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NISKAYUNA & ALBANY
WNYT, CBS6 finalizing content-sharing deal
BY KARTIKAY MEHROTRA For The Daily Gazette

    After decades of daily competition, a pair of local TV news stations will begin sharing content in order to remain financially viable.
    The Capital Region’s CBS and NBC affi liates will spend the next month hashing out technological details before consolidating their resources.
    The local sports highlights you see on Channel 6 and Channel 13 could be identical by as early as April.
    “The general story coverage that everyone does that’s not all that distinguishable between one station to another, that’s what we’re hoping to share,” said Steve Baboulis, general manager at WNYT. “In a time of diminished resources, we’re still trying to get the most productive value and hopefully make the viewer the winner.”
    Baboulis added that the agreement has yet to be confirmed and that any dialogue regarding the agreement “may be premature.”
    Although the two “friendly competitors” have not yet signed any formal agreements, each one’s union leaders are ready to cry foul if the contract to share sports video footage infringes on videographers’ and reporters’ opportunities to work every day.
    In December, WNYT laid off 15 union employees including the lone photographer tabbed to cover sporting events, said WNYT reporter Bill Lambdin, also president of Local 21, a broadcast employees’ union.
    Lambdin worries the agreement will be “sufficiently vague” by claiming the station does not have enough videographers to handle the umpteen newsworthy events in need of coverage on a daily basis.
    “That is basically what the general manager said to me and that this will allow us to have people do things that make our newscast unique,” Lambdin said. “I have a tough time accepting that considering the recent job layoffs.”
    Although the unions may not like it, the concept of sharing content has become common practice among TV news competitors around the country, said Dow Smith, associate professor and director of electronic media and journalism at Siena College.
    Smith says further consolidation is probable as alternative media, including students and parents with video cameras, continue posting their amateur content on personal Web sites.
    “For certain types of news, it does make some sense,” Smith said. “The problem comes in if they cut back on covering events that are really important, not spot news, but major events.”
    Robert Furlong, general manager for CBS6, says the partnership should get under way in the weeks to come, and he doesn’t rule out the possibility of the partnership stretching beyond sports and into daily news.
    “Really, we’re just being progressive and looking at how the world is changing,” said Furlong, adding that he has yet to face questions regarding union concerns from his employees. “There’s no need to have fi ve cameras in the back of a news conference, it doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.”
    Don Decker, retired general manager of both WTEN and WRGB, says the move is further proof of a deteriorating economy.
    “It’s just another example of the economic crunch that the stations find themselves in,” he said. “You’re going to see more of this and you’re going to find stations giving up their news altogether.”
    Rob Hubler, news director of WTEN, the local ABC affiliate, says his newsroom will...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00403

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NISKAYUNA
Owner orders furloughs for some CBS6 employees
BY JEFF WILKIN Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Jeff Wilkin at 395-3124 or at wilkin@dailygazette.com.

    Some employees of CBS6 will be forced to take five days off from work, without pay, this spring and summer.
    Other workers — union members — will be asked to accept the unpaid breaks on a voluntary basis.
    The furlough policy was announced Friday by Freedom Communications, which owns CBS6, seven other television stations and more than 100 newspapers across the United States. Freedom has not issued an official statement on the furloughs, but company officials say the new order is companywide.
    Peter Hutchins, chief steward of Local 21, National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, at CBS6, said station employees learned about the furloughs in e-mails sent Friday morning by Californiabased Freedom.
    “Anybody with a personal services contract or represented by a union, it would be voluntary,” said Hutchins, a station engineer. “Those things have not been discussed yet.”
    Employees at CBS6 are represented by two unions. NABET represents about 30 news photographers, engineers and other technicians. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) represents reporters, producers and assignment editors.
    Hutchins said it was hard to predict how CBS6 employees would react to furloughs.
    “It’s hard to know the frustration,” he said. “You just don’t know, is it enough? It doesn’t guarantee there won’t be any more in the future, furloughs or anything, layoffs, reductions, bankruptcies, who knows?”
    Hutchins added that Freedom’s plan would require employees paid by the hour to take one day off at a time, reaching a five-day quota in a three-month period. Salaried personnel would be requested to go on furlough for one full week.
    CBS6 representatives for AFTRA referred calls about the furlough policy to the AFTRA offices in New York City, where a call seeking comment was not returned. Robert Furlong, general manager and vice president at CBS6, also did not return a call for comment.
    The Orange County Register, Freedom’s flagship newspaper in Santa Ana, Calif., announced layoffs as well as the furlough plan on Friday. The newspaper said the mandatory absences will be taken by all employees, including executives, and scheduled between April 1 and June 30.
    Furloughs have become commonplace in newsrooms across the country. Media General and Gannett earlier this year announced their employees would have to take unpaid time off.
    Media General, which owns television stations and newspapers chiefly located in the Southeast, has told its employees they must take 10 days off by the end of September. Gannett, which operates 23 television stations and publishes 85 daily newspapers, announced a weeklong furlough program in January.
    Bill Lambdin, president of Local 21, said Freedom had not contacted NABET about the furlough plan. But he said the union’s contract does not provide for breaks without pay.
    “I would expect our people would not.....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00502