TV Q&A: Do anchors go home between 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts?

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: I’ve noticed that most/all of the 6 p.m. news anchors will also be on their respective 11 p.m. broadcasts for the local news. Do those anchors stay at their stations for that time until 11 p.m. or are they allowed to go home and come back?

— Chad, via email

Rob: My sense is it varies by person, station and sometimes even the day.

“Some stay. Some go home,” said WPXI 6 and 11 p.m. anchor David Johnson. “It can depend on how your contract is worded. I do run out to get food for dinner, which I bring back to the station. So I leave for a few minutes — I have my phone at the ready if there’s breaking news — but I don’t go home.”

KDKA-TV’s Ken Rice and WTAE’s Mike Clark did not respond when I sent them Chad’s question.

Q: Please find out why on WPXI-TV’s streaming channel airs the same commercial over and over three or four times in a row. It causes me to change the channel.

— Kathy, via email

Rob: I can only figure that perhaps the station has no other commercials and/or promos available to run. WPXI general manager Kevin Hayes did not respond when I sent him Kathy’s query.

Q: Is Dulcé Sloan still a correspondent on “The Daily Show”? It’s been several weeks (months?) since I last saw her appear on the program.

— Mark, Squirrel Hill

Rob: Yes, Sloan is still part of “The Daily Show.” But “Daily Show” players can also have other projects that sideline them from “The Daily Show” for periods of time.

Q: On “America’s Got Talent,” why do they feel the need to constantly cut away from the performers to show audience members’ reactions and comments? Extremely annoying. Are these cutaways staged and planned ahead? They would seem to be because the camera is there at the exact moment someone makes a comment about the performance. I wish they would stop doing this and show the entirety of the performance.

— Alex, Uptown

Rob: TV shows – game shows, televised sporting events – have shown crowd reaction shots for decades. Alex seems to be calling for the elimination of reaction shots, but that would make for pretty static TV.

What Alex describes seeing on “AGT” occasionally goes beyond reaction shots for host Terry Crews to say, “That’s crazy!” or “Oh my goodness!” That’s clearly a planned, produced reaction but other images of audience members’ facial expressions or applauding seem as anodyne as the shots you’d see on any game show or sports broadcast.

Q: If I get a streaming service like SLING or Fubo TV, do I still need a cable service or can I just plug SLING or whoever into the TV and start watching TV?

— Eric via email

Rob: Both streaming options require a high-speed internet connection, but they do not require cable TV. You’d have to check with each company to see which local and national cable channels their services offer.