Steve Wasserman is the new General Manager of WPTV. He takes over for Brian Lawlor who left the station for VP of sales position for Scripps Television Station Group.
Most recently Wasserman was the vice president and general manager of WDIV Local 4 in Detroit an NBC affiliate and sister station to WPLG.
Wasserman is an interesting choice for a WPTV GM by Scripps when you realize he also ran KPRC, without a doubt Houston’s take on WSVN, for 11 years! KPRC is also a Post-Newsweek owned station like WDIV and WPLG.
Current WDIV HD Open, graphics package by Renderon, music composed by WSVN’s Chris Crane:
KPRC Open from 2004 with Lisa Baldwin who worked at WSVN until 1999
1998 talent bump
1997 NightBeat Open
Interesting. Somebody should tell him that Laurel Sauer rockz and should be treated better @ wptv
sw didn’t do anything but copy wsvn. that station was obsessed with wsvn. obsessed. if ch7 in miami did something one day, kprc in houston would copy it and do it the next day. they soon learned what works in miami doesn’t work in houston. ratings tanked.
they hired the same person who built the wsvn set to build their set. sw even tried to name their set the “newsplex” until wsvn threated them with a lawsuit. wsnv has a trademark on it. they hired all 7 people and moved them to houston. kprc called them the florida mafia. in the end it didn’t work in houston. when sw left the station was no.4 most of the time.
sw went to houston and bragged in the papers he would make kprc number 1 in 3 years with the wsvn style news. he was wrong. he didn’t know the community like he knew miami. knew nothing about texans. it flopped. he left and the nd was later fired. all the key florida people came back to florida.
wonder if he’ll pull the same tired act in west palm. ch7 has their thing and it seems they are the only ones who can pull off that style both here and at their boston station. it doesn’t seem to work for anyone else.
some of your facts are wrong
SVN copied WPLG from the 1980s, when Wasserman was ND. Cheatwood admitted as much.
True, he tanked in Houston, true he did copy the “Newsplex,”
he didn’t use the same people who built 7’s.. 7 used an inhouse handyman… KPRC actually used photos and copied it…
you are probably right about the sw wplg thing. i didn’t know the history that far back.
u r wrong about the set though.
kprc moved that 7 in house handyman guy to houston for several months to build that set. it wasn’t a set design company, it was that same guy you mentioned. i don’t think he liked it there and wanted to go home after a while (to fla).
sw is a real smart guy. at least he has a news background and is not from sales like most gm’s today. the good thing is he is going to a top station and not trying to re-build a last place station like he did in houston.
Really, WSVN copied WPLG in the 80s?
How?
Duh elaborate if you can please 🙂
kprc’s set was designed by broadcast design (bdi) and not in-house.
WPTV also has a newsplex. Kinda, but it feels much like home to me.
WPTV has been the news leader in West Palm Beach for decades. Let’s hope the new GM will keep things the way they are, and if he needs to make changes, that those changes will work.
Why would sw go from major markets like Houston & Detroit to WPB? Usually it’s the other way around. Maybe he wore out his welcome at PN stations.