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Weighing workload of news anchors

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By Ron Lorenzen | Sunday, June 25, 2006 11:24 PM CDT | () comments

All these changes in network TV anchors seems to have rekindled speculation on just how much work anchors have to do for their fabulous salaries anyway.

One survey, recently conducted, claims an evening news anchor “averages four minutes of face-time and seven minutes of speaking time each night.“

Not all Quad-City area news directors are sure what is meant as the difference between face and speaking time but statistics about network evening anchors do not necessarily apply to the gentlemen and ladies working on local news desks.

According to the survey, the nightly half-hour newscasts of the major networks contain an average of seven “taped news packages,” says Andrew Tyndall in a piece written for Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

“That’s almost 85 percent of the time spent on filling the news hole.

“On average each package is assigned about 140 seconds of air time, two minutes for the correspondent and 20 seconds or so for the anchor. So each night an anchor spends a grand total of 140 seconds introducing reports from the field.”

Then there are the short “voice-overs” and “read-only” items by the anchor that doesn’t require a reporter.

The survey concludes with a further breakdown of the minutes and seconds in which an anchor does his or her thing.

Without going into the merits of such analysis, Doug Retherford who has, as a news director, worked with TV news anchors for 24 years, says it has been his experience that they have always been heavily involved in all phases of putting newscasts together before and after screening them.

Currently Retherford is news director at the Independent News Network, Davenport, which produces the “Fox 18 Nine O’Clock News” for KLJB-TV, Davenport.

The survey may, however, perk up the interest of Kurt Liske, 22, of Donahue, Iowa, who is realizing an early aspiration to become a news reporter.

Retherford says Liske, who graduated from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, last month holding a degree in communications art with emphasis on electronics media, has joined INN as a video journalist.

He fills the vacancy created when Andrew Cunningham left to take a job in Cedar Rapids after having served on KLJB since November.

While at North Scott High School, Liske was extremely active in sports. He played baseball for two years and wrestled four years. He also was captain of his golf team.

But he never took his eyes off his reporting goal, he says. He did a stint at the Wartburg campus TV station and interned at KUSA, Denver, and KWQC-TV, Davenport.

Contact the features desk at

(563) 383-2400 or newsroom@qctimes.com.