On October 11th, 2010, New York’s CW station, WPIX (known on air as PIX11) recently altered their 10 p.m newscast to make it look less like a newscast and more like some app on an iphone.
WPIX GM Bill Carrey said the newscast was to be more fast-paced and created something called the ‘11 @10’’ which is 11 main stories of that newscast ran through like a countdown list with the reporters rushing through the news having one to three minutes rather than a 5-8 minute news report.
Yes, I get it, We’re in the age of people getting their news in a faster pace (CNN’s sister HLN Network is successful for creating and mastering that format) However , that doesn’t mean TV stations have to dumb down their newscast for young people.
And yes, if that means you have drop one the most respected news anchoring team in the city to get attention for the newscast, than you got that attention. Mind You, PIX11 is trying this format a second time, PIX News also had a 630pm Newscast that tried that format only to have that newscast moved up to 6pm on weekends.
The good thing about this change is that PIX is getting a lot of attention over the change and made the newscast feels different than its predecessor (because it is different than the old PIX News at 10)and its only competitor, the FOX 5 News at Ten which is run by rival FOX O&O station FOX 5 WNYW( who, along with sister WWOR My9 is having a dispute with Cablevision). The bad things about these changes are 1) the Weekday Jim Watkins/Kaity Tong team and the Weekend Peter Thorne / Jackie Hyland team was replaced by a single anchoring format of Jodi Applegate (formerly of News 12 Long Island, WNYW ,and MSNBC ) on weekdays and Jim Watkins relegated to Weekends ( which is a demotion).
2) They dumbed down the newscast to something, as I mentioned before, like an iphone app and rushed through the news to the point that you can not get the subject of the stories reported. 3) they are giving less time to those news reports and MORE time to the PIX EDITORIAL team which is made up of Lionel (don’t know who that is) Larry Mendte (formerly of CBS 3 in Philadelphia, who was fired for checking out his co-anchor’s email).
And finally, this is another FAILED attempt to attract viewers who have since started a Facebook page demanding the return of the Watkins/Tong team and have abandoned PIX News at 10 for Fox 5 News at 10. WPIX has finally pushed the viewers over the edge, and PIX thinks they will work, but they failed.
The City & My Life 
32 replies on “Changes to WPIX’s ‘PIX News at Ten’ Fail”
At 10 pm we always turn on pix 11 news, always.Not any more.Pix news 11 can show all the positive news about the new format that it wants to,I and most people I know,do not like it, and I will not turn to pix news 11again.I truly regret this decison and really enyoyed pix11 in the past. WHAT IN HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING.
I agree that the 10PM newcast at WPIX is a mess. I like Jodi Applegate, but not in this format, she is WAY too light. I like some of the reporters – Mocker, Howard, Mendte – but the format is a mess. Almos unwatchable.
the new format forces reporters to rush through their stories to the point where the message for the stories they report is lost in the shuffle
My wife and I have watched the PIX 11 news at 10pm nearly every night for more years than I can remember. After two nights watching the new format, we’ve switched to the Fox 5 news.
Whomever came up with the new format should be fired!!!
Bring back the old team PIX!!!!
The new format is so awful that the station no longer merits viewing. There sould be a management change, not a change in personnel, save for Lionel.
My husband and I always watched pix 11 news at 10pm. With the new format we will now going to fox 5. The newsteam also look very uncomfortable walking around and posing in front of the camera. Please don’t DUMB down your show, and bring back Watkins and Tong!!
What happened? We have been watching Channel 11 at 10 for years but no more.
We miss the old team and will not be watching Pix News at 10 anymore. Bring back Watkins and Tong. Who is Jodi Appelegate? We don’t need that set with so much going on. All we want is the news quietly and intelligently given.
It’s no longer a newscast, it’s now an abomination. I can’t watch PIX@10 (or whatever it’s called now) anymore.
It’s one thing to try to be edgy or innovative, but the new format is just amateurish.
I agree with you on that.
the dumbing down of newscasts, especially the US’s #1 market is ridiculous
I can’t stand the new format. The show is chopped up nonsense, they seem to have demoted everyone who made the old 10 o’clock news great, even the video is awful. What is Kaity doing interviewing someone in LIC, and why do I have to watch film of the back of her head? Didn’t anyone edit this? The AAMCO monkey-with-the-bat could do better. What moron came up with this? I can’t watch. And I can’t watch Fox 5 because I have Cablevision, so no more 10 o’clock news for me.
Well, Fox did make a return to Cablevision as of October 30th.
so WNYW is gonna benefit from the WPIX’s format changes
how come tv stations listen to idea people
that are stupid
I WILL NEVER WATCH PIX 11 NEWS AT 10 pm
AND PIX RUINED CHILLER THEATRE BY HIRING HOOKERS AS HOSTESS
CHILLER DRIVE INN
We are talkin’ about classic sci fi/horror movies produced when people went to the drive in….keep the original theme and film montage opening (guess you can change some of the movies in montage opening) and keep the program in black and white also the commercials I bet most sponsors would be glad to use commercials from 60’s….people will love the trip back in time once a week….my title pick is ‘CHILLER DRIVE INN” Use opening before we meet the “new ghoul” (you can even use this as a premise to audition a different ghoul or monster every week in the tomb (which doubles as a Inn for other horror characters to visit from time to time )……..comeon WPIX-TV 11 make it a weekly tv experience
the ratings will follow the “CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS” into the stratosphere………..I will suspect it make Officer Joe Bolton, Captain Jack and the Merry Mailman Ray Heatherton smile from above
Chiller theather is a shell of its former self.
i mean it was ridiculous and its not that scary to today’s youth
Oh Boy! I do not like the new format one bit.
How can they get rid of Jim Watkins? The new format and the host are horrible.
Please bring back the old team.
This format doesnt work, trust me!!!!
I have only one word for your new format. It “STINKS”
Here goes another example of the dumbing of America. After all these years you’re NOT THE ONE
If Jim and Kaity were so popular,where were the viewers? The show needed some spark and energy and the format change succeeded.
I agree with you 100%. I use to love channel 11 news and now I hate it! I don’t like that the took off certain people that have been there for years and put people who I have no idea who they are. They even started doing it in the morning and I can’t stand it. They need to change it back and quick!!!
Isn’t say that if it is not broken, do not fix it? I want to see news, not a bunch of running people with text so prepared, that the last phrase is introducing the next one. That is not news. The format is poor and it lack of taste.
PIX 11 NEWS is awful and where did Jodi Applegate come from?
I love Jim Watkins & Kyte Tong. Now they have 1 minute of Sports! whoever decided to make these changes, should be fired! The 10pm Pix News is getting worse NOT better.
DUMBED DOWN???? Are you kidding?????? The local news scene and in markets all over the country for too many years to count. It all started when Channel 7 Eyewitness News started its “happy talk” format back in around 1970. Before the chit-chat between the anchormen/anchorwomen, news was serious. As it should be. By the mid-70s, the only New York City newscasts that still had any respectability at all were the Channel 5 Ten O’Clock News with Bill Jorgensen (later John Roland) and the WPIX-TV Channel 11 News (which later on, also had Jorgensen as the main anchor). Then, FOX bought WNEW-TV from Metromedia,and the once respectable Channel 5 News began it’s downhill slide. Channel 5 and Channel 9 now have the most dumbed down newscasts in New York. And you call ANY newscast with “Flighty” Tong to be NOT dumbed-down????? Yes, most of it was relatively intelligent (although not compared to the news programs that we used to have in New York) intelligent on Channel 11, but Flighty Tong just dragged it down in the intelligence category completely. The loss of Tong is actually a dumbing UP! Now, I’m not saying that the new format is in the same category as Walter Cronkite News, but I give them some credit for being creative, at least. And Larry Mendte and Lionel’s segments are witty and intelligent, albeit a bit gimmicky. Compared to the other dumbed down New York news programs, the new WPIX program is SMART! WCBS Channel 2’s program isn’t all bad. Chuck Scarborough on Channel 4 is a respectable newsman, but Sue Simmons just drags it down completely. Channel 7, WABC-TV’s news, is horrible. But how can anyone say that taking away “Flighty” Tong DUMBS DOWN WPIX news???????? Would I prefer to go back to the ultra-serious format that Channel 5 had in the 70s, a news program that NEVER insulted one’s intelligence? Of course! But it just isn’t going to happen. So I’ll watch WPIX, mostly because of Larry Mendte and Lionel, who add an air of IQ to the presentation.
With all due respect, I can’t see how the nightly T&A show with Jodi Applegate (with a smarmy “frat boy” mentality being cultivated, given how you have cameramen and even some of the male reporters appearing to leer at her; plus some comments I’ve seen about her being packaged as anything from a cougar to a “MILF”) counts as “dumbing up.” On top of it all, given Larry Mendte’s particular history, he comes across as a sanctimonious hypocrite lecturing everyone else on morals. (The fact that YouTube clips of sample segments of PIX 11 News at Ten makes mention of Ms. Applegate’s cleavage, skimpy outfits, physical appearance, et al., within the clip titles, is a good indication of how seriously she’s being treated as a journalist – that is, not at all.) And then there’s the constant navel gazing, with more time given to the personal goings-on of the top “talent” than the actual news, i.e. a whole minute devoted to a slide show of Ms. Applegate’s wedding to Yankees announcer and carbon-monoxide detector pitchman Michael “See Ya” Kay in February.
Bring back the Watkins & Tong Team Can’t stand Jodi Applegate. I can’t take another minute of her & her cleavage. Ugh! Lionel is good. Larry Mendte is usually good, but he has to move on from his endless “dirtiest subway” stories. Yes, they’re all dirty. Who cares? We’re not eating dinner down there.
Ch 11 is trying to lure the younger crowd with it’s quick i-app format. What they don’t realize is that young people don’t watch tv anymore & they certainly don’t get their news from it.
On, the other hand, there’s no one more annoying than know-it-all Ernie Anastos & his giant ego on Fox.
Guess I have to go back to the reading the newspaper!
wpix doesn’t even show the good movies they used to show years ago when i was a kid. they should bring back the old movies. they should show monthly movie promos of good movie that they would show. they should announce the movies, the summary of the movie and the time of the movie. that really pisses me off that they don’t even show the 8 o’ clock movie like they used to. if anybody out there has the 1995 wb 11 8′ oclock movie bumper.
if anybody has an old tape of a movie that has been on channel 11 on the eight o clock movie of 1995 post it on youtube.com for everyone else to see. so they can remember as well as the monthly movie promos.
I used to watch pix 11 all the time. And still so, only because i still wanted to give it a chance.to improve. But sadly, i hate turning the tv on to wb 11 to watch the news at 10pm. First, where did Jody come from? She is a very unprofessional reporter. Yeah, its a free country and everyone has the right to speech, but that does not mean you can be unprofessional on TV. There is a line between freedom of speech and doing your professional job, especially when you address the nation every night. Secondly, I m sorry to correct the reporters (especially Jody), that whether you like it or not Mr. Obama is our President. So get over it, and address him as President Obama (just like you would for Bush), He is NOT obama, he is NOT Mr. Obama. As a reporter, you should be addressing him as President Obama.
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I watch pix 11 because frankly it reminds me of an episode of Saturday Night Live! It is so bad that it has become by latest guilty pleasure!
Lionel is great…go see him do standup at a nightclub for his best material, but he makes the audience think…which is why the ratings are so low…the average New Yorker is a brain-dead liberal wacko.
I love wpix 11 news BUT I have to mute my tv when this Lionel caricature goes on. SO ANNOYING. I get the grumpy old man comedy but quite honestly it’s a waste of time. They could be, I don’t know-showing the news instead of this played out Barney telling us “what grinds his gears”. Nobody cares! Tell me the news and leave out the schtick crap, thank you.