I’m not the most faithful viewer of the TV news—evenings are too busy, and staying up until 11 p.m.? Not happening—but like a lot of people, I made it a point to catch Channel 22’s 6 p.m. broadcast last night, for the long-awaited return of anchor Barry Kriger.
Kriger, as we all know by know, had been absent from the broadcast for months, undergoing what sounds like pretty intensive physical therapy after being involved in a car accident during a Mexican vacation in January.
While 22 played the story close to the vest in the beginning, the station made a well-warranted big deal about Kriger’s return to work. The newsman spent yesterday morning making the rounds of the local radio talk shows (nope, he didn’t drop by Channels 3 or 40), and Channel 22 teased his return prominently on its newscasts during the day. The station couldn’t resist injecting a little drama into the big moment of his return at 6—the broadcast started with co-anchor Elysia Rodriguez sitting next to her colleague’s empty chair, then a camera followed Kriger from his backstage desk to the set—but mercifully kept it short, segueing quickly into the business of the news.
Kriger’s ordeal left his body thinner—not scary-skinny, just thinner than he was—but his trademark perfect-teeth smile intact. It’s good to see it, and him, back in action.
Kriger’s return wasn’t the only local-news news yesterday. That morning, Channel 40 unveiled its new morning news format, with former WHYN radio personalities Dan (Williams) and Kim (Zachary) as hosts, replacing the more traditional news-reader-at-a-desk model.
Reaction so far has been, well, meh. While Republican reporter Ray Kelly offered a mostly positive review on MassLive—while the hosts seemed comfortable, certain parts of the show “could use a little fine tuning” he wrote—reader responses to that story were almost to a person negative, generally describing as awkward both the set and the interactions between the hosts and the deposed news folks, who occasionally appeared on a split screen to deliver the news and weather.
To be fair, who ever has a stellar first day at a new job—much less when that first day is being broadcast live across the region? And Dan and Kim did have a couple of defenders among the MassLive posters, who suggested everyone just chill out and give them some time to find their way. (“I’m watching it right now, I don’t think it’s so bad. [Dan] has a lot more hair than in that above picture,” one supporter wrote.)
Still, even accounting for the usual percentage of MassLive meanies—who would probably have something nasty to say about Santa Claus, or Gandhi—the feedback suggests that the show does, indeed, need some work if it’s to win over viewers.
