The New KSPR Turns 1, Part One

It was one year ago, when the "new KSPR" debuted on television sets across the Ozarks. It marked the first time in years that the station actually invested in some promotional work and really made itself a viable newsteam. The last time that had happened was when Bob Snell, Susan Harding, and Tim Drum were a part of the team.

Now, it is a time of reflection and la look back at what helped drive KSPR back into the watercooler talk around Springfield and the rest of the Ozarks.

Among one of the most controversial decisions was to change the times of the boradcasts. KSPR caught some people by surprise with their new times for the early evening newscasts. Joe Daues, co-anchor of the evening news with his wife Christine (edit: duh, I knew that...sorry Michelle and Christine), was gracious enough to discuss the milestone with The News 2K.

"The decision to air our news at the new times was made by much smarter people than me.It involved shifting some programming too, KY moved Jeopardy to KSPR, which gave us not only a great show with a huge following, but allowed us to air it at 5 pm, which is a key spot in afternoon programming. (Keep in mind I'm not a programmer) The 4:30 gave us the chance to have the first newscast of the afternoon. That's good and bad. Good because we're first. Bad because when we have exclusive content it gives the other guys a chance to make some calls and play catch up. It was a risk yes, our entire "experiment" is a risk. But it does work, and we have dozens of emails to prove it."

The risk didn't fully pay off, however. On its one year anniversary, KSPR moved ABC News w/ Charles Gibson back to 5:30 and now run their second evening newscast at 6. The 4:30 broadcast remains.

I also asked Joe how he thought KSPR was doing overall. His answer was quite candid.

"We couldn't be more pleased with how things are going at KSPR. We're coming up on our first anniversary already and we've already won two of the top three state awards for best television newscast from the Associated Press, plus we've seen our ratings increase. The increase isn't as substantial as we would like, but it is movement and I think we all realize a station turn around doesn't happen in one year.Are there changes we'd still like to see - of course! News is all about deadlines... because of that and the "performance" factor it's never perfect, that's a goal we're always striving for.We're still gel-ing as a newsroom, among the producers, reporters, videographers and anchors not to mention with those you never see - the production staff, which I'm particularly proud of. I've never seen production people working with such outdated and malfunctioning equipment put together a newscast night after night in often extremely challenging conditions like they do... I really can't compliment them enough."

In part two, we will look at how the weather department has been partially responsible for driving viewers to the station.