Buffalo Sports TV Review

3rd and final part on the series of Buffalo Sports Media

It's pretty sad when the 3rd part of my series on sports media outlets in Buffalo is regulated to me writing about all the local television outlets in one story. The reason is there isn't anything really to review about them. The days of Empire Sports are long gone. Even Sports Extra which was a fixture on Sunday nights in Buffalo for well over 15 years is retired. The sports TV landscape on local news has changed throughout the country. Anchors who use to get at least 5 minutes of air time only 10 years ago, have been regulated to about 2 minutes. But at least the viewer can fall back on the notion that most cities with two major sports teams has a local sports channel (FSN Affiliates are all over the country).

Buffalo doesn't have any local sports channels. In just 5 years, Buffalo has lost its only sports channel (Empire Sports) and its longest running sports show (Sports Extra). Heck, Channel 4 has about a one minute sports cast and even give the weatherman 7 minutes of air time to talk about the weather (Never could understand why weatherman get so much time, it's called look outside). Channel 7 has fallen apart, budget cuts and new ownership hasn't helped this previous Buffalo media Juggernaut. The channel is the only outlet that carries 2 sports personalities and it wouldn't shock me if the interns are directing the news casts, can you say jump cuts. Channel 2 seems to be the only channel that still believes there is a place for local sports in Buffalo. They have 4 personalities on staff with the main trio (Kilgore, Boyar, Benigni) having been together since 1996. But even with the seniority, the station seems to be lacking the content you would hope to have to feed the sports fan.

Lack of Opinions
It was the Fall of 2002 and I had just gotten my first internship. I was going to be the sports intern for WGRZ and more importantly I was going to see first hand what it would be like to be in a news room and see how how the TV world works. One of the intern's jobs was to go and assist on shoots for the Sabres, high school, and college sports (The Bills weren't to fond of interns). I remember Stu Boyar and I had to go cover a high school game in Elmira. It was about and hour and half drive there, so Stu and I had a lot of time to talk. The conversation topics ranged from the TV profession, girls, and how Stu started in sports (I was always good in asking questions). The thing that Stu showed was that he had a opinion about everything, but for whatever reason you wouldn't know that by watching the channel 2 sportscast.

I'm not blaming Stu for this, but most of the blame falls on the News Directors of the 3 stations in Buffalo for allowing sports on local newscasts to be just "filler" TV. The rest of the blame goes to the sports producers for each newscast. If you're only allotted 3 minutes of air time and supposedly all of your viewers are getting highlights from Team websites and ESPN, then how about doing a commentary feature. If Kornheiser and Wilbon can debate a topic in 1:30 and get their point across, then so could the anchors. We are in a sports world where viewers want opinions, that's why PTI does such good ratings and WGR rates so highly. It's time for the old school journalism methods of just reporting the facts to take a back seat to what the public really wants.

If TV doesn't work, try the web
The Buffalo News had an article a couple of weeks stating that because of the lack of time given on Newscasts for sports that anchors are encouraging viewers to go their web page to read additional content on the Bills and Sabres. Makes sense considering how sports fans love the Internet. Problem is that the websites are a lot like the sportscasts, just "filler" programing with very little substance.

The worse is the channel 7 website. Well, for one the sports page has more advertising postings then stories. Two, there's not any sort of blog to get opinions from the personalities. Three, the website does have videos for the "Super 7 Athlete of the week," problem is they haven't posted any new Super 7 Athlete since February (I guess the kids were looking for prom dresses) It's pretty sad considering they are the "Official Station of the Buffalo Bills," at least give the impression that your a station cares about sports.

Channel 4's website is actually a lot better then I thought it would be. Considering channel 4 spends the least amount of time of their newscast on sports they do a decent job of keeping the site up. They have a blog for all 3 personalities to write about sports and normally update it at 2-3 times a week. And most impressively, they have a pretty decent video library that has all the news packages that air on the sportscast and some exclusive video web content (NHL FA preview video and a interview with Ron Jaworski). The site still could use more articles and I'm not exactly a big fan of Paul Peck.

Channel 2's website is just inconsistent. I started being a fan of the site during this past football season. Each of the 4 personalities have their own blog page, and during the season the blogs were being updated at least twice a week. Stu Boyar's blog was shockingly good, and I mean that in a good way because Boyar gets a lot of flack because he's kind of like the middle child in the WGRZ sports family. They also aired an exclusive web cast of Sports Extra twice a week (usually previewing and reviewing the Bills game). The best part was that after Sunday's game, usually around 7pm, WGRZ would air a live web cam chat, where at least 2-3 of their personalities would take questions about the Bills. The opinions were flying and I the rant was on. Seems like this website could give The Buffalo News a run for the top sports site in Buffalo. Wrong. The problem is the site has the best content for 4 months (during football season). After the season, forget it. No Sports Extra show, No Live web cam show, the blogs go from being updated from twice a week to once month. I understand that Buffalo is a two sport town and it can get slow, but there wasn't even a column talking about Bills mini camp or the Sabres lack of player movement. The only new posts on their blogs over the last 2 months have been about Roswell park and Ed Kilgore's trip to North Carolina (Stu did have a entertaining retrospect blog on "no goal" in early June). Hey it's your Blog, I get it. But don't make me feel like I'm at a bar and there's girls everywhere and all of a sudden the bartender runs out of beer and the girls leave..the party can still keep going you know.

Lack of programming
I understand that I may not be the best person to judge what the TV sports scene is like in Buffalo because I'm in NYC. But when I go home, which is about 4 weeks a year, I'll always look forward to watching local TV coverage of the Bills or Sabres. At least I did, till it got dwindled down to 3 minutes. The most shocking dwindling was when Sports Extra was canceled because of the NFL being on NBC on Sunday Nights. The reasoning was it would of been too late for viewers to watch Sports Extra by the time the game and Newscast was over. I still don't get the reasoning. The games end at 11:15 normally, Newscasts are 22 minutes long without sports. By my math you should be able to get through the newscast by 11:37, that's what? 7 minutes later then the old time slot use to be. Again, stupid news directors who don't realize that all the national sports outlets ignore the Buffalo teams. I should mention that WKBW and WIVB do have Sunday night shows after the newscast, but they really are lacking on what should be their focus. Just airing highlights and soundbites isn't good enough, I want to hear what John Murphy and Paul Peck think of the Bills in a debating format. Yes, I know it doesn't have to be a firing squad every week, but at least find something you guys disagree and let the viewer choose. Channel 7..please.

Solution
Doing a review on the landscape of TV sports in Buffalo is very painful for me. In essence it represents the same problem that Buffalo has. The city like the TV sportscasts are getting smaller and smaller. What needs to be done for starters is for the anchors to show more of an opinion on air. Doing commentary is essential, especially if you have only 3 minutes to do a sportscast. You want to leave the viewer with an impression since your competing against print, radio, and the Internet. Getting a good sports format show would be a good start. Try having athletes or even people from print or radio to debate (it worked for Pros and Cons on Empire). Make it interactive, if Jerry Sullivan can get 300 questions in his chat so can WGRZ. The one thing the TV people have for them is seniority. Murphy, Peck, Kilgore, Boyar, and Benigini have been around forever it seems. You could go up to a Buffalo transplant whose been living in Texas for 10 years and they would remember who those guys were, the problem is remembering what these guys have to say.

Joe
"Sports movies are overrated"