Walker: ‘I Need to Do More Than Just Sit on the Set’

Bree Walker said that she will sign a new, multi-year contract to anchor the news at KCBS-TV Channel 2 as soon as station management agrees to allow her to work on other types of programming such as documentary-type projects and town hall forums.

“It’s really important to me to hammer out those kinds of details,” said Walker, who expects to sign the contract in the next two weeks. “I need to do more than just sit on the set and read the news. I need to do things that make me feel like I’m still a journalist.”

Walker added that her new contract includes “a small pay cut,” but she said, “as far as I know, everyone in TV news is taking a pay cut except for (KNBC anchor) Paul Moyer,” who this year signed a record-breaking, multimillion-dollar new deal.

Walker said that she agreed to accept a slice from her approximately $700,000-a-year salary in exchange for the stability of staying in Los Angeles and having time to spend with her two young children. Since her husband, Jim Lampley, is currently working three sports broadcasting jobs that require him to travel nearly every weekend, Walker said that it was critical for her to continue in a job that permits her to spend the mornings with her children and to put them to bed at night.

“I was quite willing to give up some money to have that,” said Walker, who anchors the 6 p.m. newscast, goes home to be with her husband and children and then returns to anchor the 11 p.m. broadcast. “It did mean learning to quell a little bit of the green-eyed ambitious monster and spend these years as a working mother with the focus on my family.”

Walker said that KCBS’ newscasts have been completely transformed since John Lippman arrived as news director in January. He has instituted major changes in attempting to create an intense, action-packed newscast.

“It certainly is faster-paced,” Walker said. “Even though we don’t have a lot of think pieces that most of us enjoy doing, we do have a lot of action at ‘Action News.’ We aren’t lying about who we are.”

Does “action” serve the news-viewing public?

“We have an identity now and the product needed an identity, because local news looks so homogenized on all the different stations,” she said. “We’re easier for people to find now.

“But no local newscast is adequate,” she added. “If you are serious about news and serious about being informed, you will always have to seek out several other sources of information. But on days that you can only afford the time for one source, local TV news is a pretty good one for telling you what is happening in your city.”