Talk:WCAU

Competition

The page describes WCAU and KYW as being in "spirited" competition with WCAU coming out on top. As a resident of Philadelphia, I question this assertion. Based on polls I've seen and just based on my general impression, most watch Channel 6 (KYW) and not 10 (WCAU). I leave correcting this error to the Wikipedia regulars.

well all i can say is that if you were watch 6, and i am guessing action news, you wernt watching kyw.

CBS did not merge with Westinghouse in 1994; that came later in 1995-6. See KYW-TV for the correct order of events.

Also, the title of this article is incorrect. The station's callsign is WCAU, not WCAU-TV. According to the FCC database, WCAU-TV became WCAU on 10/06/1995, so it happened under NBC ownership. 18.26.0.18 00:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To the anon: why did you remove the section I added on John Zacherle? -- Decumanus 22:55, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Not vandalism

Neither of you are vandals. This is an edit war. Page is protected. Talk it out please. Thanks. Rhobite 08:14, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Their is nothing to discuss, their has been a newer extensive article on the subject, that article has not been given due considertion by either users or admins, "establishment", the subject now meets that creteria that mutt and his minons, who have shown threw their edits a massive anti-Philadelphia bias, would list as a creditable person, so their is no reason to de link or speedy the subject in question, and an perosn that does i will consider a vandal or an admin who is abusing their privildges, and re link and recreat the article. But being that i am dealing with the "establishment" , who only seem to work in their best intrests and not in the best intrest of the regular credible user, or in the protection of this site as a vaid source of information of the web, as it is becoming more of a soure wikipedia needs to evolve and reform. As far as i am concerned this discussion is over. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 08:23, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • The "establishment"? What, pray tell, are the motivations of this evil "establishment", the powers-that-be, for their "massive anti-Philadelphia bias"? --Calton | Talk 08:29, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • The "establishment" = vast majority of admins on here, they are not the anti-Philadelpia gang, who are Spotteddogsdotorg (talk · contribs), and his minions 209.137.173.69 (talk · contribs), 68.83.229.241 (talk · contribs), Toasthaven (talk · contribs), Hohokus (talk · contribs), ConeyCyclone (talk · contribs), et al while all have not made anti-phildelphia edits, basied on my resarch and that of others that these useres are either the same person or or working in coridination with each other, espically in vfd, on pov unsourced edits, to creat general distruption among other things. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 08:36, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Buh? First you rail on about the "establishment" supporting "massive anti-Philadelphia bias", and now you say they (whoever "they" are) aren't? You're making less and less sense with each edit. --Calton | Talk 11:30, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • I think someone (Boothy443) watched too many episodes of the X-Files. I must be a space alien with a "massive anti-Philadelphia bias" and either multiple personalites or mind control. It has to be something in the water down there. Spotteddogsdotorg 06:47, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • what ever, and your just a tool for the admins that would rahter suppress content, and support adbusive lying admins --213.184.21.88 11:33, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Divesture to NBC

According to the WTVJ and/or WFOR articles, the deal in which CBS divested WCAU also involved the 2 Miami O&O's swapping dial positions and transmitter facilities...Ranma9617 00:42, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

What should the article name be?

This article has been moved from WCAU-TV to WCAU several times lately. Seems as though that the people that move to WCAU believe article names are dependent on FCC call letters, with the move-backs to WCAU-TV believing that all of these articles need suffixes. Who is correct and where does it say so? --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 23:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

In August 2004, Radiojon decided that stations that FCC licenses without the class suffix must be at WZZZ (TV) whereas stations FCC licenses with the suffix should be at WZZZ-TV. Any disagreements with this rule?? Georgia guy 23:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be an slow, ongoing "move war" (as I call it) that keeps moving this article from WCAU-TV to WCAU back to WCAU-TV back to WCAU, etc. Should we protect from page moves just to enforce that this page is supposed to be WCAU and not WCAU-TV? And the most recent move spread itself to essentially every TV station article in the wiki... this is going to take a while to take care of. Apologies for the long comment, but I have to mention this. --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 01:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I put a message on Boothy443's talk page asking why he wants this article at WCAU with a reason that appears to be most probable according to my speculation. Georgia guy 01:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Recent Changes

I took out most of the paragraph on the 1956 NBC-Westinghouse swap, as it did not directly involve WCAU-TV as a separate entity. While it **does** involve NBC's history in Philadelphia, that information should continue to have a place in this article, but the nuts-and-bolts details from a Philadelphia standpoint can be found in KYW (AM) and KYW-TV. Rollosmokes 16:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Reporters and Anchors

Can anyone here explain to me why David Ushery and Steve Handlesman are on this page? They do not work for WCAU. Ushery works for WNBC and appears on WCAU at most twice a year and that is generous. Handlesman works for NBC and reports for all of it's owned and operated stations. I feel that they should not be included on the page as they are not WCAU staff. (D. Lynch) 22 July 2006

Chris Blackman

"Chris Blackman, the current news director, took over the job from the well-liked Steve Schiwald, who got the station to come closer to WPVI than it ever had in a long time. Blackman does not seem to have the favor among this employees as his predecessor - the fact that his name was used alongside a picture of The Grinch during a Christmas newscast seems to support this (other staffers were simply pictured among objects such as holly)."

This seems a bit subjective, and it also is not cited.

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Significant trimming of Former Staff section

I just cut everyone out of the alumni section that does not have their own Wikipedia page. This is believed to be the current consensus at WP:WikiProject Television Stations. The rationales are as follows:

1. Most importantly, per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is "not an indiscriminate collection of information." As that section describes, just because something is true, doesn't necessarily mean the info belongs in Wikipedia.
2. Secondarily, per WP:V, we cannot include information that is not verifiable and sourced. I'm not certain how it would even be possible to source this information.
3. Per WP:BLP, we have to be especially careful about including un-sourced info about living persons.

All of the people with their own pages are notable enough to appear on this list. However, if you look at pages about companies in general, you will not find mention of previous employees, except in those cases where the employee was particularly notable. Even then, the information is not presented just as a list of info, but is incorporated into the text itself (for example, when a company's article talks about the policies a previous CEO had, or when they mention the discovery/invention of a former engineer/researcher). Qwyrxian (talk) 03:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I would wonder if it's possible to reformat the list so that it takes up less real estate than a one column list, so that perhaps including these additional folks isn't such a bother? Or maybe it's the case that these lists are large and significant enough to spin them off into their own pages such as "List of staff of WCAU." It seems to me that a number of people are notable, it's just that nobody has created their pages yet. Just choosing a couple, John Ogden is interesting and notable because he won a contest that got him his job and while it was only supposed to be a summer gig, turned into five years of work -- he has also done significant charity work through his position, Mike Strug was on the air for over 40 years, and also taught classes at local colleges, and was involved in a number of other efforts.

First, as far as WP:NOT, a list of former (mostly) on-air staff is by very definition, not indiscriminate. In regards to WP:V "not verifiable and sourced" it is pretty easy to find references for these two, and I would assume a majority of the others, so WP:BLP is a moot point. Now, onto your so-called "consensus" -- one person postulating an opinion, however well-written, and another single person replying does not a consensus make. You even stated that you saw a few discussions on the matter but "but no absolutely solid consensus". The WP:WikiProject Television Stations itself even says that a television station article should include "information on it's personalities past and present." I would say you are going "crazy deletionist" (your own words) and I think I'm going to revert your edit. I would agree with you that for these lists "administative assistants" should not qualify unless there is some other related reason they are notable if indeed they are actually being listed on these pages, but since the only relevant issues really seems to be whether or not it is verifiable that the person worked there or not -- I would recommend that if you wish to remove someone from a page, that you do a simple websearch for them rather than simply doing a blanket delete of all people without wikipedia pages.

The talk page discussion if anybody wants to read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Television_Stations#Alumni_.28and_current_staff.29_Lists

Centerone (talk) 12:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the burden for including information always lies with the person who wishes to add/keep the info. Thus, I don't need to do any web searches--if you wish to keep the info, you'll need to verify that those people worked at the station. On any WP article, it is always acceptable to remove unsourced info, unless that info is so uncontroversial that everyone will agree it's true. As neither I nor the majority of WP'ers have never been residents of Philadelphia, the information does not pass the "obviousness" test. So I'll need you (or someoen)to add references for anyone you wish to keep--at this point, I don't even have any evidence these are real people. I am under no onus to do web searching for unsourced info, especially if my belief is that the info doesn't belong in WP and that reliable sources are unlikely to be found even if I do look. I am required, however, as all editors are, to follow WP:BLP, which requires that all unsourced statements about living people must be removed immediately.

The one thing you are correct on is that I don't actually have consensus to do this. I also know that the Television Station Project isn't active enough to get it. Thus, I knew my only choice was to be bold and start making the edits; I figured someone will disagree with my removals eventually. My plan is this, and I will be very open about it, as I would believe that issue does need a real consensus:

1. I will leave the page for a few days, which should be plenty of time for you (or anyone else) to find valid references that these people worked at WCAU, and that, their working there is in some way "notable." Here, I don't mean notable in the sense of WP:NOTABLE--that policy only applies to pages as a whole. Rather, I mean that we need some reason to indicate that these people are more important than the "average" past employee. I'm even inclined to be on the generous side for this issue--both of the people you mention above (Ogden and Strug) seem like they probably belong, so long as we can prove (with reliable sources, again, not just with their bio on an SNS, for example), that they worked at WCAU as an announcer.
2. For those people for whom such sources cannot be found, I will again remove them based on the policies I already cited.
3. Should you or anyone else continue to revert me (as is your right, of course), I won't edit war--instead, I'll begin to take steps through dispute resolution to get as wide a community view as possible. I'll use WP:3O, WP:BLPN, and/or WP:RFC, depending on exactly how many people are disputing the issue.

I sincerely believe that only "important" people belong on these lists. I think the easiest "bright line" is someone notable enough for their own article, but I am certainly open to a different, community defined standard. Having no standard at all makes it impossible for us to determine who is and shouldn't be at the list.Qwyrxian (talk) 13:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

For expediency sake; I've copied and pasted a small amount of this material from an earlier posting of mine. I'm in agreement with Qwyrxian on this one. Both WP:NLIST and WP:Source list) explicitly tell us that this kind of list is held to exactly the same standards as other material found in the encyclopedia; special attention is actually applied, because of the inherently "conservative" editorial stance demanded of us owing to the presence of BLP material WP:BLP. Many of these lists are quite long; because of how potentially problematic it might become to provide several references for each "unlinked" individual entry to satisfy the demands of the policies I've mentioned above; a "compromise" has been proposed by several editors and administrators. In keeping with "Uw-badlistentry" [1], it's been proposed that entries in lists of former employees of television stations should be restricted to contain only those individuals who have demonstrated basic notability and inherent verifiability through already being the subject of an existing article in the encyclopedia. In terms of existing consensus regarding these matters; approximately six weeks ago the issue was raised [[2]] in discussion and a determination was reached by a half dozen editors (several of whom were administrators) that these lists *are* in fact subject to the same standards of verification as all other material in Wikipedia. Qwyrxian is quite right when they point out that the onus for this verification is firmly placed by policy on the shoulders of the editor who adds (or re-adds in this case) this type of material to the encyclopedia. It should also be noted, that I've personally pared the entries to this type of unreferenced list of former employees of television stations back to only those individuals who are properly referenced; or already have existing articles, in roughly 70 articles (approximately 3% of the television station articles in North America) in total about a month and a half ago, and apart from one notable exception and a handful of 'drive-by' anonymous IP reversions, my edits have remained intact in this regard; which in itself can be regarded as a weak form of consensus. I applaud Qwyrxian's efforts. cheers Deconstructhis (talk) 14:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Readdition by Bfern8788

While Bfern8788 provided a source, unfortunately, it's a self-published source--note that the introduction says, "This page is updated as I find or receive more information. If you would like to contribute email me at the address below." As such, it doesn't meet the reliable source guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Notable former staff

To be "notable former staff", someone must be notable and former staff. For instance, we would not include Sally Field or Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. While both are clearly notable, neither one is former staff. Likewise, someone who is former staff but not notable would not be included. - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

"(deceased)"

Yes, people die. However, Wikipedia generally does not indicate in lists that various people are dead. If you disagree, you might want to update this list for starters. - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)