WVUE New Orleans

A handful of New Orleans Pelicans games could be coming to over-the-air television this season. There are still significant technical hurdles to overcome before a deal can come to fruition. Bally Sports’ financial issues also threaten to alter these plans. Any deal is unlikely to be finalized until mid- to late December. Until that happens, the Pelicans will not be able to decide which of their 10 games will be shown on Gray Television’s WVUE.

With its colorful festivals, two major pro sports teams and lots of crime and corruption, New Orleans feels like a larger market than No. 50 to the newsgatherers toiling in the region. There’s never a shortage of big-time happenings.

The station group promotes Ronna Corrente to lead WAVE Louisville, Ky., and Mikel Schaefer to oversee WVUE New Orleans.

Many of the staff at Gray’s New Orleans Fox affiliate faced the reporting challenge of a lifetime 15 years ago when Hurricane Katrina struck. The coronavirus pandemic has compelled them to write a new playbook and yet lean on old comforts like local music. Above, WVUE and Katrina veteran Lee Zurik working from home.

The station group promotes Ronna Corrente and Joe Sciortino to lead its New Orleans Fox and Baton Rouge CBS affiliates.

In the TV business, WWL was as much a New Orleans landmark as Jackson Square or Café du Monde. The CBS affiliate dominated the Crescent City for decades, until General Manager Tim Ingram and his team from Fox affiliate WVUE flipped the market.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center are for openings at the Nexstar station in Spartanburg, S.C., and the Gray stations in Roanoke, Va., and New Orleans.

The fixture in New Orleans television news was killed Friday in a plane crash there while working on a story. She anchored every primetime newscast at Gray Television’s Fox affiliate WVUE during her 22-year tenure in New Orleans. She was 53.