A small group of dignitaries gathered in Studio 5 at LTV Studios in Wainscott on Friday to acknowledge and celebrate a milestone: the taping of the 52nd episode of “East End News,” the weekly news program the public access broadcaster launched one year ago.
Christine Sampson, the program’s newscaster and a former reporter and deputy managing editor at The Star, read reports on the East Hampton School District’s upcoming bond propositions, the Sag Harbor Village Board asking Mayor Thomas Gardella for his resignation, a fatal car accident on Main Street in East Hampton Village, and the Montauk Library’s recent budget vote, among others.
The celebration was made possible by considerable prior effort at LTV, which was founded in 1983. All the way back in 1986, the late William J. Fleming, an East Hampton attorney, started hosting “The East End Show,” a live, 30-minute community interview program that aired on Thursday evenings. Fleming would go on to host more than 900 episodes, the show continuing for 31 years. He died in 2018.
“Over the years, Mr. Fleming interviewed politicians, journalists, sports fans, historians, writers, activists, artists, winemakers, and clergy members, beginning each live Thursday evening show with a reading of The East Hampton Star’s headlines that day,” according to his obituary in The Star. He also headed LTV’s election night coverage. “Government, politics, books, movies, you never quite knew what was going to come up,” former Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a longtime friend and frequent LTV guest, said in the obituary.
Later, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly upended day-to-day existence, rendering residents isolated, anxious, and hungry for information about the novel coronavirus. In response, LTV developed “Facts @ Five,” a live news broadcast to provide education and information. The program ran in 2020 and 2021, featuring interviews with officials including Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, Village Mayor Richard Lawler and Deputy Mayor Barbara Borsack, Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, Representative Lee Zeldin, and Chief Michael Sarlo of the town’s Police Department, among many other members of the community.
“Facts @ Five” was the brainchild of Michael Clark, then LTV’s executive director, who co-anchored the program with Morgan Vaughan, a writer and former director of LTV. “That was Michael saying, ‘Our community needs something, and we have the ability to offer it,’ which was helpful news about the pandemic — the latest numbers, the latest resources, vaccines, etc.,” Ms. Sampson, LTV’s director of community engagement, recalled.
Mr. Clark had a stroke in March 2020 (he made a full recovery), and Ms. Sampson, whose husband, Jason Nower, is LTV’s chief video engineer, helped to fill the void for three weeks. “I happened to be here that day because Jason was here and I was visiting, and he said, ‘Can you jump in as anchor with Morgan?’ ”
“That was the seed, and it got a really great response,” Ms. Sampson said. “People really responded to ‘Facts @ Five.’ ” During his tenure, Mr. Clark, who retired last year, noted that LTV did not have a news program. “I credit Michael for having that vision to say, ‘We’re a TV station without a news show, this is the problem that needs to be solved,’ ” she said.
Perhaps Ms. Sampson’s position as anchor of “East End News” was destined. Around 20 years ago, “I played a news anchor in a student film,” she said. “The next thing I knew, I was dabbling and making videos where I wasn’t on camera.” Later, while working for the Patch news and information site, she would watch News12 Long Island “all night long.” But “they don’t do a ton of East End coverage,” she noted. (Justin Timberlake’s 2024 arrest in Sag Harbor was a notable exception.) “We’re the ones covering the nitty-gritty stuff at Town Hall, on the street at the No Kings protests, in the schools, on the sidelines doing sports coverage.”
“East End News” is a group effort. Zachary Minskoff is its director and editor of many of the prerecorded segments called packages. Tess Quinlan and Gaylin Davey are studio technicians. Sydney Salamy, a former LTV intern, is the show’s calendar editor. Max Mensch, an intern, is the sports reporter. Dara Berger, a reporter and interviewer, creates the “Special Edition Interview” segment, in which she interviews local leaders such as Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni and Lisa Goree, the Shinnecock Tribal Council chairwoman. Hunter Begun, an intern, operates the teleprompter and helps with other LTV programming. Mr. Nower built the digital set that functions with the green screen and designed technical aspects.
Bob Wheelock, a veteran television news producer, “helped out a lot last year as our script editor,” Ms. Sampson said. “He would proofread and copy-edit for me, and give comments and feedback. He was coaching me on my on-camera presence, because he has the most experience.”
“East End News” features 10 to 15 stories per episode. In addition to reports, Friday’s first-anniversary episode included as segments “Zach Does Stuff,” in which Mr. Minskoff, Ms. Quinlan, and Ms. Davey visit the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons in Wainscott, and “Ollie Asks,” in which Ollie Dianora-Brondal, a former summer intern who is 13, conducts man-on-the-street interviews.
The news program is recorded on Friday afternoons and broadcast daily at 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on LTV’s Channel 20. It can also be seen on LTV’s YouTube channel.
“The primary lesson I’ve learned along the way is that people aren’t used to having a TV news show out here,” Ms. Sampson said, “so it’s an educational process. I hope people are responding to it.”
