R News surpasses goals set for 24-hour newscast

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First, they thought Ted Turner had short-circuited with his Cable News Network. Twenty-four hours of news was fine, the “experts” said, but not in the same day.
Now comes Peter Dobrovitz, news director at Time Warner Communications’ R News, followed closely by the question, “Why is this man smiling?” The answer is simple: The round-the- clock news that debuted July 4 on cable channel 9 has been more successful than even Dobrovitz anticipated.
Deborah Cuffaro, director of advertising sales, reports a base of close to 100 accounts and envisions R News increasing that by 75 percent in the next year.
“My former employer (WHEC-TV 10) told me I was committing career suicide,” Dobrovitz said, a wry smile punctuating his satisfaction. “I went to a news director’s convention in 1990 and I was on a panel with a guy from New York on one side and a guy from Los Angeles on the other and here’s Rochester. I asked myself, “What’s wrong with this picture?’ and I realized, nothing.
“I remember coming back and saying, “We’ve got to do 24-hour news.”’
That was the first time Dobrovitz heard it: “There’s not 24 hours’ worth of news here in Rochester.” He has heard it 100 times since. He has long since learned to ignore it.
Meanwhile, R News has increased its staff from 19 to 62. Dobrovitz has two assistant news directors, Edward Buttaccio and Gary Turner; two assignment editors, Seth Vorhees and Sean McNamara; four news anchors, Virginia Butler, Leigh Ann Carlson, Diana Palotas and James Aroune; and three sportscasters, William Pucko, Michael Hedeen and Molly Cummings.
Benjamin Herrera does a five- to eight-minute newscast in Spanish each evening. The other staffers are either reporters, photographers, producers, directors or production assistants.
The station covers local and national politics, business, education, sports, weather and community activities, and Dobrovitz says it does not watch the clock.
“We can go to an important press conference and we’ll turn on the cameras and stay there, whether it lasts 30 minutes or 45 minutes or what, we’re there.
“In terms of what we envisioned a couple of years ago and what it has turned out to be, it’s exceeded our expectations,” he added. “What it is, is making a newscast that is adaptable to your lifestyle so you watch it when you want to watch it–similar to what WHAM does with all-news radio.”
To that end, Cuffaro’s staff does not concern itself with ratings–that is, a given number of viewers in a given time slot on a given day.
“We don’t live or die by the ratings,” Cuffaro said. “We sell the frequency of the message and the additional opportunities, such as being able to sponsor specific segments of the news. We also create niches, which is basically what cable advertising is all about.”
R News sells advertising in annual packages of $12,000, $30,000, $60,000 and $120,000.
“With that package,” Cuffaro said, “(clients) get X number of spots in the early morning, X number during the daytime, X number in prime time and then the overnight. Overnights are always a throw-in because we repeat tapes overnight. Everyone gets the same spread throughout the week.”
Joel MaHarry, associate creative director at Crane Advertising, like so many before him, questions R News’ ability to maintain quality for 24 hours every day.
“I would hope that it would succeed,” MaHarry said. “It’s a good alternative to what’s on TV now, especially during the daytime.”
Still, MaHarry is not convinced that a 24-hour news station is something he would recommend to his clients. “From our standpoint, we’re not jumping up and down and throwing money at it.”
Dobrovitz makes no apologies for the segments that are repeated on R News. He seems to see that as a strength rather than a weakness.
“You watch when you want to watch,” he said. “A network affiliate won’t give you everything at 5 o’clock because they want you to watch at 5 and at 6. We’ll come on at 5 and give you everything we’ve got, and we’ll give you everything we’ve got at 6.
“We have eight people working overnight to make sure it’s totally new, totally fresh in the morning. At noon we’ll have new things, then at 4 in the afternoon we’ll have new things and at 9 o’clock at night we’ll have new things.”
Dobrovitz says he has noticed subtle changes in the newscasts of TV 10, WOKR-TV 13 and WROC-TV 8, but has only passing interest.
“We don’t pay that much attention to what 8, 10 and 13 are doing,” he said. “We’re in a different universe. We just do what we think we ought to do. We don’t worry about what they cover.
“A network affiliate is boxed in. There’s only so much time you’ve got. (The network doesn’t want you to pre-empt “60 Minutes’ or “Dateline’ or other network shows. And in the fringe times, 4 o’clock, 7 o’clock, they make a lot of money with “Oprah,’ “Wheel of Fortune,’ so there’s a limited amount of time.”
Robert Elmore, news director at TV 10, said R News’ move to a 24-hour format “has been a great development for local news coverage. It raises the level of the work at all the stations.
“Now there are four TV news teams out there looking for stories. It makes us much more competitive and benefits the whole community.”
Dobrovitz said he will not lose any sleep over what the competition does in an effort to out-report R News.
“I don’t care,” he said. “We just want to make sure we’re always pushing the envelope, doing new things, trying new technology, challenging our people.”
He said the digitizing of R News video is coming and suggested that it is just around the corner rather than on a distant horizon.
“You could sit home and pull up a menu that says “stories we’re doing today,’ and you could pick what you want to watch,” Dobrovitz said. “Or you could encode your system and search the system. If you don’t want to see homicides, you don’t get homicides; if you don’t want sports, you don’t get sports. You can custom tailor it.
“My thought is that 24 hours will last for some time to come.”