The premise of TruTV’s “Breaking Greenville” — which chronicles a “playful” rivalry between two small-market TV stations — took me back to simpler times. When I was a staffer at the Florence Morning News, the media pack in that small market included a couple rival TV stations (talent on which, it must be stated, seemed to get along for the most part.)
The show, based in a sliver of Mississippi along the Mississippi River on the Arkansas border, premieres on TruTV at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29. Here’s what I noticed when I watched a sneak-peek episode (tl;wr? I’ll watch the show that’s initially slated for eight episodes just because of the aforementioned exposure to small-town media)…
WAPG’s wide-eyed firecracker Lucy Biggers may or may not be playing up to the cameras when, after the morning-show Telepromptr goes south, she roots around on the ground trying to remedy the situation.
She wants to be the next Kelly Ripa. They’re both small and blonde, after all! She’s got spunk. She like to high five. Her boss seems to think she has maturity issues.
News Director Pam “People Treat Me As A Local Celebrity” Chatman notes that people treat her as the “Oprah of the south” because she, too, was a full-figured African-American lady so they see Oprah in Pam, who is the first African-American woman to direct a newscast in her state.
She does not seem like someone with whom you should trifle. She is well aware that hers is a stepping-stone market for talent. (Small-market leadership like that is to be commended; some of my editors in SC knew this reality and managed to use that to their inspiring-the-charges benefit.)
Their ratings lead over rival station WXVT has dwindled per the latest stats.
This has Chatman worried.
Lucy chalks it up to viewers mixing the letters WAPG and WXVT up when filling out “the questionnaire.” She also suggests doing more stories about “farms” to remedy the situation.
News Producer David Lush, who has been in a bunch of musicals, says it’s a blip. He is emblematic of a Waiting For Guffman ethos.
Whomever pitched TruTV on this show, however, likely saw this as a narrative plot point to carry a reality series.
Lucy’s primary competition is Callie Carroll, morning anchor at WXVT. Callie says they’re, like, nothing alike besides the fact that they both host morning-news shows in “the Delta.” She does NOT like how Lucy talks down to her. This beef could play itself out splendidly.
Eric Zernich, weekend meteorologist/reporter, initially reminds me of Brick Tamland with some smarts. A Midwesterner, he misses Applebee’s.
Woodrow Wilkins is XVT’s version of Pam Chatman. Sometimes, he says, “I feel like a babysitter.”
At their ratings meeting, Carroll suggests she go on camera and weigh herself for some sort of health-friendly story. (Watch the pilot just to see the Healthy Anchors campaign commercial tease, f’real.)
The breaking news on this inaugural episode is a lockdown at an elementary school on account of a stabbing. Stories of this nature come along every six months, we’re told.
But the station’s computers, we’re also told, as so slow that Steve Schill — anchor/weatherman — can “smoke a whole doobie” waiting for it to catch up with his demands. His coworkers are younger than his children.
When told that WAPG was not at the lockdown scene, Schill notes that they now “look like the punk-ass bitches that they are.” Hoo boy, he’s a firework.
BUT NOT SO FAST! When they report that they were first on the scene, Wilkins gets a call from Chatman, who proclaims that they were NOT in fact first on the scene. APG WAS THERE ALREADY!
Gauntlet thrown.
The irony of that whole exchange is how it runs counter to the feeling in a 24/7 news cycle that Breaking tags no longer matter. In markets like this, under ratings-war circumstances like that, they do. (That’s pretty cool; takes me back to ’95 in Florence).
Anyway, Carroll weighs 177.4 pounds and, apparently, has better ratings-season ideas than her foe.
Are they playing to the national-cable cameras? I don’t know. Really don’t care, either. Most people never get to see the inner workings of small-town media. At least those don’t live in “flyover country.”
Show might not be for everybody, but I’ll DVR it if — for no other reason — to see how Schill fits into the Bolaris-Mendte-Keeley spectrum of TV personalities. And if he ever smokes weed at the station. And if it ever starts to feel like a real-life version of “The Office.”