We all knew that after Antonio Mora's demotion last June that he wouldn't be in Chicago long. CBS 2 brought him in to beef up the ratings for their hapless 10 PM newscast. After not being able to break through and beat NBC or ABC, Mora took the fall.Now he's headed south to Miami.
The headline for this interview is that his demotion was a setback for Latinos and that it was. I was pretty happy to see that CBS had figured out a way to bring Mora to town. We even switched over from ABC to watch him the first few weeks. But eventually we went back to the newscast that we've both watched since we were kids. And that's the weird thing...We grew up watching the Channel 7 news and thus we still watch it. Even bringing an awesome Latino to town to read us a list of who got shot, who died, who blew up who couldn't bring us to make a major switch.
After his demotion I did miss the idea that a fellow Latino was reading the news at 10 o'clock. Just knowing that he was reading the news felt good. I never got a chance to run into him and for that I'm sad. He always seemed like a nice guy and never heard any bad rumors about him. This interview in today's Sun-Times seems to cement that classy demeanor:
Outside of my disdain for Lester Holt (I can't watch him...Ever), I do think he joined a great club.Q: Do you feel you were treated as a scapegoat when you were demoted?
A: Ah, the difficult question from the tough interviewer! Can we move on to the next one? The station has been ratings-challenged for a quarter century. Managers make their choices based on what they think will help the ratings. All I can say is that I am in terrific company, sharing the same fate as Lester Holt, Carol Marin and Bill Kurtis.
Stay classy, Antonio.
Photo credit: Sun-Times File
Technorati tags: Antonio Mora, Chicago media, CBS 2 Chicago, Latino, Hispanic