we'd have also preferred that the new owner had some local ties, but Fusion, the Iowa-based owner, has made an attempt to market the station's local identity. Unfortunately, the reality is that the market isn't buying.

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	Oooh Barracuda!   fri nov 13 2009 at 11:18 am         ·  Since when does local mean good? Local radio is having the same issues all over the country. Who cares if a show is local if it isnt funny, entertaining, produced poorly, etc.. If local wants to succeed it needs to try something totally new and innovative. Give it a shot guys, stop pumping out the same Good Morning America type rips offs and try something "out of the box". Bleck, i hate myself for even saying "out of the box". Im going to go die now.
	GtownGuy   fri nov 13 2009 at 11:57 pm         ·  Do you think that the difficulty in RECEIVING THEIR BROADCAST SIGNAL has any impact on the number of viewers? I just connected an old, unused-for-years rooftop antenna to one of my sets - and now I am the only person in the neighborhood who is receiving their over-the-air signal. BUT - with their digital signal I get a perfect picture with NO AUDIO. If I go to the trouble of trying to readjust the volume of both my set & converter, I can switch to ANALOG (channel 28) & get perfect reception, audio & video. But such a nuisance... (With my traditional indoor set-top antennas they never came through at all.)
	clarkembree   fri dec 11 2009 at 12:12 am         ·  I agree with GtownGuy. I live in Portland, and, like many West-Enders, only get TV over-the-air, and WBKI cannot be picked up on digital at all.