WNYT 11pm Newscast (September 7, 1983; Complete)

Описание: #80sweek

A full edition of "13 News Tonight," airing on WNYT in Albany, NY (the area's NBC affiliate). At long last, a full newscast from the days where WNYT was still a joke in the 518 news ratings!

At the anchor desk, Nancy Cozean and Vic Vetters with news, Herb Stevens with the weather, and Bob McNamara on sports. Reporting are Bill Lambdin, Chris Kapostasy, Benita Zahn, Julie Fusella, and plus Cozean and Vetters do reports themselves. Vic Vetters was filling in for Craig Alexander who was taking the day off.

In the news, the town of Brattleboro, VT is under fire for using underage kids as prostitutes (yep, you read that correctly!), GE closes one of its plants, NY’s telephone bills go up a dollar, Albany finds a buyer for one of its landfills, a local woman bakes dishes for the upcoming Jewish holidays, a class is held on saving people from choking, and a new air purifier is invented. Mac reports on MLB scores, a new affiliate for Albany’s minor league baseball team, and Howard Cosell’s on-air slur during Monday Night Football. That prompted him to leave the show after the 1983 season.

First off, Vic Vetters: someone I would call a "Northeast journeyman," Vic worked at many stations across the area, and also had a stint at WTEN in the early 90s. He is currently general manager at WJAR in Providence, and also managed news at WKTV in Utica. Before coming to Albany, Vic worked at WSTM in Syracuse under the name "Vic Wright." His main job was weekend anchor, but in 1984 he co-anchored the 6 and 11 shows with Nancy Cozean until Ed Dague arrived; Craig Alexander had decided to quit upon word Ed was coming.

Second, despite being a laggard in the ratings, WNYT was doing better than it did as "WAST" in the previous decades. Viacom helped boost the station's signal range, added the first computers for newsgathering in the area, switched the station to NBC, and lured Bob McNamara away from WRGB (which shocked many in the business). They also renovated and expanded the news set; this version of the set lasted until the spring of 1986.

They also were building their news empire, as Bill Lambdin, Benita Zahn and Chris K also appear here. Mac did sports until 2001 (he died in 2010), Bill Lambdin retired in 2014 (he died in 2021), Benita retired in 2021 and now works at a health clinic, and Chris is now at MSNBC under the name Chris Jansing, her married name (she was already married when this aired).

Third, the camera work here isn’t great. Maybe someone was filling in or just hired, but the anchors’ faces are way to close, and sometimes their heads are cropped. Also the editing is a bit sloppy - look for Mac try to catch up with the footage airing during the sportscast.

The news theme is Look for Us by Telesound, which WNYT used until 1984. You get a good long close of it at the end! I have another full newscast from this period on the way soon, plus a 1984 one with a completely different news open!

(C) 1983 Viacom, now part of Paramount Global; WNYT is now owned by Hubbard Broadcasting. No copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We don't profit off this video.