Veteran News Executive Out at KHJ-TV

Disney-owned KHJ-TV Channel 9 has hired a new vice president of news, forcing Stephanie Rank Brady, the station’s news director for the past 16 years and the only woman ever to hold that position in the Los Angeles TV market, “to step aside,” station officials said Monday.

Bob Henry, director of special news projects for LIN Broadcasting and news director at WOTV, the NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, Mich., will arrive at the station in the next two weeks to oversee KHJ’s plans to launch a three-hour prime-time newscast in January. Disney has already hired longtime KABC-TV Channel 7 anchor Jerry Dunphy at a salary reported to be the highest ever paid to a local TV anchor and longtime KABC reporter Larry Carroll to front at least parts of the upcoming broadcast.

Brady is the second prominent KHJ executive to be forced out of her job since Disney, which bought KHJ-TV for $324 million, assumed control of the station last December. Chuck Velona, who had been KHJ’s general manager since 1979, was fired last May.

Both Blake Byrne and Jim Saunders, the men Disney hired to run its sole television station, previously had been executives of LIN Broadcasting, which owns seven TV stations including WOTV in Grand Rapids, the 37th largest market in the country. Henry once worked for Saunders at WOTV.

Byrne, KHJ president and general manager, and Saunders, executive vice president, said through a spokeswoman that they had asked Brady to stay with Henry as her boss, but Brady, who has been in charge of the KHJ newsroom since 1973, chose to resign. Neither Byrne nor Saunders was available for comment Monday.

Brady, who was one of the first women in the country to run a local television newsroom, was also unavailable.

“She was very, very competent,” said Jeff Wald, news director at rival KTLA Channel 5. “I knew she had very good ideas for the station, but she never had the budget to implement them. It’s ironic that now that Disney has the budget and she has the opportunity to really prove herself, they aren’t going to give her the chance. I think it’s very sad, and a sad commentary on what happens to news directors in this business.”

It is widely rumored that Brady was the original architect of the three-hour newscast that Disney plans to implement and had been at the forefront of the station’s plans to expand its news force. KHJ-TV is reportedly spending millions of dollars to upgrade its technical capabilities as well as investing heavily in local news talent. For the past month, Brady has been sifting through hundreds of audition tapes from news personalities seeking a place in KHJ’s plans.

The departure of Brady leaves the orchestration of the ambitious three-hour newscast to three executives who have never worked in Los Angeles before.