Revolving Door at KTTV to Spin Off 2 Anchors

The revolving door to the Fox-owned KTTV Channel 11 newsroom is spinning once again. Both anchors of the station’s 10 p.m. news, Dennis Morgino and Pat Lalama, will be removed from their positions to make way for new news personalities in the next month or two, the station confirmed Monday.

A KTTV spokeswoman said that both Morgino and Lalama, who served as reporters at the station before moving “temporarily” to the anchor desk, will be asked to stay on at the station. She said KTTV has been shopping around for new anchors and hopes to announce at least one new hire by the end of the week. The station also plans to make several other on-air changes in coming months, she said.

Since Fox bought KTTV four years ago, change has been nothing new to the Channel 11 newsroom. Longtime local anchors Marcia Brandwynne and Tony Cox left in the summer of 1987. Network news reporters Bill Redeker and Andrea Naversen replaced them; Naversen’s contract was bought out after only six months. KNBC Channel 4 anchor Kirstie Wilde was lured to KTTV in 1988; she left the station on a maternity leave about a year later but did not return. Lalama took over in her absence. Then Redeker decided to return to network news last fall. Karl Brown held down the weekday job for a few months before giving way to Morgino last December.

Changes in news management at the Fox station have also been frequent during the last several years. The station has had five news directors since 1987, including Joe Saitta, former KCBS Channel 2 news boss Erik Sorenson, Steve Blue, Joseph Barnes and Dick Tuininga, who has held the job since May. There have also been several managing editors and executive producers during the same time period as well as three station chiefs--Bill White, Robert Morse and current chief Greg Nathanson, who has been on the job since October, 1988. Joel Cheatwood, KTTV vice president of news and programming, was hired to oversee the news operation last February.

Since the Fox takeover, despite the reported active involvement of Fox chairman Barry Diller, the station has failed to achieve Diller’s stated goal of becoming the No. 1 news operation in the Los Angeles market. In the most recent ratings period last May, Channel 11 finished a distant second at 10 p.m., a good 115,000 homes a night behind longtime independent news champ KTLA Channel 5.

The ongoing instability at the station has caused newsroom morale to sink, some station employees said. Other recent changes include the departures of weekend sports anchor Tom Nettles, executive producer Tom Moo, planning director Betsy Bates and field producer Stephanie Seldin. A new weatherman, Mark Thompson, is scheduled to begin work in about a month. Last summer, in a controversial move, the station bought out the contracts of 11 veteran news writers, producers and directors.

Tuininga held a recent staff meeting to assure current news staffers that there would be no further dismissals, but since then two more news employees have lost their jobs, said a KTTV news employee, who asked not to be identified. Some staffers are also unhappy with recent directions in the station’s news content.

“No one feels particularly safe,” the employee said. “Everybody’s been told to take a step back to a kind of keep-it-simple, stupid attitude about (our newscasts), which has got everyone feeling offended. The place has been a beacon of instability and remains so.”