Studio 31 Media Archive's video: WSYM Fox 47 News at Ten Full 1 22 2021

Full length 10pm newscast from the Fox affiliate serving the Lansing-Jackson market in Mid-Michigan. WSYM is owned by Scripps. On January 4, 2021 WSYM began producing newscasts in-house once again after outsourcing them to Gray-owned NBC affiliate WILX for over 15 years. I believe WSYM was the only Scripps station paying another station to do its news instead of doing news itself. WSYM airs newscasts on weekdays from 6:00-9:00 AM, 12:00-12:30 PM, 5:30-6:00 PM, 7:00-7:30 PM and 10:00-11:00 PM. They also air weekend morning news from 7:00-9:00 AM and 10:00-11:00 PM weekend nights. On top of that they also simulcast the 5am hour of 7 Action News This Morning from sister station WXYZ in Detroit. I find this newscast, well, interesting, and not in a good way. Scripps is clearly doing this on the cheap. The whole thing just screams low budget. They have a lot of work to do if they want attract eyeballs away from the two more established stations. The format is like a bad mix of Tribune's failed NewsFix experiment, the failed TouchVision experiment from Weigel, and LocalNow that's anything but. There is an anchor, sort of. It appears that she pre-records introductions to some stories, but she doesn't lead out of them. She's standing in front of a chroma key with the most random backgrounds. The lighting is bad. The playout and transition of segments isn't smooth. It's almost like they've thrown all the segments into a Windows Media Player playlist and clicked "auto play". They use the same "welcome back" rejoin every time they come back from break. Sometimes they transition right into stories without an introduction. It's just so awkward and honestly a little hard to watch. They're not even using the right fonts in the graphics most of the time. The story selection is a little questionable, definitely a lot of national content over local stuff, a lot of it being must-runs from Scripps corporate. Weather isn't even done locally, that's all pre-taped from WXMI in Grand Rapids using their existing talent and set (if I was a met there I'd demand a pay raise lol). I have a lot of respect for Scripps and think their stations generally put out good newscasts, but this one needs a lot of work. It's definitely not ready for primetime. I hope they look into building out a more polished operation in the coming months and years if they're truly committed to this and making an impact. As we see so many are quick to criticize the traditional local news formula, but it works. Every time a station tries to "re-invent" the wheel, it fails. Miserably. When WJZY went traditional after its failed experiment it began to make headway in the ratings. Same with WPIX. I would much rather have live news anchored from a station in Texas with local reporters live in studio or on location, than whatever this is. So I'll give Sinclair some credit in that respect. It's not NewsNet Alaska/Wyoming bad by any means, and the on-air talent isn't the problem. But I even find the Waypoint newscasts more watchable than this. I want this station to do well and think Michigan's capital city deserves a third local news option. But it makes one wonder if they would have been better off just staying with the WILX-produced shows? I have no idea who the female voiceover is they're using for most of their imaging. They still do have some promos with Bob Tracey's voice (they should have used him for the opens, the lady they're using sounds bored). The music (Stephen Arnold) and graphics are stock standard Scripps. Anchored by Gabi Dunham and meteorologist Erik Kostrzewa from WXMI with weather. Contains reports from Brett Kast (WXYZ), Kaisha Young, Alexa Liacko (Scripps National), Larry Wallace, Carrie Cochran (Newsy, which is owned by Scripps), Rachel McCrary (WNEM), Connell McShane (Fox Business), Tianna Jenkins, John Matarese (WCPO "Don't Waste Your Money"), and Lauren Shields. Commercials are edited out, station promos have been retained. ©2021 E.W. Scripps Company and WSYM-TV, no copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We do not profit off of this video. open, news open, news close, close, legal ID, stinger, bump, logo, promo, tease