MEDIA : KFMB’s Ted Leitner Strikes Out With Commentaries

If Ted Leitner has “something to say” about politics, racism or any other news topic, he’ll have to save it for the gang around the KFMB-TV (Channel 8) water cooler. Of course, Leitner will still be able to express himself during his nightly sports segments, but the station has decided to drop his weeknight commentaries.

“We didn’t feel it was worth the time Ted was putting into them,” said Jim Holtzman, Channel 8’s news director.

The addition of Leitner’s “Something to Say” news commentaries, which debuted six months ago, was a clear attempt to capitalize on Leitner’s popularity and the imminent departure of KGTV (Channel 10) commentator Michael Tuck. However, as much as they tried, station management couldn’t get people to think of Leitner as anyone more than an opinionated Sports Guy. Ironically, Leitner had very little to say of any interest, and the taped pieces were stilted and unimaginative.

Leitner’s schedule didn’t help much. Since April he has been traveling with the San Diego Padres, doing their radio broadcasts, which has further cut into his time.

“Baseball season made (the commentaries) almost impossible to do,” Holtzman said.

For the past few years, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has been on a relentless campaign to make people understand that the Emmy awards are not a competition. Emmy’s are presented for excellence, not for beating other entries, academy officials point out over and over again.

Somehow Channel 39 didn’t get the message. Its current self-congratulatory commercials say the station “won” Emmys. To the academy, this is akin to announcing that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

The wording of the commercial was brought to the attention of NATAS chapter president Terry Williams by a call from one of Channel 39’s friendly competitors.

“From our point of view, we liked that another station whined about it because it brought up the issue again,” Williams said.

After discussing the ad with a NATAS member who works at the station, Williams thought the wording of the ads had been changed. But a Channel 39 representative says that’s not true.

“There has been no request as I far as I understand” for a change, said station promotion director Doug Gilmore. Although NATAS by-laws prohibit stations from saying they were named the “best” in a category, there is nothing prohibiting the use of the word “won,” he said.

Williams was not happy to hear the change had not been made, but she didn’t expect to pursue the case any further.

“Frankly our relationship with the stations is such that I don’t feel like antagonizing them,” she said. “My philosophy is that I’m delighted the station is using the Emmys in their commercial and that I’m not going to have a war over a word.”

The new issue of Arete, the pseudo-hip, slick magazine published locally by David Alden Mills, an heir to the Dow Chemical family fortune, is due out the first week in August, according to magazine spokeswoman Christine Baker. That’s two months after press releases were sent out touting the release of the new issue, which will focus on drugs and creativity.

The “Forum for Thought” magazine, which started out calling itself by the radical title: “A Critique of America,” is supposed to be published six times a year, but the last issue appeared in March.

Problems with the printing company and the small size of the magazine’s staff contributed to the delay, Baker said.

The March issue included a letter from Mills bemoaning the magazine’s lack of advertising and financial support. Which made San Diego Business Journal reporter, Susan C. Schena, curious about the state of the mag, which makes up for a generally pompous tone by featuring such top writers as Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut. But she couldn’t get any answers.

“Weeks of repeated efforts to reach Mills were unsuccessful,” she wrote in a blurb in a recent edition of the Business Journal, under the headline “Memo to Arete: pls return calls.”

Baker said Mills was simply too busy to talk to the Business Journal, what with all the pressure of trying to get the issue together. Some stories were rewritten “three or four” times for the current issue, she said.

Mills was still unavailable for comment. “He’s on vacation,” Baker said.

It started a few weeks ago with a rogue lock of hair defiantly hanging from the left side of Professional Television Journalist Susan Roesgen’s ever-evolving hairstyle. One day it would be there; the next it was gone.

Eerily, at the the same time, the Channel 8 anchorwoman’s light brown hair hair started changing color, seemingly becoming lighter and darker from day to day, until, suddenly, in an explosion of hair coloring, she showed up with dark brown (almost red) hair last Wednesday night. In the world of television news, this is tantamount to a newspaper doing a complete redesign. These things don’t happen by accident.

Contacted Thursday, Roesgen really didn’t want to talk about the evolution of her hair. Clearly not a popular subject at the station, news director Holtzman also didn’t sound excited to discuss it.

“I have no comment except to say I like it at this point,” Holtzman said.

Former Noble Broadcasting exec Norman Feuer has a new job--but it’s only temporary. He is the acting general manager of KJQY-FM (103.7), while the new owners search for a replacement for recently departed Bert Wahlen. . . .

Ed Diaz has left the general manager job at XHTZ-FM (Z90) to return to embattled XHRM-FM (92.5), where he did a short stint as general manager a few months ago. “I have an opportunity to participate in an equity position at this station,” Diaz said. He promises XHRM will stick to a “hardcore urban” format. There are no plans to replace him at Z90, according to a station spokesman. . . .

With rumors that a consultant is exploring the station operation, KSDO-FM (102.9) has laid off producer Nina Reeba, despite a recent ratings surge, prompting fears at the station that more cuts may follow. The current joke at the station: “You know someone is gone when their name is whisked off the mailbox.”