New News is Good News

It looks like the local TV news challenge to the horrendous Sinclair-owned WICS is taking shape. Again from the SJR today:

The on-air lineup is taking shape for a 9 p.m. newscast debuting Thursday on Springfield station WCFN.

The station, which is owned by the same company as WCIA-TV in Champaign, will have two reporters and a photographer full time in Springfield. The newscast also will use resources from the Champaign station.

WCFN is on Channel 49, though Insight Communications cable subscribers in Springfield receive the UPN network station on Channel 19.

According to Jim Gee, news director for both WCFN and WCIA, the anchor of the 30-minute news program will be Michael Marsh, who is main anchor at Channel 3. He now anchors WCIA newscasts at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. He will drop the 5 p.m. post on WCIA - a CBS affiliate - as he begins his weeknight broadcasts on WCFN at 9.

Having the anchorperson based in Champaign "has been the plan from the beginning," Gee said.

"That doesn't make it any less of a Springfield newscast," he said, with on-scene reporters in the capital city.

Longtime "chief weathercaster" Judy Fraser of WCIA also will report the weather on the Springfield newscast. And Jason Elliott will report sports, as he does on WCIA.

Two reporters who live in Springfield and will gather news for the station are Catie Sheehan and Abbie Alford.

Sheehan, 23, is a Springfield native who graduated in 2003 from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a broadcast journalism degree. She worked at an NBC station in Columbia and returned to Springfield in August. She was a substitute teacher at Blessed Sacrament School and Sacred Heart-Griffin High School - both from which she graduated - until being hired by WCIA/WCFN at the end of January. She taught journalism at SHG, where she also had played soccer.

"I'm really excited to offer Springfield an alternative news source, as I've lived here my whole life other than going to college," Sheehan said.Alford, 24, is a native of Red Bluff, Calif., who finished college at Eastern Illinois University, where she participated in speech and debate competitions. She received a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield and was an intern at the Statehouse bureau of WAND-TV in Decatur as part of the work for that degree. She went on to be a reporter with the station and has been hired by WCFN, where she will start April 13.

Alford said she lives in Springfield and was sought out to take the new position.

"When I found out about it and I decided to accept the job, I said, 'Bring it on, baby,'" she said.

Gee said some reporters from WCIA also will help with Springfield coverage as the new newscast begins.

WCFN is not going to have the resources that WICS has, but it would be hard for them not to have a better product. I wish them luck.