KNBC’s $8-Million Anchor : KABC Loses Paul Moyer to Archrival

Paul Moyer’s long-rumored mega-million dollar jump from KABC Channel 7 to KNBC Channel 4 is official.

Both Channel 4 and Moyer confirmed Tuesday that the anchorman, who has been an integral part of KABC’s success in news since 1979, has signed a multi-year deal with KNBC. Channel 4 trails archrival KABC in news ratings after a few years at the top in the late 1980s.

Neither Moyer nor the station would release details of the contract, but a source close to the negotiations said that it will pay Moyer in excess of $8 million for six years--the biggest deal for a local news personality in this and probably any market. The contract also calls for Moyer to fill in for Tom Brokaw at NBC’s “Nightly News” and for Bryant Gumbel on “Today” as well as for Moyer to play a role in a future NBC prime-time news program, the source added.

The station did not announce when Moyer would start or on what news shows he would appear because it is still shuffling schedules and plans for the anchors currently employed there. It is likely that Moyer will begin before the end of the month, and he is sure to anchor KNBC’s 11 p.m. newscast as well as either the 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. broadcast. A KNBC spokeswoman said that Keith Morrison, who currently anchors the station’s 6 p.m. newscast and does reporting for NBC, will leave the station when Moyer arrives.

“Change is never easy, and I’m one of those people who kind of snuggles into a place and gets very comfortable with the people,” said Moyer, 51, who left KNBC in 1979 after the station demoted him from its primary newscasts. “But in this case the offer got my attention in a hurry . . . I would have regretted it if I turned it down.”

KNBC pursued Moyer after slipping behind KABC in ratings during the past year. Moyer, along with his co-anchors Ann Martin, Jerry Dunphy and Christine Lund, had spearheaded nearly a decade of ratings supremacy at KABC throughout most of the 1980s before KNBC took over the No. 1 spot in 1988. KNBC held on to that advantage for about two years before falling back badly in recent ratings periods.

“KNBC is obviously in desperate straits,” said Warren Cereghino, news director at KTLA Channel 5, of Channel 4’s decision to toss all that money at Moyer during an economic climate that has mandated cutbacks at many local stations. “They’ve done it to shore up an eroding situation and it’s a concession that whatever they’ve been doing has not been working.”

But both Moyer and KNBC management cautioned that Moyer himself can not be expected to turn the ratings tide around overnight. “We’re both smart enough to know that just having Paul Moyer walk through the door is not going to catapult the station back to the top. We’re in this for the long haul,” Moyer said.

“No one man can shoulder that responsibility by himself,” said Reed Manville, KNBC’s general manager, who conceded that the deal was “a lot sweeter than I would have liked.” But Manville added that KNBC was willing to pay the money to lure him away from KABC because he believes that “Paul Moyer is a terrific newscaster. He has a proven track record in my market and he is a very compatible addition to my newscast. He will bring some of his loyalists with him from KABC without alienating any of the loyalists who watch Channel 4.”

Whether one anchor can drag viewers from one station to another is questionable. Jerry Dunphy, for example, was able to achieve enormous success when he moved from Channel 2 to Channel 7 in 1975, but he had limited success when he jumped to KCAL Channel 9 in 1990. Other anchors have jumped stations over the years only to face similar ratings disappointment.

In addition, KABC’s success is hardly a credit only to Moyer. Both Jerry Dunphy and Christine Lund already had that station on the rise when Moyer arrived in 1979, and throughout much of his run there Moyer was paired with Ann Martin. Moyer also was on hand at KABC when the station’s ratings slipped in the late 1980s. KABC began its current resurgence when Christine Lund returned in November, 1990, after a four-year hiatus, and the station’s news programs have enjoyed the enormous lead-in advantage of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“I’m one of those fuddy-duddies who still believes that the purpose of a newscast is to give information,” said Irwin Safchik, who was a news director at Channel 4 when Moyer first worked there. “The anchor is part of that and Paul Moyer is fine at providing information, but so are the anchors who may now be replaced at KNBC. My common sense tells me that it won’t make that much of a difference.”

One longtime local news veteran agreed that news coverage, not anchors, wins ratings, and KABC has been first recently because its coverage has been best. KNBC has been hurt by cutbacks in its news department the past few years, he said, not by inadequacies in its current anchor lineup. He cited the station’s burying the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion on its 11 p.m. newscast and a failure to thoroughly cover the recent police shooting of a black truck driver as examples of its editorial decline.

Terry Crofoot, general manager at KABC--which tried to keep Moyer with a multi-year deal that would have paid him more than $1.1 million annually--was on vacation and could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But last May, in an interview explaining why the station had taken Moyer off the air during the negotiating period, Crofoot said that the success of KABC was a “team effort” and could not be attributed to any one person. Harold Greene and Paul Dandridge, as well as Lund, Martin and Laura Diaz, have been shouldering the anchor duties in Moyer’s absence, and while KNBC’s coverage beat KABC’s Moyer-less reports the day of the recent earthquakes, KABC has retained its lead in news on most days.

Cereghino, who calls Moyer “a major player” and “first among equals” in terms of viewer recognition, argued, however, that Moyer’s appeal just might transfer to KNBC. “It’s a chancy thing, but it just might be the smartest thing they have done in some time. Paul is a very likable guy. He is a man of integrity, a decent man and I think the audience sees that . . . People see an anchor for what he or she really is and I think Moyer makes viewers feel comfortable.”

Whether that comfort level will justify his massive salary is another matter. One news employee at KNBC, who did not want to be identified, said that while no one there dislikes Moyer, many are afraid that his salary will mean cutbacks in other areas of the news coverage.

“There have been a lot of jokes among people here like, ‘Who is going to pay for this? You are,’ ” the staffer said. “The station has had a very stringent budget all year and there have been questions raised about whether this is a worthwhile expenditure. Is it worth putting that much into an anchor and then have to take it out of the product? In the current economy there is a finite amount of money and the question is how you appropriate it. I don’t think the money and this move alone will bring them what they want.”

Manville concedes that tough economic times bespeak a need for increased productivity and minimal waste in all areas of the station, but he said NBC has not asked him to cut one thing to compensate for Moyer’s salary.

“I think in fact that it is a grand gesture of financial support that we were given the assets we needed to make this move,” Manville said.

Moyer, whose wife gave birth to their second child during his time off the air--he has two other children from a previous marriage--said the hardest thing about going back to KNBC after 13 years as the competition is simply the grind of going back to work.

“You don’t realize the rat race and the pressure you’re under until you leave it for awhile,” said Moyer, a native of Los Angeles and graduate of Torrance High School.

“It will be a little strange to walk back in through the door that I walked out of 13 years ago . . . And when you go to a station after being off the air and with all this publicity, I’m sure some of the people there will be a little threatened. But I’m sure in time, that will disappear.”