FRATANGELO QUITS KFMB EXPERIMENT

Since February, 1985, Dawn Fratangelo has been a promising personality, and at times an anchor, at KFMB-TV (Channel 8). An insider at the station, who asked not to be quoted by name, said Fratangelo was being groomed to be “the star anchor--and then she dropped a bombshell on Holtzman.”

Holtzman is Jim Holtzman, news director at Channel 8, San Diego’s CBS affiliate. He admitted in a recent interview that he was “very disappointed and extremely surprised” at Fratangelo’s decision to leave KFMB for a weekend anchor job and weekday reporting job with WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate.

He wasn’t surprised at Fratangelo’s desire to move to Boston, he said. As a native of upstate New York (a small town near Syracuse), she had been seeking a return to the East Coast as an anchor for a major station.

He was surprised at the timing, he said, which coincided with the demise of “This Day,” the innovative but ultimately doomed 11 p.m. news show at Channel 8. “This Day” still goes by the same name, but the concept of multiple anchors (of which Fratangelo was one) is gone.

Gone, too, is the look of reporters seeming to lurk in darkness behind the anchors, until the spotlights went up, and the appearance of a news booth that resembled a hot tub more than an anchor desk. Gone, too, for the most part, is the notion of each day having a theme or philosophy, hence the title. Some viewers had complained of this contrivance as being “fluffy,” not to mention the sometimes schmaltzy way the anchors narrated the script.

A more conventional look is now in place, with Allison Ross, whom Holtzman calls the “exceedingly popular anchor” of the 5 and 6:30 p.m. shows, now doing yeoman’s work by co-anchoring the 11 p.m. show as well.

Her partner is Stan Miller, a 31-year-old newcomer from WFAA, the ABC affiliate in Dallas. (The show doesn’t have a weatherman, and won’t, Holtzman said, until it proves “it has to.”)

Fratangelo, 26, had distinguished herself in a short time as an intelligent anchor and a good reporter. She acknowledged that Holtzman had wanted her “to be the main anchor. He brought me into his office, and we talked at length about the problems of the show (mainly the awkward format of ‘This Day’),” she said. “I had to tell him I had been getting overtures from a station in Boston.

“I must say Jim has been very, very good. He said he was disappointed, but that if I wanted to work there that badly, good luck. I can’t tell you how nice he’s been. A lot of news directors would have said, ‘Just pack your bags and leave.’ ”

Fratangelo expects to start in Boston around the first of December. She was asked if her reason for leaving was based more on a desire to try New England or as an escape from a failed experiment.

She considered her answer carefully.

“I think eventually all of us who were on the show were disappointed by the format, by the fact that it didn’t work,” she said. “But I have always wanted to work in the Boston market. “Of course, I’ll miss San Diego--people have been very good to me here--but I couldn’t have made the move to Boston without first working at KFMB. My main desire was to go back East, and Boston is a terrific news town.”

Ironically, Holtzman had conceived “This Day” almost as an anchorless format. And now the one person he had hoped might resuscitate its sagging ratings is leaving for greener media pastures. Susan Lichtman, an affable, popular personality who shared anchoring with Fratangelo, Loren Nancarrow and Hal Clement, is already gone, having taken a job as lead anchor with WTVJ, Miami’s CBS affiliate.