TV Q&A: Are 2 WTAE broadcasters sisters?

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review.

Q: Are Elena LaQuatra and Kelly Sasso sisters?

— Anne, via email

Rob: I was 99.999999% sure the WTAE broadcasters are not related but to eliminate any doubt I asked them both.

“No, but we get that a lot!” Sasso said. “And not just from viewers. Both Elena’s husband and mom have told me on different occasions that they’ll pass by the TV and think they hear or see Elena only to realize it’s me! I would definitely consider her a ‘work sister,’ though. She’s one of my closest friends!”

LaQuatra said, “I wish we were, we do look so similar and have similar personalities too! We get asked that a lot! She and I look more like sisters than we do to our actual sisters.”

Q: I’ve noticed lately that all the local news stations (WPXI, KDKA and WTAE) have many glaring errors with their graphics. These include misspellings, wrong use of tense and grammar errors. These occur during news stories as well as in the rolling trailers at the bottom of the screen. Am I the only one that has noticed this??

— Richard, via email

Rob: Nope, Richard is not the only one to notice. I’ve been hearing complaints about errors in TV newscast graphics since starting to cover the Pittsburgh TV market in 1998. One could imagine that with so many more hours devoted to local news now than two decades ago, perhaps there are also more errors — but typos are nothing new.

Q: Now that the strikes are over, will the networks continue to air the shows that previously aired on streaming services, like “Only Murders in the Building,” “NCIS Sydney,” etc?

— Linda, via Facebook

Rob: It’s likely that “NCIS: Sydney” will be back on CBS. It never aired on a domestic streaming service before CBS; it’s just a foreign production. But the sharing between streaming and linear will continue this summer as CBS airs the first season of Paramount+’s “Tulsa King.”

Whether ABC airs more “Only Murders,” we’ll see. Nothing has been announced but media companies do seem more open to giving some of their streaming shows a linear airing than they once were.

At the recent Television Critics Association winter 2024 press tour I attended in Pasadena, Calif., Craig Erwich, president of Disney Television Group, said “Only Murders” reached more than 11 million viewers on ABC, most of whom had never watched the show previously.

“But the impact on streaming was even greater,” he said. “Many of those ABC viewers migrated over to Hulu to continue watching the series. In January alone, the first streams of ‘Only Murders’ on Hulu increased 40% and hours streamed rose 39%, again underscoring how these platforms are additive and complementary to one another. … As we evolve the broadcast model, this is something we will look to do again.”

I asked a follow-up question, trying to pin him down on Linda’s question about whether ABC will air the second season of the Hulu series, but I failed to get a definitive, concrete answer.

“We’re certainly open to doing it with ‘Only Murders’ again and/or other television shows,” Erwich said. “When we look at both ABC and Hulu, it’s kind of one big chess board, so you’re able to see where certain audiences watch certain shows, and some migrate more to one platform or the other. ‘Only Murders’ was really the perfect show to put on ABC.”