The Las Vegas local early morning news shows is a very competitive market, with no less than four of these shows vying for the attention of the viewing audience in this 24/7 town. From the married co-anchors who want to make you a part of their family to off the wall blur of news or talk show, Las Vegas seems to have it all. In the middle of the road, with a mixture of fun and news was the CBS affiliate, KLAS-TV. Better known as 8 News Now with morning co-anchors, corny/straight man Dave McCann and glamorous, hip Dayna Roselli, They played well off each other. After a multi-year run, KLAS had a change in their morning line up for their early local news program. Long standing anchor McCann took on a job at KLS in Salt Lake City, UT and Roselli had a recent two year extension to her contract. There was much buzz as to who was going to be the next co-anchor with the very popular Dayna Roselli.

Dayna Roselli, with her infectious smile, neat appearance and a personality was very popular in the early morning news market. Roselli's popularity extended beyond being a co-anchor of KLAS-TV's 8 News Now This Morning. She started her KLAS career as a traffic reporter and was quickly moved to the co-anchor position. It seemed apparent that she had that "It Factor". Not only did she shine as a co-anchor, but she was the goodwill ambassador for 8 News Now. She  hosted local charity events, had an entertainment blog, was socially active within Las Vegas, admired by her peers and was very savvy with social media. With a following of nearly 10,000 on Twitter and over 5,000 Facebook friends, she embraced Instagram, FourSquare, and Google+. She would tell her viewing audience about social media and was instrumental in getting the Vegas community at large to join in on the social media bandwagon, bringing a new dynamic to local television. Often times tweeting to her followers while broadcasting and making early morning television an interactive experience. I for one would watch 8 News Now This Morning while sitting at my laptop or iPhone to get the entire picture and get in on the behind the scenes activities at the television station.

With the departure of McCann, there was an opportunity to improve the lagging ratings in the market share for early morning local news. A new co-anchor was needed to bring about a fresh change to 8 News Now morning team. As large as Las Vegas is, it still has its roots as a small wild west frontier town and as much as Las Vegas changes, stability or at least familiarity is what the people of Las Vegas seem to want. Was that going to be the factor in deciding who was going to be the new anchor at the right of the screen every morning? Would the new anchor be one of the many talented anchors and reporters that already worked at KLAS, like Chris Saldaña? Were they going to pull someone from one of the other TV stations in town? Or was the management at KLAS going to take a big risk and look for someone outside the Las Vegas market? The hunt was on, but life was still going on at 8 News Now morning newscast with different guest anchors rolling in and out and sitting opposite Dayna Roselli. One day it would be Chris Saldaña another day it would be the traffic reporter Brian Loftus. It made for interesting TV. I was even setting my alarm an hour earlier just to see what was going on 8 News Now. It was very fresh and there was Dayna, the "Anchor" of the show in the true sense. She kept the show flowing and was the stabilizing factor of 8 News Now morning newscast.

On Monday, June 11, 2012 Roselli was in her usual form and finished the show without a hitch. Then came Tuesday, June 12, and no Roselli. I felt something was wrong. I grabbed my iPhone, and went straight to Twitter. While scrolling through Twitter I booted up my laptop and went to Facebook. Juggling all three devices trying to get more information I noticed on the TV that the rest of the 8 News Now morning team changed into the Stepford version of the news. It was almost too animated and obviously too normal for me. on my iPhone, there were no tweets from Roselli which really was unusual. I did come across a tweet that directed me to a brief article about an all new morning anchor team for 8 News Now. With that I launched my investigation and Googled Roselli's name for the direct link to her KLAS profile page and got the message that is was unavailable. Not a good sign, so I tweeted what was going on and got a response that Dayna had been fired.  Not knowing if it was true, but knowing that two new anchors were coming on board, I contacted a friend, Johnny Katsilometes, who is a mutual friend of Dayna's and a reporter for the Greenspun Media Group. He had no idea what was going on at the time, but was investigating. When an article from Katsilometes came out that afternoon, I knew it was true. Roselli was gone. Citing poor ratings, the management at KLAS decided to go in a new direction to improve its market share.

Roselli was always one of the first to use social media services, which seemed to launch KLAS to the forefront of blending TV with the internet, leaving the other local Las Vegas stations to play catch up and helped change the entire Las Vegas TV market. I don't have the figures, but I am guessing that local early morning news programing was regularly losing market share specially from the younger, tech savvy demographic. I know that I gave up on local morning news years ago to just checking the information on my computer every morning. Internet is instant, short, sweet, to the point and no longer a distraction. I got my information, got ready for work and went on my way. It took pioneers like Roselli who's name kept popping up on my Twitter that gave me a reason to follow her and it was her candor and her ability to put her personality into those 140 characters of Twitter that made me want to find out to find out what she was all about. Roselli brought me back to viewing morning news shows and particularly 8 News Now, using TV as a tool along with Twitter, then later Facebook to get the "whole story". Not only did Roselli's tweets cover local news, weather and traffic, but it also focused on the person and her ability to interact in the community at large. This was not just in a journalist perspective, but intertwining journalism and personal life. She had me roped in and I am sure she had that grasp on countless others. Being a busy business person and family man and no longer in the social limelight where I was years ago, I could now live my social life vicariously through Roselli's via social media.

Whatever information television rating services has to present, it does have an impact on the television market. Rating services don't appear to take into account the changing dynamic of the viewing audience. The viewing audience no longer sits on the couch watching the news in the morning then feel like they have their fill. Audiences are now more complicated, using the internet, social media and other electronic outlets to get information. Roselli appears to understand these changing viewers and will be an asset wherever she ends up.

In an effort to create a "fresh new alternative" version of 8 News Now morning newscast, the management at KLAS will be bringing in an entire new anchor lineup. This is a big risk.Will it work in this wild west town where building come and go in an instant? Is Las Vegas ready for a high falootin', big city news team? Or have they lost the new style viewer who uses the TV as one of many tools to get their information? Only time will tell.

My issue is if the market share has declined and you have one of the anchors gone, give the other anchor a chance to see if that is where the fault lies. Doing one's "homework" is the first step in any journalistic venture. I think it is a real disservice that just throwing out the baby with the bathwater is going to resolve the market share one-upmanship game. KLAS had a cutting edge anchor who knew how to keep her audience involved, yet it appears that the management didn't realize or understand the impact that her involvement with social media may have had in the future of  Las Vegas local television. With rating services appearing to be as archaic as the abacus in their way of getting information, specially when it comes to the impact that social media has on TV, why do TV stations continue to take them as the tell all of what people want to watch?