It was “Karaoke Wednesday” on WGN-Ch. 9’s 6 a.m. newscast a few weeks ago.
Two guys from Star Tracks Karaoke accompanied traffic and weather spots (“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” came with the forecast of showers), but never news reports.
Co-anchor Bill Weir, weather forecaster Paul Konrad and traffic reporter Jenniffer Weigel sang solos. Co-anchor Micah Materre bopped along at the anchor desk during one tune. At the end of the hour, the four got together to sing “My Way.”
“Beautiful, Micah,” Konrad said, “you have a lovely voice.”
“That’s it for me,” Materre chimed in after voicing a single verse.
Ch. 9’s wakeup telecast is an example of the major difference between early and later newscasts: solemn and serious at night, light and casual in the morning.
Other morning shows in Chicago vary in how seriously they take themselves while delivering news and information. But the slight playfulness may cause viewers to ask: How seriously can one take anchors who at times act a little silly?
According to several daybreak personalities, it depends on how you conduct yourself overall.
“I’ve never done `Karaoke Wednesday’ on the air before,” says Materre, “but I think with my journalistic background, I think I do hold my integrity.”
Materre, a native South Sider with Channel 9 since January, spent about 10 years as a reporter and anchor at television stations in Detroit and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was also a producer for four years at radio station WBEZ-FM in Chicago.
Materre says there has to be a certain lighthearted air in morning news when “people are just waking up.”
But Materre, 36, adds that in her short time at Channel 9, “I’ve established myself in that people know that I’m a journalist and that news comes first and that’s what it’s all about.”
Bob Sirott, who practically reinvented the modern morning news show’s less restrictive format when he put together “First Thing in the Morning” at WMAQ-Ch. 5 in 1990–which he bought to WFLD-Ch. 32 four years later as “Fox Thing in the Morning”–feels viewers don’t have a problem with some of the playfulness morning anchors convey.
“They’re very sophisticated,” says Sirott, 48, of audiences. “Our mission is to be seen as a real person, multifaceted with many dimensions.”
Sirott says that because anchors are allowed to loosen up in the morning, viewers “accept it, and in fact appreciate it and actually respect and give you more credibility because they know you’re real.”
Sirott and co-anchor Marianne Murciano have a little more latitude in their casual approach because they don’t read news headlines. Since that is taken care of by Mike Pomeranz, the two don’t have to worry about joking around the edges of a serious, or even tragic, news story.
Art Norman and Robin Meade, anchors of Channel 5’s “First Thing in the Morning,” do handle their own news. Playing silly around that isn’t much of a problem, however, because their newscast is a little more formal than some of the others.
Even so, Norman, a 30-year news veteran, says it’s all in the presentation, whether the situation is light or heavy.
“We’re just delivering a message,” explains Norman, who inherited his morning job from Sirott. “You can smile while you’re telling (one kind of) story. You don’t want to smile if the news is bad or a plane goes down. Those kinds of things you’ve got to be very careful of.”
“Care” is the watchword Mary Ann Childers has for anyone coming into a new market and working on a lighter morning newscast. That first impression can mean the difference between establishing, or losing, credibility with the audience.
“I think that everybody has to look at the choices you make very carefully. But I think someone who’s new to the market would have to maybe be more careful, because the audience is just getting to know you,” says Childers, a veteran of Chicago TV news who has anchored WBBM-Ch. 2’s morning show for about a year.
For instance, Childers says, audiences know Katie Couric of NBC’s “The Today Show” well enough that she can do something like wear a goofy hat on the air. “But then she does the big interview,” Childers says, and it doesn’t jar the audience.
Materre says viewers are still learning who she is, but that doesn’t preclude her from both participating in such activities as “Karaoke Wednesday” and talking with authority about serious events.
“I can be a little silly and lighthearted to a certain extent, but you know where to draw the line,” Materre says.”And I’m comfortable with that, because I’m not a person who’s going to run around and act crazy all the time.”
