Local TV news anchors have always occupied an outsized space in the communities where they work.
When you are beamed into someone’s home two or three times a day for years, familiarity sets in. Viewers feel like they really know you. I can vouch for this. I have had some fairly high-profile jobs in my 35 years with The Arizona Republic. On occasion, someone would recognize me in a grocery store or somewhere like that.
Then I started doing a movie-of-the-week segment on a local station. The whole thing lasted about 90 seconds. The station would run it a few times over the course of each weekend…