October 18, 2024 • 17 mins
Bill Lamb, the new President and General Manager at WDRB, discussed going to Los Angeles, coming back to Louisville, unretiring, the constant change that takes place in media, and the importance of local news...
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I like having golf friends because you can badger them
to go play golf anytime. I contacted one of my
longtime golf partners and he said, well, I can only
play on Saturdays and Sundays. And then he didn't tell
me why, and I thought, what, I didn't play Saturdays
and Sundays. It turns out he has another job. It's
(00:22):
one that he has reclaimed from years earlier. Bill Lamb
is back at w d RB as president and general manager.
Welcome to the w h A S Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you, Terry, and I have a question for you
before we start, which is which camera do I look
into this one?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay? This this this way right across the area? Got it?
So you couldn't tell me you were You were coming
back to where you've been back in Louthal for a while.
But you know, people know who you are. You're you're
the guy who the point of view guy from w
d RB. You went to Los Angeles, Yes, sir, that
was fun. That was COVID was a blast, and.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Uh it just it just tickled me. No, l A
was LA was great. You know, Fox Corporation treated us
great and enjoyed it. But you know, three years I
thought that was probably all I needed to do there.
And and we always knew that we were coming back
to Louisville because Louisville's home and we wanted to retire here,
(01:20):
or I wanted to retire here.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Becky's Becky's like, yeah, she's still working, she's enjoying.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So you know, I got a call last week asking
if if I would consider coming back, and we had
to talk about a couple of things, none of which
was about money or compensation any of that. It was
about what do you need done and how are we
going to do it? And it was a pretty short conversation,
and I said, yeah, I'll come back.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Because you and I have seen each other during this
down period when you were retired, retired, and and you
told me several times, you said, now make sure you're
ready when you're when you're whenever you're going to pull
the ripcord on this thing. And so you had some
I guess, so just a little bit of reflection, like
you know what I kind of like being in the
middle of things.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Well, I'm a very shallow person, Terry, and I have
no real hobbies or interests, I have no original thoughts.
So when you retire and you're left to your own
devices and there's no other stimulus. Fortunately, I have a
great wife. But I wasn't really good at retirement. I'll
be honest with you. I just wasn't good at it.
I didn't enjoy it, and it seemed like the world
(02:27):
was happening around me. And now I have a chance
to kind of get back in and work with people
I care a great deal about, and work for a
station I care a great deal about in a community
I love. I mean, that's kind of one of those
decisions that sort of makes itself almost right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
We're going to stay focused on your work. But let
me sidestep one time here. For all the golfers listening
during that time off, did you get your handicapped down
to single digits? My goal?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I started the season with a nine point two index.
My goal written down right in front of me, was
to be a six. I took lessons. I played fifty
six rounds of golf this summer, and I don't know
how many between January and March, and I went to
an eleven point two.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Oh that's not good, folks.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
In the last couple of months, I got it back
to a nine point two. So, in other words, no
progress for all that effort.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Nothing. Did you go back and ask the instructor for
your money back?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh yeah, he told me the checks in the mail. Yes, No, sadly,
he's a great instructor. I'm just not his prize pupil.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I got you. So you're back at WDRB you were
there for many years. Oh look there's Tyler Greever. I
love that guy. He's a good guy that he was
working at HAS when you were gone. Yeah, he's your
sports director and s. Yes, there's a lot of quality
talent in this market. But when you come in, obviously
you did it in Los Angeles too, you have to
put your eyeballs on what you're doing and how to
(03:48):
get ready for tomorrow. Yesterday doesn't matter, right, right, right,
that's right, there's uh. You know, the business is changing.
Let's let's be candid about doubt. The market is changing.
Everything is changing, not just for television but for everybody.
And if you're going to be stuck in the Ron
Burgundy world of television, you're going to get left behind.
(04:11):
So we have to think differently. We are going to
have to present our product, perhaps in a way we
haven't before we're going to have to maybe shift some
of our resources, but make no mistake, we still have
more resources than anybody in the community. And we have
great people.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And you know the thing about great people is you
tell them what you need them to do, they tell
you that they can do more, and they go do it.
That's it, And that's what I love about the people
I work with. They're the best people I've ever worked
with in my life. And I work with some wonderful
people in LA Also, were.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
There any Ron Burgundy's in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Around every corner Ron Burgundy lives exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Everybody knows the anchor Man movie. And when you go
to a market like that, that's the two market or
the three number two number two, you got egos. And
also you're in Hollywood or you're near Hollywood, so a
lot of the people who would work for you out
there as opposed to somebody in Middle America thinks my
next step is the movies.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, we had several people who were in movies from
time to time, whether it's cameos or playing the part
of a newsperson or even I had one reporter who
actually had a role in a movie. I'm sure there
were others, but that's one I know of, but it
is a different place. That was interesting to me because
(05:34):
I thought when I went out to LA I was
going to be dealing with massive news egos and we
were going to have a battle and it was going
to be ugly, but I intended to prevail. Those anchors
and reporters, all of them made an appointment to come
up to see me, and their message was almost the
same thing. We're winners, but we don't know the game plan.
We don't even know where the goal is, and if
(05:56):
you can lead us there, we will be forever great.
They wanted to win. The egos were aside. They were delightful,
wonderful people. That's fantastic, it really was. I thought, this
is so cool.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
But I always here that in the biggest of markets, though,
that the competition is brutal, and that people will, you know,
just so we can express it in a way the
listeners can understand cut somebody else's cord on their camera.
I know there aren't cords, but to try and sabotage
their competitors to get a story. Is it like that?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I don't think so. I mean, I've never seen that.
It's certainly competitive, but it's also congenial. Everybody knows everybody
in television out there, so you've got friends everywhere. A
lot of people have worked at multiple stations, so it's competitive,
but it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's not that you were highly successful here in Louisville.
You love this community. You and Becky love this community.
Now you're in Los Angeles and it takes an hour
and a half to go a mile on the freeway.
How quickly did Becky say let's go back. Well, Becky
(07:03):
was fortunate because her job out there started with her
working remotely before COVID, so her commute was not bad. Yeah,
she worked out of our little office. But you're right.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I literally lived nine point two miles from the station,
and it would take me an hour and a half
to get home, no matter what route I took. On
Thursday nights, that was the busiest night. And that's maddening
because you feel like you're just wasting time. And so
we wound up moving closer to the station because it
just wasn't worth it to stay where we were. We
(07:37):
sold our house and we moved, so I had two
houses out there. Yeah, but those are cheap, Luckily, that's right,
Dimond doesn't. But boy, can you get bang for your
buck out there. But look, you know, I had a
great time, and I don't regret it.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I loved it. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But I'm back and I literally there's no place on
Earth I'd rather be than Louisville, Kentucky WDRB. I mean,
this is this is a terrific, terrific opportunity again.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right, and it's a good news market. I mean, obviously,
if you're in Los Angeles, you've got a million things
to cover. You don't know if you can cover the
everything that's available to you. But here we're hyper focused
on obviously the crime issues that happen. We have to
do that, the things that are happening, the growth curve
Louisville and Kentucky, sports and so you know, it's a
(08:28):
it's a it's more of a limited universe, but you
can still go in depth and a lot of these
things as well, and you still have reporters that can
do that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yes, yes, you know, I had a conversation with and
I'm sorry I'm blanking on his name, but the guy
who's the head of TMZ and I went over to
kind of study.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Harvey, Harvey Harvey Levant.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, okay, Harvey Levin and I went over just to
kind of see what are you guys doing. You seem
to be covering everything, and what are your resources? That
type of thing, and he said, he said, let me
ask you a question. He said, how many news crews
do you have truck's reporter photographer? I said eighteen. He said,
so basically, you're missing everything, right, of course, this is
too big a city for eighteen people. And I thought
(09:12):
eighteen crews was pretty good. He said, you're missing everything.
He said, we use a lot of social media stringers.
We do, we sure do. And he got me thinking
a little bit differently. Not that necessarily that's the way
to go, but it's like, you guys have invented a
whole new way of gathering information that is acceptable. It's
you've created a very good business out of that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Some of them are unprofessional. That's the problem is that
some people will jump over somebody's fence. Yeah, yeah, they'll
jump over Taylor Swift's fence. Your fence is safe, Terry.
We will not jump it. I promise, I promise. No,
You're right.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean, in journalism, it has to be ethical you know,
and I look at you, look at Fox News, you
know who they are. They know who they are. You
look at MSNBC, they know who they are, and so on.
I worry about CBS, NBC, ABC because they're pretending to
be neutral journalists and yet they are slanting, for example,
(10:09):
this election in an unbelievable way. Sixty minutes gets blasted,
you know, a week or so ago for a messing
up a sixty minutes interview. And I'm sitting here saying,
you know, we're going to be local news in this
country is going to be the last man standing when
the networks implode because they deceived people.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
They're not neutral. Local news is as neutral as human
beings can be. But citizen journalists are the ones who
busted CBS on that sixty minutes deal. Is that? Is
that who got them? Yeah? I mean people saw what
was on the air, and then they went online to
see the repeat like on YouTube, the CBS's version of
sixty minutes. Yes, and they edited an answer from Kamala
(10:51):
Harris from a different question and put it with and
put it with a different answer.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And why an organization like CBS or sixty minutes within
the CBS organization would do that and put themselves in
such a position.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I have no idea. It's bizarre, but that's that's a
producer who thinks they have too much power, but by
thinking too much.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
But that's that's the thing that I really do believe
about local news, radio television. Those journalists, the people in
those newsrooms really truly do want to report the news.
They're not trying to be advocates. They're not trying to
be activists. They're the activists. They're not trying to sway anything.
They're just trying to tell you what they know. And
(11:33):
of course every human being has built in biases of
some sort. The object is to fight those every day.
It's hard to go, uh, cover a story about a
pedophile and be completely neutral as a human being, Right,
you have feelings, but you have to do your best
to try to just report, and I think local journalists
do a great job of that.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Are you going to return to the point of view position? Ah,
I haven't decided.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I wasn't sure. I think I am, and I think
it may be soon. I really honestly hadn't decided, but
I think I have that I will. I think I will.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, Well, you have to have opinion columns, I mean,
and the various sources have to have to help just
I guess coalesce thoughts about things. I had the lieutenant
governor here a couple of days ago. Yesterday I had
a state rep here. They're on either side of the
amendment too. The reaction is fierce on both of those sides.
So it's important to weigh into some of that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, And as you remember, the purpose of point of
view when I did it was not to get you
to agree with me. That's not what's important. What's important
is to provoke a conversation. If you don't have an opinion,
you're welcome to mine. If you agree with mine, that's
great too, But if you don't, that might even be better.
The thing is to have a conversation. And because there
(12:53):
are so many things that happened to us in this community,
happened to us, decisions that are made for us, and
if we don't know what they are enough to even
have an opinion, then we just are kind of victims.
And I'd rather us be involved in our communities, because
heaven knows, all the decisions that are being made are
not always good ones.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Video killed the radio star that never happened. Radio is
still alive. TV Local TV is still alive as well,
even though people have called out its demise. You see
a lifespan continuing beyond the next decade.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I do, and it's because of what I just said.
The things that people watch most on television is of
course sports NFL, but local news and communities need local news.
We don't have the newspapers like we used to. The
newspapers don't offer the death or the timeliness that they
(13:46):
used to. So I think there's always going to be
a place for us, both of us. I think there is,
and that's I don't think that's really replaceable.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Are the Are the major sports all going to go
to pay perview? I mean I had to go to
the peak to get my first Green Bay Packers game
and Louisville versus Notre Dame. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Is that happening?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think you're going to see in ten years that
could be where it is. Maybe not, maybe fifteen years,
but yes, all these platforms are trying to build audience
and build subscribers, and you can only do that with content,
and the best content is compelling content that you can't
get anywhere else. So that's why you'll see Notre Dame
(14:28):
move over there. That's why you see an NFL game.
It's not to benefit the NFL. It's to benefit Amazon, right, Okay,
But they'll pay a lot of money for that, and
the NFL is agnostic as long as they get money.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I watched that crummy game last night, but go to
Amazon to get it.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, it's I think the future's good. It's just we're
just going to have to evolve. If you just try
to live like we did and everything's the same as
it was seventy years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Last thing for you, Bill Lamb. These squabbles that come
up between individual stations and whatever, you know, the direct TV,
they ads or whatever it is, and then they take
you off their system. When are we going to get
to an end game on this?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I don't know, because that is the system. They have
to pay us for our product. Our product does cost
a lot of money to make and they are benefiting
from it. And if you know, they always start, you
start these negotiations. They don't want to pay what is
the going fair market rate, and we probably want a
little bit more than we're worth, and we wind up
(15:29):
usually meeting in the middle. But if a broadcaster isn't
being treated fairly, we can't let them continue to use
our signal, and so we may say take us off
because that'll apply pressure on them to get a deal done.
Usually they take us off, and it's you know, the
(15:50):
only person that really loses there. It's not the television
station so much. It's not the cable company at the
end of the day, it's the customer. It's the viewer,
and we hate that.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
But my question also is is there technology coming there?
If you just want WDRB, it's going to bounce off
some signal somewhere and you just take it on you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Oh yeah, I mean we are all moving more and
more towards streaming. The entire product is going to be available.
It gets a little trickier with music and syndicated programs.
So the people who produce syndicated programs aren't crazy about
you watching WDRB in Austin, Texas because there's somebody in Austin,
(16:31):
Texas who paid to broadcast that program. You know, that
type of thing. Licensing is the tricky thing. But the
technology is there. We're all going to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Great, see you, bro, I'll meet you on a golf
course someday so soon. Remember I'm not very good. We're
not playing the back teas because you always drive at
forty yards farther than me. He always says, let's play
the back teas because he knows he's going to be
way ahead of me, always a competitor. Bill Lamb, welcome home.
Always fun to be here. Terry, President and GM of
WDRB News, I can admitute
I like having golf friends because you can badger them
to go play golf anytime. I contacted one of my
longtime golf partners and he said, well, I can only
play on Saturdays and Sundays. And then he didn't tell
me why, and I thought, what, I didn't play Saturdays
and Sundays. It turns out he has another job. It's
(00:22):
one that he has reclaimed from years earlier. Bill Lamb
is back at w d RB as president and general manager.
Welcome to the w h A S Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you, Terry, and I have a question for you
before we start, which is which camera do I look
into this one?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay? This this this way right across the area? Got it?
So you couldn't tell me you were You were coming
back to where you've been back in Louthal for a while.
But you know, people know who you are. You're you're
the guy who the point of view guy from w
d RB. You went to Los Angeles, Yes, sir, that
was fun. That was COVID was a blast, and.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Uh it just it just tickled me. No, l A
was LA was great. You know, Fox Corporation treated us
great and enjoyed it. But you know, three years I
thought that was probably all I needed to do there.
And and we always knew that we were coming back
to Louisville because Louisville's home and we wanted to retire here,
(01:20):
or I wanted to retire here.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Becky's Becky's like, yeah, she's still working, she's enjoying.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So you know, I got a call last week asking
if if I would consider coming back, and we had
to talk about a couple of things, none of which
was about money or compensation any of that. It was
about what do you need done and how are we
going to do it? And it was a pretty short conversation,
and I said, yeah, I'll come back.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Because you and I have seen each other during this
down period when you were retired, retired, and and you
told me several times, you said, now make sure you're
ready when you're when you're whenever you're going to pull
the ripcord on this thing. And so you had some
I guess, so just a little bit of reflection, like
you know what I kind of like being in the
middle of things.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Well, I'm a very shallow person, Terry, and I have
no real hobbies or interests, I have no original thoughts.
So when you retire and you're left to your own
devices and there's no other stimulus. Fortunately, I have a
great wife. But I wasn't really good at retirement. I'll
be honest with you. I just wasn't good at it.
I didn't enjoy it, and it seemed like the world
(02:27):
was happening around me. And now I have a chance
to kind of get back in and work with people
I care a great deal about, and work for a
station I care a great deal about in a community
I love. I mean, that's kind of one of those
decisions that sort of makes itself almost right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
We're going to stay focused on your work. But let
me sidestep one time here. For all the golfers listening
during that time off, did you get your handicapped down
to single digits? My goal?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I started the season with a nine point two index.
My goal written down right in front of me, was
to be a six. I took lessons. I played fifty
six rounds of golf this summer, and I don't know
how many between January and March, and I went to
an eleven point two.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Oh that's not good, folks.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
In the last couple of months, I got it back
to a nine point two. So, in other words, no
progress for all that effort.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Nothing. Did you go back and ask the instructor for
your money back?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh yeah, he told me the checks in the mail. Yes, No, sadly,
he's a great instructor. I'm just not his prize pupil.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I got you. So you're back at WDRB you were
there for many years. Oh look there's Tyler Greever. I
love that guy. He's a good guy that he was
working at HAS when you were gone. Yeah, he's your
sports director and s. Yes, there's a lot of quality
talent in this market. But when you come in, obviously
you did it in Los Angeles too, you have to
put your eyeballs on what you're doing and how to
(03:48):
get ready for tomorrow. Yesterday doesn't matter, right, right, right,
that's right, there's uh. You know, the business is changing.
Let's let's be candid about doubt. The market is changing.
Everything is changing, not just for television but for everybody.
And if you're going to be stuck in the Ron
Burgundy world of television, you're going to get left behind.
(04:11):
So we have to think differently. We are going to
have to present our product, perhaps in a way we
haven't before we're going to have to maybe shift some
of our resources, but make no mistake, we still have
more resources than anybody in the community. And we have
great people.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And you know the thing about great people is you
tell them what you need them to do, they tell
you that they can do more, and they go do it.
That's it, And that's what I love about the people
I work with. They're the best people I've ever worked
with in my life. And I work with some wonderful
people in LA Also, were.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
There any Ron Burgundy's in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Around every corner Ron Burgundy lives exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Everybody knows the anchor Man movie. And when you go
to a market like that, that's the two market or
the three number two number two, you got egos. And
also you're in Hollywood or you're near Hollywood, so a
lot of the people who would work for you out
there as opposed to somebody in Middle America thinks my
next step is the movies.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, we had several people who were in movies from
time to time, whether it's cameos or playing the part
of a newsperson or even I had one reporter who
actually had a role in a movie. I'm sure there
were others, but that's one I know of, but it
is a different place. That was interesting to me because
(05:34):
I thought when I went out to LA I was
going to be dealing with massive news egos and we
were going to have a battle and it was going
to be ugly, but I intended to prevail. Those anchors
and reporters, all of them made an appointment to come
up to see me, and their message was almost the
same thing. We're winners, but we don't know the game plan.
We don't even know where the goal is, and if
(05:56):
you can lead us there, we will be forever great.
They wanted to win. The egos were aside. They were delightful,
wonderful people. That's fantastic, it really was. I thought, this
is so cool.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
But I always here that in the biggest of markets, though,
that the competition is brutal, and that people will, you know,
just so we can express it in a way the
listeners can understand cut somebody else's cord on their camera.
I know there aren't cords, but to try and sabotage
their competitors to get a story. Is it like that?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I don't think so. I mean, I've never seen that.
It's certainly competitive, but it's also congenial. Everybody knows everybody
in television out there, so you've got friends everywhere. A
lot of people have worked at multiple stations, so it's competitive,
but it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's not that you were highly successful here in Louisville.
You love this community. You and Becky love this community.
Now you're in Los Angeles and it takes an hour
and a half to go a mile on the freeway.
How quickly did Becky say let's go back. Well, Becky
(07:03):
was fortunate because her job out there started with her
working remotely before COVID, so her commute was not bad. Yeah,
she worked out of our little office. But you're right.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I literally lived nine point two miles from the station,
and it would take me an hour and a half
to get home, no matter what route I took. On
Thursday nights, that was the busiest night. And that's maddening
because you feel like you're just wasting time. And so
we wound up moving closer to the station because it
just wasn't worth it to stay where we were. We
(07:37):
sold our house and we moved, so I had two
houses out there. Yeah, but those are cheap, Luckily, that's right,
Dimond doesn't. But boy, can you get bang for your
buck out there. But look, you know, I had a
great time, and I don't regret it.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I loved it. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But I'm back and I literally there's no place on
Earth I'd rather be than Louisville, Kentucky WDRB. I mean,
this is this is a terrific, terrific opportunity again.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right, and it's a good news market. I mean, obviously,
if you're in Los Angeles, you've got a million things
to cover. You don't know if you can cover the
everything that's available to you. But here we're hyper focused
on obviously the crime issues that happen. We have to
do that, the things that are happening, the growth curve
Louisville and Kentucky, sports and so you know, it's a
(08:28):
it's a it's more of a limited universe, but you
can still go in depth and a lot of these
things as well, and you still have reporters that can
do that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yes, yes, you know, I had a conversation with and
I'm sorry I'm blanking on his name, but the guy
who's the head of TMZ and I went over to
kind of study.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Harvey, Harvey Harvey Levant.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, okay, Harvey Levin and I went over just to
kind of see what are you guys doing. You seem
to be covering everything, and what are your resources? That
type of thing, and he said, he said, let me
ask you a question. He said, how many news crews
do you have truck's reporter photographer? I said eighteen. He said,
so basically, you're missing everything, right, of course, this is
too big a city for eighteen people. And I thought
(09:12):
eighteen crews was pretty good. He said, you're missing everything.
He said, we use a lot of social media stringers.
We do, we sure do. And he got me thinking
a little bit differently. Not that necessarily that's the way
to go, but it's like, you guys have invented a
whole new way of gathering information that is acceptable. It's
you've created a very good business out of that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Some of them are unprofessional. That's the problem is that
some people will jump over somebody's fence. Yeah, yeah, they'll
jump over Taylor Swift's fence. Your fence is safe, Terry.
We will not jump it. I promise, I promise. No,
You're right.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean, in journalism, it has to be ethical you know,
and I look at you, look at Fox News, you
know who they are. They know who they are. You
look at MSNBC, they know who they are, and so on.
I worry about CBS, NBC, ABC because they're pretending to
be neutral journalists and yet they are slanting, for example,
(10:09):
this election in an unbelievable way. Sixty minutes gets blasted,
you know, a week or so ago for a messing
up a sixty minutes interview. And I'm sitting here saying,
you know, we're going to be local news in this
country is going to be the last man standing when
the networks implode because they deceived people.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
They're not neutral. Local news is as neutral as human
beings can be. But citizen journalists are the ones who
busted CBS on that sixty minutes deal. Is that? Is
that who got them? Yeah? I mean people saw what
was on the air, and then they went online to
see the repeat like on YouTube, the CBS's version of
sixty minutes. Yes, and they edited an answer from Kamala
(10:51):
Harris from a different question and put it with and
put it with a different answer.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And why an organization like CBS or sixty minutes within
the CBS organization would do that and put themselves in
such a position.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I have no idea. It's bizarre, but that's that's a
producer who thinks they have too much power, but by
thinking too much.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
But that's that's the thing that I really do believe
about local news, radio television. Those journalists, the people in
those newsrooms really truly do want to report the news.
They're not trying to be advocates. They're not trying to
be activists. They're the activists. They're not trying to sway anything.
They're just trying to tell you what they know. And
(11:33):
of course every human being has built in biases of
some sort. The object is to fight those every day.
It's hard to go, uh, cover a story about a
pedophile and be completely neutral as a human being, Right,
you have feelings, but you have to do your best
to try to just report, and I think local journalists
do a great job of that.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Are you going to return to the point of view position? Ah,
I haven't decided.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I wasn't sure. I think I am, and I think
it may be soon. I really honestly hadn't decided, but
I think I have that I will. I think I will.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, Well, you have to have opinion columns, I mean,
and the various sources have to have to help just
I guess coalesce thoughts about things. I had the lieutenant
governor here a couple of days ago. Yesterday I had
a state rep here. They're on either side of the
amendment too. The reaction is fierce on both of those sides.
So it's important to weigh into some of that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, And as you remember, the purpose of point of
view when I did it was not to get you
to agree with me. That's not what's important. What's important
is to provoke a conversation. If you don't have an opinion,
you're welcome to mine. If you agree with mine, that's
great too, But if you don't, that might even be better.
The thing is to have a conversation. And because there
(12:53):
are so many things that happened to us in this community,
happened to us, decisions that are made for us, and
if we don't know what they are enough to even
have an opinion, then we just are kind of victims.
And I'd rather us be involved in our communities, because
heaven knows, all the decisions that are being made are
not always good ones.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Video killed the radio star that never happened. Radio is
still alive. TV Local TV is still alive as well,
even though people have called out its demise. You see
a lifespan continuing beyond the next decade.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I do, and it's because of what I just said.
The things that people watch most on television is of
course sports NFL, but local news and communities need local news.
We don't have the newspapers like we used to. The
newspapers don't offer the death or the timeliness that they
(13:46):
used to. So I think there's always going to be
a place for us, both of us. I think there is,
and that's I don't think that's really replaceable.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Are the Are the major sports all going to go
to pay perview? I mean I had to go to
the peak to get my first Green Bay Packers game
and Louisville versus Notre Dame. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Is that happening?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think you're going to see in ten years that
could be where it is. Maybe not, maybe fifteen years,
but yes, all these platforms are trying to build audience
and build subscribers, and you can only do that with content,
and the best content is compelling content that you can't
get anywhere else. So that's why you'll see Notre Dame
(14:28):
move over there. That's why you see an NFL game.
It's not to benefit the NFL. It's to benefit Amazon, right, Okay,
But they'll pay a lot of money for that, and
the NFL is agnostic as long as they get money.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I watched that crummy game last night, but go to
Amazon to get it.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, it's I think the future's good. It's just we're
just going to have to evolve. If you just try
to live like we did and everything's the same as
it was seventy years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Last thing for you, Bill Lamb. These squabbles that come
up between individual stations and whatever, you know, the direct TV,
they ads or whatever it is, and then they take
you off their system. When are we going to get
to an end game on this?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I don't know, because that is the system. They have
to pay us for our product. Our product does cost
a lot of money to make and they are benefiting
from it. And if you know, they always start, you
start these negotiations. They don't want to pay what is
the going fair market rate, and we probably want a
little bit more than we're worth, and we wind up
(15:29):
usually meeting in the middle. But if a broadcaster isn't
being treated fairly, we can't let them continue to use
our signal, and so we may say take us off
because that'll apply pressure on them to get a deal done.
Usually they take us off, and it's you know, the
(15:50):
only person that really loses there. It's not the television
station so much. It's not the cable company at the
end of the day, it's the customer. It's the viewer,
and we hate that.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
But my question also is is there technology coming there?
If you just want WDRB, it's going to bounce off
some signal somewhere and you just take it on you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Oh yeah, I mean we are all moving more and
more towards streaming. The entire product is going to be available.
It gets a little trickier with music and syndicated programs.
So the people who produce syndicated programs aren't crazy about
you watching WDRB in Austin, Texas because there's somebody in Austin,
(16:31):
Texas who paid to broadcast that program. You know, that
type of thing. Licensing is the tricky thing. But the
technology is there. We're all going to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Great, see you, bro, I'll meet you on a golf
course someday so soon. Remember I'm not very good. We're
not playing the back teas because you always drive at
forty yards farther than me. He always says, let's play
the back teas because he knows he's going to be
way ahead of me, always a competitor. Bill Lamb, welcome home.
Always fun to be here. Terry, President and GM of
WDRB News, I can admitute
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