Bill Press Will Return to His KABC-TV Commentator Post

Who says you can’t go home again?

Like Bruce Herschensohn before him, Bill Press, the liberal KABC-TV commentator who gave up his job last fall to run for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate, will return to his old post at Channel 7 Thursday--as the May ratings sweeps period gets under way.

Press, who abandoned his long-shot Senate campaign last month, said that KABC’s revolving political door has swung open again, and he will offer commentaries on “the hottest political issues of the day” three times a week on the station’s 5 p.m. newscast.

In 1986, Herschensohn announced his own candidacy for the Republican nomination to the Senate on the air at KABC, left the station to run second best in the GOP race, and was subsequently welcomed back to Channel 7. When Press quit last year, John Severino, KABC’s general manager, went searching for and found what he called at the time “a liberal replacement” for him in former California Chief Justice Rose Bird.

Bird has been reading broad, humanistic commentaries about ethics and morality twice a week at KABC and at San Francisco sister station KGO-TV since February, but Press feels she has not provided the ideological balance to Herschensohn’s conservative, issue-oriented opinions that Press once did.

Press, who is also trying to work out a commentary deal with KGO-TV, said his return to the station will fill that ideological hole. Herschensohn currently appears on KABC’s newscasts at least four days a week, offering his own 2 1/2-minute commentaries and debating the day’s big political issue with former Democratic Sen. John Tunney.

Press said that as far as he knows Bird will continue in her present role. No one at KABC was available for comment.