Goodbye, News10, and thanks for the memories

 

This is kind of a sad day for me and a lot of my friends who have been lamenting about the changes at my longtime employer (and in some ways, its demise).  Yesterday was News10’s last day.  The Sacramento station is now known as ABC10.  It had been News10 for more than half of its 60 years on the air.  To me, the change brings an end of an era in Northern California broadcasting. 

 

The “News10” identity was born 1983 when new owners, Belo, took over and announced that news would become the station’s top priority.  No expense would be spared in covering news and it showed.  It adopted the name “News10” to instill a belief in the minds of the viewers that this station meant news.  It was a real commitment.

News10 hired the best reporters it could find, and paid them Bay Area level salaries.  In turn, those journalists dedicated their lives to a station in an effort to make it number one.  There was mutual respect between employees and management.  Most of the reporters got great job offers from larger markets (including San Francisco and Los Angeles) and from the network, but we stayed at News10 because we knew it was a model station for covering news.  During its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, News10 put up a formidable challenge to the longtime news leader, KCRA, and at times handily beat all competitors in the news ratings.  We were News10, and no one was going to stop us.

During that period, most of us kept suitcases packed at our desks, along with our passports.  And we needed them as the station would send multiple crews to out of town locations.  Wherever the story was, we would go.   It was a time when News10 excelled.  But that zeal is gone.

In recent years, it is fair to say the station lost its way and its identity.  Part of the reason is the changing culture of TV, but a larger cause were missteps by management and new ownership.  By the mid-2000s, the station’s commitment to news had faltered.  The helicopter was sold, the satellite truck dismantled, and Emmy award winning journalists who were the backbone of the news operation were either told to leave or made to feel so unwanted, they left on their own.  As other stations in the market increased their devotion to news, News10 skated, perhaps figuring viewers wouldn’t notice.  But instead of competing to be the number one news operation, News10 found itself languishing, sometimes fighting to beat reruns of The Simpsons and Dr. Phil on cable stations. It was a slow death for News10. 

 

Again, for me it is sad, but I guess in a way it was inevitable.  Perhaps it is best that the once prestigious name “News10” is retired.  It is not the station it once was.  That is reflected in the letter station management posted to viewers on the new website abc10.com, explaining why News10 is a thing of the past. The general manager writes “From our Murrow-award winning news, to Modern Family to the Muppets, ABC10 better describes the full breadth of our exciting offerings.”  With Modern Family and Muppets now sharing top billing with news, then the name and identity “News10” no longer reflects the philosophy that made it the station that it was.