Ann Martin, ‘Action News’? : After 18 Years at Channel 7, Forgetting the Word ‘Eyewitness’ Isn’t the Only Challenge the Longtime Anchor Will Face at Troubled Channel 2

If you pull up beside Ann Martin in traffic and she’s staring straight ahead saying “Ann Martin, Channel 2 Action News” over and over again, don’t call the men in the white jackets to take her away. She simply has a few things to get used to.

After 18 years of saying “Ann Martin, Channel 7 Eyewitness News,” she will start sitting behind the anchor desk at KCBS-TV Channel 2 Monday. While others in the industry have been furiously speculating about her new deal, which they say makes her the highest paid television news anchor in local history, Martin has spent much of the past two weeks relaxing, meeting her new colleagues and practicing her new station name to ensure she doesn’t mention the old one on the air.

“When you’ve been at the same place for the last 18 years, you get used to saying things a certain way, so I’ve been practicing over and over in the car,” Martin explained last week during an interview at KCBS.

But it’s more than just Martin’s station name that is changing. She is leaving the dominant news station in town for a newsroom that has been last in the ratings for much of the past 20 years, clouded by an apparently endless cycle of management upheaval and low morale. In addition, news about her salary, which has been reported in a range between $1.2 million and $2 million per year, has suddenly thrust the unassuming Martin into the center of the recurring controversy over the high salaries of selected television anchors in the age of newsroom cutbacks and staff reductions.

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It’s given her a high profile that makes her uncomfortable.

“It feels like all of this is happening to someone else,” Martin said. “I’ve always been a very private person. It’s such a funny thing when the journalist becomes the news story. I feel like I’m in the eye of the hurricane.”

She paused, then said, “I mean, before, at my other station, I was always just there. I grew up at that station. I was just part of the scenery; I never made news. This whole thing has come as a surprise.”

Martin was mainly known at KABC for her calm, pleasant manner, which seemed unflappable even in the face of disasters such as the riots and the Northridge earthquake. Martin says she is just being herself when she reads the news, and has based her style of delivery on acting as if she is relating the news to her 80-year-old aunt: “I just try to be as honest as I can.”

But Martin refuses to set the record straight on terms of her contract or salary, saying only that the $1.7-million figure most frequently quoted is “off the mark”--but whether it’s too high or too low, she isn’t saying.

KCBS General Manager William Applegate, who calls Martin “arguably the preeminent female anchor in the marketplace,” also declined to discuss the specifics of her salary. But he said, “I think it should be noted that, for the first time, a female reporter and anchor takes her place in the higher echelon, financially and otherwise, in what has been an exclusively male domain.”

“There is a quiet dignity about Ann,” said KNBC-TV Channel 4 anchor Paul Moyer, who anchored with her at KABC for 13 years. “She carries herself with style and dignity. That has allowed her to survive in a business where precious few do. We developed a fondness for each other on and off the air, which is rather rare in this line of work. We’re still very close friends, and I’m tickled to death for her.”

Of her exit from KABC, Martin said, “When my agent, Ed Hookstratten, was in negotiations, he said this might be a time to see about making a change. A lot of people who I had grown up with at the station had left, so my history was already interrupted. I just felt it was in the wind. It’s a chance to get shaken up a bit and revitalized. I find it exciting to work at a place where they’re aiming at being No. 1.”

Martin’s arrival also appears to have juiced up the staff at KCBS. As she walked down the halls, employees smiled and welcomed her. When she was introduced in the newsroom by Applegate, the staff applauded.

Michael Tuck, who will be her co-anchor at 5 p.m. and 11 p.m., said Martin is seen as a pivotal link in the effort to turn around KCBS’ fortunes, which also includes other personnel changes and the recent introduction of a revamped set.

“Everyone here now wants to succeed,” Tuck said. “We’ve gone through some terrible times, with the revolving doors of management. We’ve gone through our tabloid stage. Turnaround is never easy. It’s like turning around an ocean liner. You have to stop it first before turning it around. We’ve managed to do that now. We’re doing the best job we’ve done since I’ve been here, and Ann’s acquisition is a big piece of the puzzle for us.”

Tuck added, “Of course, we have to be careful not to put too much responsibility on one person. But Ann is a key player for us.”

Moyer said he understands what kind of pressure Martin is under with the media furor over her salary. He signed a six-year contract with KNBC 1992 paying $8 million, but that station’s ratings fortune did not dramatically change with his arrival.

“I went through the same thing she’s probably going through now, and I’m sure it’s not very comforting to her,” Moyer said. “I went through it and it bothered me. It becomes an overriding concern of the press, how much money we make. It’s really too bad.”

But others said they had difficulty understanding Martin’s high salary.

“She went to the highest bidder,” said former Channel 2 anchor Joseph Benti. “I have nothing against her, but what she represents. All this underscores again that the public and public information are the last consideration. Compare the salary of one anchorperson to the entire budget of a public-radio station like KPFK-FM. What many of these anchors earn in one week is more than that station spends all year on wire services.”

Michael Emery, acting chair of the journalism department at Cal State Northridge, said, “It’s deeply disturbing that around the nation, local stations on the one hand reduce their staffs and have cheaper output, but somehow find the dollars to hire these so-called ‘stars.’ In Ann Martin’s case, she’s a fine, straight-shooting journalist who happens to be in the right city at the right time. But every time these huge salaries are announced, there are mutterings from many other solid journalists who don’t know how long they will be on the payroll.”

Applegate disputed that view. “The amount paid for anchors has nothing to do with how well a news department is financed,” he said. “Critics would like to think that anchors prey off the newsroom and siphon off money, but that’s just not true. We are all financed very well, and TV news has always been personality driven in terms of anchors.”

For her part, Martin says she isn’t worrying about the controversy.

“I’m not getting stressed out by all of this at all,” she said. “Two weeks from now, someone else will be the big story and all of this will be forgotten. The people I meet when I’m shopping at Ralphs who tell me they like my work--they’re the ones who are important to me. All the rest of this stuff is confetti.”