Photo: KHON's Joe Moore

KHON TV 2 news anchor Joe Moore was voted as Hawaii's most popular newscaster in the recently completed 3rd Annual Hawaii Radio & Television Guide media poll. KITV 4 sportscaster Shawn Ching got more votes than Moore to assure himself as being Hawaii's favorite TV sports guy. KGMB TV's Kim Gennuala was chosen as Hawaii's favorite weather person. She also garnered some votes for news anchor, a position she has during that station's early evening newscast.

The most popular TV news station was KITV 4, though none of their reporters or anchors except for Shawn Ching garnered any significant amount of votes. News 4 was perhaps chosen for their better balanced news and in-depth reports.

As far as local prime time goes, several people had at least voted for either "Fantasy Island" or "Wind On Water", two made in Hawaii network shows that met with untimely demise during the period the survey was being taken. None of the locally produced and Hawaii-only shows got any large amounts of votes.

On the radio front, votes reflected the wide variety of choices available on the local dial. Two Pacific Star stations emerged to take the #1 and #2 positions as being the most popular... they are Hot I-94 (KIKI FM) radio at the top position and local talk station KHVH at the #2 position. Favorite radio personalities are Rick Hamada and the duo of Perry & Price, though none got an overwhelming majority of votes. Most people listen to the radio in their cars and at home most of the time. Respondents were cold to the internet bitcasts offered by local broadcasters.

Granted the vote sample for this most recent survey was very small. I received 42 ballots of which 38 were accepted. Six were ruled as invalid due to lack of name or an email address. The polling period was from November 1 to December 16, 1998. Despite the small amount of voters, the most interesting aspect of the poll were the comments received regarding to Hawaii's broadcast media.

Here are a few of the interesting comments:

From Mel Martinez regarding local TV news: "Too many kids and "part-timne" reporters. There aren't journalists like there used to be. Stories on television have become much too simplistic and non-informative. But that's the nature of a 22 minute news/sports/weather-cast. Empahasis has become style over substance because of the ratings game, but what's new there? Even public television has reduced it's visibility for issues oriented programming with the elimination of it's "Dialog" program."

Michele Dela Cruz wrote: "Lately, i've been watching KGMB-9 News. They have really improved over the past year. I was very delighted when Kim Gennaula began anchoring the 5pm newscast. What I like about her is that she comes across the viewer as being genuine, approachable, and her delivery is confident and understandable. She makes weather reporting seem fun! I'd like to have her job! I also think that KGMB-9 has the sexiest guy on local tv... weekend weathercaster Paul Drewes! What a babe!!!"

More comments can be read by following this link.

Finally I have to apologize for the lateness in posting the poll results. I made a mistake by conducting this poll close to and during the holiday season. Being bogged down with work and holiday activities, it was impossible to post the results in a more timely manner. For that please accept this most humble of apologies.

The next polls conducted at this site will be more of an ongoing, single question variety, which will be starting soon.

As usual feel free to send me any comment or commentary you have about Hawaii's broadcast media, both television and radio. Commentary may be dropped off at my e-mail address of macpro3000@yahoo.com.

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