It was an inauspicious start for Rob Schmitt at WNBC.
The former KCAL/KCBS anchor and reporter began on yesterday’s 5 p.m. broadcast reading a 90-second story about the death of Glee actor Cory Monteith.
It appears the station’s decision to ease Schmitt into the newscast slowly was a smart move. Nerves clearly took hold of him. His voice wasn’t commanding, he had awkward pauses scattered about, and Schmitt concluded his live piece by giving an errant close to the story, “Rob Schmitt, NBC 4 News New York,” instead of “News 4 New York.”
We’ll give Schmitt the benefit of the doubt, and assume he won’t be another Steve Trout, a decent ballplayer who couldn’t handle the New York spotlight. Trout crashed and burned with the Yankees in the 1980s.
Schmitt was hired last month from the CBS-owned stations in Los Angeles as weekday general assignment reporter, and ultimately to be Channel 4’s noon anchor.
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