Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Saturday Tribune-Review.
Q: I’ve often wondered how local TV news anchors manage to get to the studio during major snow events, such as the one we experienced recently. Dedication aside, significant snowfall and dangerous icy road conditions would seem to prevent them from getting to work on time just like the rest of us.
— Amy, Murrysville
Rob: There’s probably no single definitive answer for this because I’m sure it can vary by station, size of market and even individual broadcaster.
My general sense in Pittsburgh is that news anchors are responsible for getting themselves to the station, even during adverse weather conditions.
“Having an All-Wheel Drive or 4×4 certainly helps — and several of us have those,” explained retired WPXI news anchor David Johnson. “If we know it’s going to be a huge snowfall, we might spend the night at the station. That’s pretty rare though.
“I went home on the Friday night before the big February 2010 snow and then couldn’t make it back to the station for Saturday coverage,” Johnson recalled. “Too much snow even for my AWD! The news director wasn’t happy. I probably should have stayed at the station!”
Q: Is Eric Braeden leaving the “The Young & the Restless”?
— Mary Margaret via Facebook
Rob: While I am sure Braeden, who plays Victor Newman on “Y&R,” will hang it up eventually — he’s almost 85 — but a show representative said there are no plans for Braeden to leave “Y&R.”
CBS recently announced a June crossover between “Y&R” and CBS’s “Beyond the Gates” that will feature close friends Victor Newman (Braeden) and Vernon Dupree (Clifton Davis) from “Gates” reuniting at a political fundraiser.
Q: I see that a TV station in Miami, WPLG, cut ties with its network (ABC). I’ve never heard of a local television station disaffiliating from a network and losing all of that programming, including sports broadcasts. Does this happen often?
— Joe via email
Rob: It happens, including in Pittsburgh.
In 2023 Channel 19 (and all the CBS-owned CW affiliates) disaffiliated from The CW, changed its call letters to WPKD and adopted the KDKA brand as an independent broadcaster with no network affiliation or programming. Of course, these stations were still owned by a massive media conglomerate, Paramount Global, so it was not difficult for them to come up with replacement programming. When that switch happened, The CW relocated to WPNT, Channel 22.
(Once upon a time The WB was on what is now WPNT — then WCWB, Channel 22 — and moved to what is now WPKD — then WPCW, Channel 19 — in 2006.)
When the NFL moved from CBS to Fox in the late 1990s, a bunch of stations changed their affiliations, although none went independent as far as I know.
The example Joe cited of the Miami station disaffiliating from ABC is rarer because it’s a station that was not owned by one of the big broadcast station groups. Not many quasi-independent stations exist anymore.
Q: It seemed like the two weeks the Olympics were on, the other networks ran reruns as if they were just surrendering their ratings to NBC. But isn’t February one of those special sweeps months where the ratings matter more?
— Robin, Scott Township
Rob: Once upon a time, sweeps months — February, May, November — absolutely mattered to the networks as they’d try to juice their ratings. Now? Not so much.
You still see local stations make some special efforts during newscasts in sweeps, but with the advent of overnight ratings year-round, the importance of sweeps has diminished.
But when it comes to network programming, there is still a school of thought that it doesn’t make sense to “waste” new episodes of scripted series when you know those shows’ ratings will be crushed by the Olympics. That’s why ABC debuted its “Muppet Show” special before the games began and why CBS will debut “CIA” (10 p.m. Feb. 23) and bring back many of its shows with original episodes (“Survivor,” “Ghosts”) after the Olympics the week of Feb. 23.