Martin Savidge, NBC News Correspondent, Leaving Network For Public Television Show "Worldfocus"
New York Times:
The correspondent Martin Savidge is leaving NBC News for public television, where he is to become the anchor of a new weeknight broadcast that will focus on international news. WLIW in New York, which is developing the program, is expected to announce his appointment on Wednesday.
The newscast, "Worldfocus," is scheduled to start broadcasting Oct. 6 on a lineup of public television stations nationwide that is still being assembled but already includes stations in 8 of the top 10 markets. On WLIW and its sister station, WNET, the newscast will replace "BBC World News," with two airings on each station each night. The new show was announced in April, but details have been kept under wraps until now.
"Worldfocus," with a start-up budget that station employees said is about $8 million, will attempt to fill what Mr. Savidge called a void in television news.
"When CNN was born as a concept, we all said: 'The 24-hour era of news has arrived; think of the topics we can cover,' " he said in a telephone interview late Monday. But, he said, 24 hours now "boils down to about six headlines repeated over and over and over," adding, "It seems that opportunity was squandered."
In recent days, he said, the conflict between Georgia and Russia was heavily covered by television news media in the United States, but not the economic downturn in Europe, Iraq's nearly unspent budget surplus from oil sales or the assassination of one of Syria's top generals. "There were other events happening in the world that most Americans heard nothing about," Mr. Savidge said.
Loading comments…
First Posted: 08-20-08 06:47 AM | Updated: 09-20-08 05:12 AM