M:M May Sweeps: a litmus test for WMC?

By Richard Thompson
Mediaverse:Memphis

The May sweeps started Thursday. Is this a litmus test for WMC Action News 5 News Director Tracey Rogers? That depends.

In February, the last TV ratings period, the NBC affiliate lost to CBS affiliate WREG News Channel 3 but not by much—just six-tenths of a point. Still, it represented WREG’s fifth consecutive win at the coveted 10 p.m. newscast slot since the February 2006 sweeps.

There wasn’t much Rogers, 37, could do about that.

After all, she arrived in Memphis right in the middle of February, coming from Huntsville, Ala., the 84th ranked TV market, where she served as news director of WMC’s sister station, WAFF-TV. But now she has nearly three months under her belt in the 44th ranked TV market.

With that in mind, for this ratings period ending May 23, this litmus test could reveal how much of a difference Rogers has made on veteran staff that nearly won the last two ratings periods with the news director position in flux. Also, for Rogers, who is still making assessments, it might also reveal what else needs to be tweaked on her “To-Do” list.

No matter what, though, Rogers is simply appreciative of being where she is.

“I am so lucky to now be a member of the Action News 5 Team. And it remains the same no matter if we are in sweeps or out of sweeps. We will serve our viewers the same no matter what day of the week it is,” Rogers said this week.

Faith-driven

Explaining how it felt to ascend from Huntsville to Memphis, Rogers said: “I feel like I was led to do this.”

At various times in her 19-year career, acts of providence have guided her. For instance, in 2000, she was hired to be a news director in Paducah, Ky. She already spent six months there, purchased a house when her son, Blake, who was five at the time, said he did not want to live in Kentucky. He was living in Alabama with his father, with whom Rogers has shared joint custody since they divorced in 1995.

“I did a lot of praying,” said Rogers in an interview just weeks after she had arrived. She put her house on the market. The next day, Raycom Media called her about an open news director position at WAFF-TV.

“I said, ‘You just don’t understand. I have to get to Huntsville,’” Rogers, 37, recalled telling the recruiter.

She spent nearly seven years there. On a personal level, she found happiness. She re-married in 2003. On a professional level, the award-winning broadcaster thrived with Lee Meredith, who served as WAFF’s general manager until he came to WMC, a Raycom sister station, last August. Months later, Rogers—who admitted to missing Meredith’s tutelage in Huntsville—has arrived here at Memphis’s NBC affiliate too.

Husband, Phillip, 39, and Blake, a young teen, have come too. Providence.

“I’m very excited about getting the opportunity to work with Tracey again,” said Meredith in the February press release announcing Rogers’ hire. She replaced Peggy Phillip, who had resigned in December. “(Rogers) is absolutely one of the best broadcast journalists in the country.”

Despite her faith, Rogers does not fashion herself in savior robe. She doesn’t have too.

Again, WMC had dominated the ratings for years, but in a close horse race stumbles can prove costly. The stumble resulted from NBC’s poor evening coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics in 2006; it opened the door for WREG. Since then, WMC has been regaining ground.

In the November 2006 and the latest February sweeps, the difference between the two stations was four-tenths and sixth-tenths of a rating point respectively. (In Memphis, a rating point represents 6,643 TV households.) Statistical ties, if you will, says WMC anchor Donna Davis.

The point, Davis said: “We fought back.”

To be sure, WMC staffers have noticed a change in style – no slight intended to Phillip, who Rogers knows, respects and shares a similar fierce competitiveness. “She’s the right person for the job at the right time,” said Davis about Rogers.

Home again

Rogers prayed before coming to Memphis, which is like coming home for her. “I feel like I’ve been (at WMC) a lot longer,” she said.

She grew up in Jackson, Tenn. She went to the same high school, North Side, as Davis, who was a sophomore during Rogers’s senior year. Rogers’ family routinely made trips to Memphis; she remembers watching longtime meteorologist Dave Brown hosting professional wrestling on WMC.

“When you thought of news, you thought of WMC,” she said, though her initial interest at Middle Tennessee State University was acting but “I didn’t want to starve.”

As a freshman, Rogers joined the campus’s news station as news director, basically building its newscast from scratch. The sports reporter she selected: Nick Paranjape. “I always tell people that was the easiest job I got,” said Paranjape, also a 1991 MTSU grad.

While in college, Rogers worked for WSMV, the NBC affiliate in Nashville. After graduation, she worked for WTVF, Nashville’s CBS affiliate, and later became assistant news director at WKRN, the ABC affiliate. When a series of tornados hit Nashville in 1998, Rogers became intrigued by weather.

“I’m fascinated with how much people are fascinated by weather,” said Rogers, adding that living in Huntsville, the “Tornado Alley” of north Alabama, also taught her how to cover severe weather “without scaring people.”

May Sweeps

In her short tenure, she pushed WMC to sell Midland weather radios at Kroger stores. The station has launched desktop news alerts among other things. So far, so good.

“This is an outstanding team and I think you will see that we are focused on serving the Mid-South community,” said Rogers. “No matter if it’s with severe weather coverage, breaking news coverage, holding public leaders accountable – we will be there.”

WMC’s first story of May sweeps: an investigative piece on State Sen. Ophelia Ford, who has missed 18 out of 29 legislative days this year. Ford attributed her absences to an illness.

And speaking of a Ford, WMC has kept one of the best John Ford trial blogs in Memphis; however, even though Rogers sees the potential, the future of blogs remains unclear at WMC.

“I haven’t made any decisions about what we’ll keep,” Rogers said in an interview soon after being hired.

An update: that hasn’t changed.