Friday, November 10, 2006
HLN 's Cover Girl
Headline News' Robin Meade graces the cover of this week's The Sunday Paper. The cover story features on how Meade got started in the news biz and about being at the helm of the weekday morning news program 'Meade and Company'. Below is an excerpt from the article:"The show must be doing something right. According to figures released by CNN, it resonates strongly with the coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic; last month its ratings showed a 71 percent increase in viewership among that group versus the previous year. Out of Headline News' daytime shows, "Robin & Company" nets roughly 90 percent of all viewer response; of that feedback, 70 to 80 percent is positive, compared to an average of 45 to 55 percent for other Headline News anchors.
Meade and her executive producer, Susan Jalali, attribute that favorable response not just to Meade's seemingly effortless charm, but to the show's focus on delivering the news in a way that's morning-show inviting, yes, but also, to borrow a term from the competition, fair and balanced—a difficult feat in a polarized environment where biased reporting from "Faux News" and the "Communist News Network" is seen as a given.
"We do try very hard to make sure that we are fair politically, that we're fair diversity-wise, that we include all members," Meade says, "and I think the viewers must recognize it, because I'm happy to say that our e-mails about that will say, 'I don't really sense any bias on your guys' part.' And sometimes, yes, people will say, 'I like you because of your personality—and you do the news good, too,'" she laughs.
"For me, it's [all about] news," Jalali says. "I'm a news girl, and I've always done hard news shows." While she's happy that the show is unafraid to emphasize the warmth and likeability of its principals without descending into contrivance or shtick, the bottom line, she says, is never in doubt. "It's wonderful that there's other ways we can branch out, but [news is] the binding of the book; that's what holds us together."
"When you look at Anderson Cooper or Paula Zahn, those are news-based shows," Meade says. "I think that's where we fall. We have more license maybe than other news shows would have, but we're definitely a news show. If we didn't do the fundamentals as far as the news correctly and well, and make it a well-rounded show, the rest of the news shows throughout the day would suffer, because we're the first part of the news-gathering team.
"So we know where our bread and butter is, and that's information," she continues. "We just let the cream rise a little bit.""
# posted by ATN @ 10:31 PM 
