9:45am — Updated to reflect more information clarifying John Auble’s status.

A couple of interesting and corroborating reports in our tip line inbox today about the two-headed local news team of Fox2 and KPLR (11). According to both our tipster and our other source, spring cleaning is in full effect in the on-air news department by both traditional firings and medical leave. Here’s a summary of what we’ve heard, starting with the slightly stale news and going from there:

A few days ago #2 or #3 sports guy Rob Desir disappeared from the station, but now reporter Sean Conroy, who had been rumored to be “leaving” to focus on the bars he co-owns (iTap), is gone as well. Fellow reporters John Gadsen and John Auble both would have also been shown the door according to our tipster, but are currently on the mend from major illness. On the KPLR side, rumor has it that Melanie Moon‘s job may be on thin ice as well…which brings us to the news team’s recent hire: Angie Mock. Who by the way, isn’t bad on the eyes:

Mock hasn’t listed the move from Oklahoma City to St. Louis on her Faacebook page yet, but she did announce it on the morning show she still co-hosts for the next couple of days.

Could Mock the less hard news experienced Mock be in line for the KPLR job if the cuts continue? Our tipster thinks so, but we couldn’t back that up other than confirming Mock’s hire. On the whole though, these cuts make sense in a trimming the books way because all of the names listed have been at the station for a while, so they make a little more money, but also aren’t “key” on-air faces most people will miss. Sadly, these moves were probably the “easy” decisions.

No formal confirmation on KTVI/KPLR at the time of this writing other than Rob Desir’s page being removed from the “News Team” page.

In a related story, Fox2 is advertising the fact that they have “the most meteorologists” in the market, which means if you work for Fox2 start brushing up on how to point to stuff on a green screen and highlighting green and red splotches on a map while telling everyone those are tornados. Nah, it doesn’t really matter if you’re right.

Update: A commenter brings up a good point…

Hot? She looks like someone poisoned by the Joker.

We hadn’t really focused on her face yet, but yeah…she kinda does.

A lot of you wrote in to us with the same sentiment: “Do we really need around the clock local news coverage about the ‘storm of the century’”? Apparently the general St. Louis audience, or at least our readers, thought that if they had to be stuck at home, then they could at least watch some TV. Ha! Nice try St. Louis, but local news won’t let that happen. Not on their watch. You have to watch the same 2 hours of weather radar loop over and over again while weather people point and zoom in on stuff between cuts to Mike Busch confirming that they aren’t going overboard and you will in fact die…Busch’s hair still won’t move, but you will totally die.

“A historic storm deserves historic coverage,” [Mike Shipley, news director of KSDK] said.

So what does a little worst that regular winter storm deserve?

Audrey Prywitch, news director of KTVI and KPLR (Channel 11), said she hadn’t necessarily planned to go live with storm coverage all day, but “as the situation was developing, we got into a good rhythm. You know when a story like this runs out of steam, and you shut it down. But we were getting so much good stuff, we kept going.”

Apparently we disagree on the definition of “good stuff”. One of your reporters in a Fox2 jacket standing by a plow falls in our list of “good stuff” way down at the bottom just above anal fissures and right below nodding along to the rants of “I’m in a hurry!” guy at the bank.

Viewership Tuesday “will be high — very high,” Shipley said. “Look at the pictures we’re getting. Nobody’s on the streets. You have to think they’re home watching a lot of television.”

That’s the spirit! Wining the “ratings” war by scaring your audience to be locked in their homes with jugs of water and enough flashlights to be spotted from space. We bet if you tell everyone that you put a bomb in their house and won’t tell them the dearming code until after sports and the weather you’d end up with some pretty decent ratings too. Unless they have cable. Dog the Bounty Hunter is worth a little explodin’.

via STLToday

Found on YouTube: KTVI Fox2′s John Brown gets bit by a Cardinal he was holding at the bird sanctuary.

He apparently had named the little red cardinal “Albert”…not sure why. Don’t see any connection there. If he was making a joke, he should really come off his high horse and do something more relatable, because who knows what he was referring to. Maybe John will explain the obscure reference needed to understand why naming a cardinal “Albert” would be funny. Naming it “Fart”or “Boob” would have been far more universally hilarious.

At least the bird bit him, that we can all relate too.

“Live in the Web Center. This is George Sells, Fox2 news.” The Web Center?!

We were going to do exactly what every pseudo-news outpost is supposed to do in St. Louis and bite on this story that some St. Louis company is going to map Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA and will undoubtedly uncover amazing truths and far too many bat head biting references to count, but when watching the clip about the story on Fox2′s site just now, something else caught out attention…

Fox2 calls a room in their office “The Web Center”.

Here’s reporter George Sells in there now doing web stuff on his multiple monitors which we can only assume doubles as a emergency NASA launch center in St. Louis when the need arrises.

I know. Its really crazy in the Web Center. Its tough to take all in. Here’s an annotated version of the shot.

That’s three monitors showing all kind of Web Centery stuff like Ozzy photos, and lets not forget the tape in the background.

…

Ok this thing is a converted closet isn’t it?! It has to be. Somewhere there is a janitor pissed off he can’t keep his mop there anymore. Why go the trouble of calling this clearly random room with an outlet on one of the walls the “Web Center”…is it because this room has the good power strip?

It would be another thing if this was 1987 and this was the only room in the whole building that had the internet, but come on! Every intern in the station has a computer, making every cube in the farm a little “mini Web Center”. Hell we have internet on our phone…are we always in a Web Center where ever we go? You tell us Fox2, you’re the ones that had to get all fancy with the names for closets.

Oh wait. Is calling it “The Web Center” how you convinced George to move to the room in the basement with those boxes of Jaco Report tapes?

Oh you wacky morning shows where you leave the studio for the craziness of the hallway.  Wait a minute! Birds aren’t supposed to be out here!

Right in the balls. Always funny. Thank God the bird went over that guy though and didn’t decide to tug on anything below the belt on Randi Naughton. That would have just been awkward and then embarrassing in a very weird way for John Pertzborn.

Dick Ford and John Auble have been around the St. Louis news scene for a long time now.  Long enough to have a clip surface where together they interview Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons from KISS even before they would allow anyone to seen them sans makeup.

Stanley and Simmons did the whole interview with their backs to the camera with only a pair of shades embedded in to the mane of Simmon’s hair to differentiate himself.

Normally this would be a pretty un-stimulating TV interview.  Good think Ford and Auble brought the audience in on the action…

Um, guys? KISS really isn’t in that TV. You don’t have to look at the TV in some vein attempt at eye contact.

You can watch the whole interview that involves four dudes with their back to the camera after the jump by clicking below.

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