He Did It His Way

Rob Starbuck is one of the most pleasant and straightforward folks you’ll ever meet.  This morning was his last broadcast as the long-time anchor of the News 3 morning show on WISC-TV in Madison. He was given an appropriate send-off by his friends and colleagues.

The photo above shows Rob recording his last news cut-in for the CBS morning show.

 

During the broadcast this morning, Channel 3 showed a whole bunch of recorded inserts from Rob’s former colleagues – including my wife – wishing Rob well on his retirement.  Rob has accomplished something which is extremely rare in broadcasting these days – he was able to retire on his on terms, on his own timetable.  Far too often nowadays, TV news folks are simply shown the door when they reach a certain age. Their contract isn’t renewed, or they’re simply “let go”.

 

Kudos to Television Wisconsin, Inc. for allowing Rob to retire and not tossing him to the curb.

 

I’ve known Rob for decades, going way back to the 70’s when I was working in radio in Oshkosh and Rob was working a few miles west in Ripon at WCWC radio…..”wick-wick radio” as we called it.  Once in a while something would happen between Ripon and Oshkosh, some horrid car wreck or barn fire…and either I’d call Rob’s newsroom or he’d call mine to say “you got anything on this?”  Rob made the move to Green Bay TV, where I watched him every weekend.  He was a consummate TV pro from the very beginning.

 

Here’s a nice shot of Rob with his “work wives” and his real wife, Joy Cardin.  (Yes, THAT Joy Cardin, of Wisconsin Public Radio fame.)  On the left is Cheryl Shubert , who co-anchored the TV3 morning show with Rob back in the 80’s and 90’s.  For a couple years in the mid-90’s, I would do a live TV segment with Cheryl and Rob called “The Week Ahead” every Monday morning, where Cheryl and I would talk about the big news events we expected to report on in the coming week.  Tim DeLay would drive the Channel 3 remote truck over to my radio news studio, set up a camera, and we’d do the 7-minute segment live at around 6:45 AM.  I still have lots of videotapes from those days!

 

Second from the left and next to Rob is Susan Siman, the News 3 veteran who does the Live at Five show now but was Rob’s morning co-anchor after Cheryl left. On Rob’s other side is his real wife, Joy Cardin, and on the right is the young woman who’s co-anchored with Rob for the past several years, Charlotte Deleste.

 

Above is a great gag shot of Rob tossing a chair into the air from the Channel 3 “Back Yard Weather Patio”, with News 3 morning show Meteorologist Haddie McClean looking on from the left and Rob's co-anchor Charlotte Deleste on the right.  It’s a great shot because the LAST thing Rob Starbuck would ever do is actually throw something in anger.  He is probably the most even-tempered person you’d ever meet.  I’ve never even heard Rob raise his voice. Sometimes in jest he’d say something like “I want to just pick this desk up and overturn it” but everyone knew he wasn’t serious. That’s why this shot is so funny – it’s Rob doing something Rob would never do!

 

I wish Rob all the best in retirement – and sure hope we can connect for coffee once in a while, now that he doesn’t have to get up at oh-dark-thirty (literally, 1 AM) to be in to work.  Rob’s going to teach yoga in his spare time now and enjoy life, and, finally, get a chance to listen to his wife’s morning show on Public Radio!  Rob is the consummate pro, respected by every one of his peers and every one of his viewers. I’m so glad he was able to “do it his way” and retire on his clock – to figuratively have his cake, and eat it, too.

 

Godspeed, Rob. I’ll call you about getting together for coffee.

Alternative Reality: Check!

In the toxic stew of negativity that political advertising has become, it’s easy to pay attention only to the ads that make your candidate look good (or, far more likely, that make the candidate you don’t like look evil) than it is to actually listen to what is being said and attempt to analyze it.  Many folks are content to mute the sound, change the channel, or simply ignore political ads they don’t like.

To most of us, the ads are a nuisance.  For the TV stations in the so-called battleground states of Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia, the political advertising is a gold mine, a cash windfall that’s kept them going through tough economic times.

A nonpartisan watchdog group called “Free Press” recently analyzed political advertising and local news coverage in Milwaukee, Tampa, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Charlotte – markets where political ad spending has been the heaviest.

The not-surprising conclusion is that none of the TV stations in those markets, which raked in millions upon millions in political advertising, provided any local news stories investigating or even naming the special interests behind the ads, and did no investigation as to whether the ads were truthful in any way.

In the two weeks prior to the June 5^th recall election in Wisconsin, no Milwaukee TV station spent ANY time doing analysis of the political ads they took money to run.  Yet the folks at Free Press say the Milwaukee stations found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.

It’s a shame they didn’t check the Madison TV market.  You don’t need me to tell you how many political ads have run on the airwaves here since the recall elections last summer, the gubernatorial recall this past June, and now the Tammy/Tommy race and all the Obama/Romney ads that clutter the Madison TV airwaves.

If they did, they would have found one station – and only one – doing any sort of fact-checking on the barrage of political ads.  Despite the millions of political ad dollars that have flowed into the coffers of the local CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox TV stations (for those who aren’t aware, WISC-TV 3 has a contract to do the local news for WMSN Fox 47 – and please don’t confuse Fox TV with Fox News) only one news organization – WISC-TV’s news team – does any fact-checking.

The photo at the top of this post, which I stole from the WISC-TV website and am using here without permission, is a picture of WISC-TV’s Jessica Arp doing one of her many “Reality Check” segments.  She’s been doing frequent Reality Checks as part of the Channel 3 local news segments for years, and she’s damn good at it.  She’s meticulously fair and analyzes ads from both candidates in a race, or both sides of an issue.

The other local TV news operations don’t do this.  They should.  And all three of them should do reality checks not only on the political ads, but also on the special interests spending untold millions to create and buy the air-time for these ads.

Full disclosure: Jessica has been a friend for years, and my wife was a colleague during her days at Channel 3.  Right now, Jess is on a well-deserved vacation with her husband, crawling around ancient pyramids in Chichen Itza, Mexico, and soaking up some sun.  So she may not see this post.  I hope her friends will tell her about it when she gets back home, because she deserves credit for doing what no other reporter in Madison TV is doing.

Kudos also to the ownership and management of Channel 3, for underwriting the cost of doing these reality checks and supporting the effort to inform the electorate.