M:M Feature Story: The Shrinking TV Sports Desk

By Brandon Harris
Mediaverse®

Memphis is a city identified by its sports. 2008 proved that, exemplified by the University of Memphis’s men’s basketball team’s first No. 1 ranking in 25 years and its subsequent run through the NCAA Tournament that ended at the national championship game.

The success of a single college basketball team transcended sports, gripped the bleeding hearts of Memphians with each authoritative dunk and technical foul as we battled against skeptics and non-believers to define what it meant to be from this city. Tiger basketball seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

Yet, as much as sports captivate the city, that does not really stem the challenges that broadcast TV sports departments are facing today. As a whole, these departments are struggling even as the interest for sports grows. In 2008, they experienced staff reductions, decreased travel budgets and more as the economic crisis forced stations to make hard decisions, which ultimately impacted their respective approaches to sports.

In 2008, EyewitnessNews and WMC-TV Action News 5 both cut staffing. WREG Newschannel 3 has long been understaffed while only Fox13’s sports desk seemed to maintain its strength.

The struggles were noticeable, for instance, at Memphis Grizzlies games and Friday night high school football. Even the daily coverage of Tiger basketball practices pointed a finger at local sports media market that, if not shrinking, is definitely rethinking and retooling how it provides coverage.

“You'd expect to see four television reporters and four photographers at basketball practices,” said Fox 13 sports reporter Greg Gaston. “But I can't tell you how many times I've been over interviewing the Tigers or the Grizzlies, and it's me and four photographers, and I'm holding the microphones for the other stations.

“It's tough. Channel 3, for example, has two on-air people. If one guy is on vacation and the other guys is working, they have to use part-time workers or interns to do interviews. You've got a trend now where there are a lot of interns who will do the interviews with whoever.”

Such is the case in the era where media executives feeling the economic pinch want their outlets to continue to do more with less.

Newport Television's Eyewitness News (ABC24/CW30) laid off at least 20 in last June, including sports reporter Kathy Morris, though she was later rehired. Raycom Media's WMC-TV Channel 5 laid off 15 employees on Dec. 9, including sports reporter Dave Cera.

"When I started working in Memphis in 2004, we had a five-person department, Channel 3 had a five-person department and Channel 5 had a four-person department," said former 24/30 sports reporter Rob Petrone, who left in November and is now a freelance journalist in New York. "Now, 24/30 is down to three, 3 is down to two full-time and 5 is down to two. That's pretty remarkable when you think about it."

Tracey Rogers, WMC’s news director, said the dwindling number isn't necessarily because sports is viewed differently. Sports would always remain important to the newscast as long as it was "hyper-local," and that the changes and difficulties affecting sports departments were affecting the news side too, she said.

"With our company, we're doing a lot of sharing with other Raycom stations with both news and sports," Rogers said. "When we went to cover the inauguration, we worked with our Richmond (Va.) station, our Charlotte (N.C.) station and our Montgomery (Ala.) station. Instead of every station being alone, we're working together, and that's making a big difference."

Geoff Calkins, columnist for the Commercial Appeal, said though he's seen very few fundamental changes within the paper's sports department outside of earlier deadlines and smaller newsholes. Still, he said, there's no question print media in general has been hit hard and is feeling the similar effects on the national level.

He looked no further than his trip to Nashville on Jan. 10 to cover the Titans' divisional-round playoff game for an example.

"I went to the Titans game and I was talking to Les Carpenter from the Washington Post," Calkins said. "You say, 'How are you?' and now the answer is, 'I'm still employed.' When you get a bunch of reporters together now, it's like a reunion of Katrina survivors. At the Olympics, everyone assumed -- I know I did -- that it'd be the last Olympics they'd ever cover. Even Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times. I talked to him and he said he assumed it'd be his last Olympics, too."

Fox 13, meanwhile, has actually bucked the trend.

Gaston became a freelancer for the station after his departure from 24/30 in October 2007, and he recently signed a two-year contract to make him the fourth full-time member of the station's sports team and making the Fox 13 sports staff the largest in Memphis and the only one that has grown.

Gaston and Fox 13 sports director Matt Stark credited General Manager John Koski and News Director Ken Jobe with the station's commitment to sports. But even then, the station has still undergone its share of cost-cutting measures, just like all of the others have.

While covering the Super Bowl for his radio show on Sports 56, Gaston did some freelance work for Fox 13. He said there was “no way” the TV station would send him to cover it again this year and it did not. Another example came as recently as mid-December when not one television station sent a reporter to St. Petersburg, Fla., to cover the Tiger football team as it played in its fourth bowl game in five years. “Has this been tougher on sports? Probably,” Petrone said. “We're the segment that's at the end of the broadcast, so we're seen as less important.”

Gaston pointed to his departure from 24/30 as a sign of how sports may be viewed in some places. “I helped build the sports department at WPTY/WLMT from when I got there in 1995,” Gaston said. “The one thing we were while the time I was there was we were well-respected as a sports department, though our TV news got no ratings. Not too many people watched 24 and 30, but a lot of people watched our sports. We won awards, we were given accolades and stuff like that.

“But once the new news director (Jim Turpin) came in, I knew that by the end of that contract, they weren't going to renew. They made a move because I was well-paid and they wanted to cut down on the cost. I understand that, and that’s why I’m so happy to be at Fox 13.”

Turpin was contacted for this story, but was not available for comment.

In general, sports departments are being asked to do more with less, be it less manpower, smaller travel budgets, shorter segments or smaller newsholes. At the same time, industry professionals said the importance of sports and the impact they have on this city haven’t been forgotten.

“You see the length of the sports segment within the newscast going down and that it's usually right at the bottom of the newscast,” Gaston said. “Yet, what galvanizes the communities more than sports? What brings people together more than sports? Every time there's something big happening, suddenly news wants you more involved in the news portion of the show. In that sense, I don't think sports reporting will ever come to an end.”

Brandon Harris is a freelance correspondent for Mediaverse®. His E-mail is bharris901@gmail.com.