As we told you FIRST, KIRO 7 in Seattle today has dumped its entire two-man sports department. KING still has Paul Silvi and CHris Egan and Fox 13 Aaron Levine and Alyssa Chraleston. KOMO only has one guy left, Niko Tamurian. But with the Mariners in first place and the Hawks and HS football coming soon (and KIRO will have Hawks games at times), where is the local TV coverage?? Two stations have thrown in the towel, making cuts and totally getting out of the sports biz.
Retired TV journalist, on-air and manager, former university writing professor and station trainer, published author of a sports team biography, Kent State U alum, Pittsburgh native and self-appointed Seattle TV news critic.
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Fred, QXVX broke the story first when Chris Francis announced Friday that he has been let go, but will be at KIRO until mid-August. His producer, Chris Swanson (who was never on camera there) is already gone. I think you are spot on about KING5…they do have an opening with the departure of their third man, Jake Garcia, and, of course, they are adding the KRAKEN in the fall, carrying games. That will give them a total advantage in the market. I think Fox 13 won’t add sports bodies.
I didn’t realize that KIRO had dumped their Sports casters and I didn’t know they had two I thought they only had one wasn’t that Chris Francis and when did they dump them I hadn’t seen anything about that
Fox 13 is pretty good but I still think number one for Sports in Seattle is King 5 although King and fox are both fighting back and forth getting broadcast contracts like cracking versus the WNBA team and other items Aaron Levine and his partner is good I don’t care for Ian Furness
He used to have a problem looking at the camera he’d be on screen and he keep looking off the left or looking after the right and he did it a lot like when he was at the Seahawks training camp he would do that he seems to have gotten better but between that and he talks like super fast sometimes like he does on KJR bugs the hell out of me