The Art of News Casting : Finding Right Mix of Anchors, Style Not That Easy

Is it the anchor? The content? Or Oprah Winfrey? Not even a coven of late-night psychic friends could figure this one out. And though local stations have been willing to lay out basketball player-sized contracts to lure name anchors away from the competition, general managers and news directors are loathe, if not downright unable, to pinpoint just what it is that makes news viewers watch one station over the other.

“Anchors are a major factor. Good anchors who have audience appeal and longevity in the marketplace are extremely valuable, but they are just one key ingredient to making a broadcast successful,” said Bill Applegate, general manager of KCBS-TV Channel 2. “I can put the most experienced, most wonderful anchors on a newscast, but if the broadcast isn’t any good, it won’t sustain itself. Or I can have a wonderful newscast, but without the right anchors, it won’t work. You need both. But you can’t buy rating points. You can’t go across the street and spend X amount of dollars for an individual and have them walk across the street carrying a sackful of ratings points.”

Which doesn’t mean stations, including Applegate’s, don’t try anyway:

* KCAL-TV Channel 9 chose to launch its massive news operation five years ago by hiring Jerry Dunphy from KABC-TV Channel 7. Local news observers contend that Dunphy didn’t bring many viewers with him right off the bat, but, slowly, the station’s entire prime-time news operation has prospered. In head-to-head competition at 10 p.m., however, Dunphy is still a distant third. With his original five-year KCAL contract now expired, he has been reported to be negotiating with others, including Channel 2.

* Two and a half years ago, KNBC-TV Channel 4 stunned the market with a bigger anchor coup, paying around $1.4 million a year to steal Paul Moyer from KABC. Moyer had little immediate impact, and KABC remained No. 1 without him. Recently, however, KNBC has easily triumphed in the all-important 11 p.m. news battle.

* Early this year, John Beard, disgusted by what he called the sleazy and irresponsible direction of KNBC’s newscast and certainly his diminished role as second banana to Moyer, took a 50% pay cut to jump to KTTV-TV Channel 11. The Fox-owned station’s news numbers have been up as much as 40% ever since.

* Then this summer, KCBS, the also-ran of the local news scene for the last 15 years, made KABC anchor Ann Martin the richest broadcaster in L.A. history with a contract that pays her close to $2 million a year. Though several other factors, including a strong showing by CBS in prime time and a much-hyped series with Judge Lance Ito contributed too, the station’s ratings soared in last month’s sweeps.

* KABC, meanwhile, having lost arguably three of the star anchors in the market (KTLA’s Hal Fishman, who has kept Channel 5 in first place at 10 p.m. for more than a decade, is probably the only other of equal stature) survives nonetheless. Although it had a serious problem at 11 p.m. last month, it again won the 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts.

* Finally, KCOP-TV Channel 13, the other VHF station in the market, spent a fortune over the last several years to build a state-of-the-art news department, but it was unable to entice any of L.A.’s star anchors to serve as its centerpiece. Hamstrung by that and other failures, the entire effort has been a ratings disaster.

“Part of the issue is that you’ve got a very cluttered environment with more stations doing news here than anywhere else, and so it takes longer to establish who your people (anchors) are, particularly if they come from out of town,” said Jose Rios, news director at Channel 11. “So it’s always more attractive to get someone who is already in the market, who you think has credibility. One of the wonderful things about John Beard was that people knew him here, they like him, they trust him. That does translate into more viewers, but how many, I just can’t say.”

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With Beard, KTTV’s 10 p.m. newscast jumped close to 40% last month over the previous year. Some of that is because of him, some because the entire newscast is better, and some of it is simply that on many nights, the newscast benefits from a large lead-in from Fox’s prime-time programs like “X-Files,” according to Jeff Wald, news director at KCOP, who just announced his resignation after more than 4 1/2 years there.

“John Beard is giving KTLA a run for its money for the first time in a long while, but it’s not just him. That whole newscast is significantly better,” Wald said. “The anchor is certainly important. We wanted to get some big-name anchors (specifically Hal Fishman and Christine Lund) here at KCOP and we were unsuccessful and that set us back. But it’s not the only thing. Fox lead-ins have really helped KTTV.”

Channel 2, which traditionally has lagged behind Channels 4 and 7 in promoting its newscasts, stunted and promoted itself extensively during the November sweeps, according to Rios, a former news boss at Channel 2. While Martin’s arrival certainly energized the station’s 11 p.m. news to almost double its rather low mark of the previous year--a jump high enough to put it ahead of KABC and into second place--even Applegate notes that KCBS’ six-part interview with Judge Ito contributed mightily to that improvement.

“It’s tough to quantify what an individual anchor brings to a broadcast,” Applegate said. “Our ratings are up considerably, and as much of an asset as Ann Martin is, you can’t attribute all of that to her. There are so many other factors, and we have an entirely different newscast on the air. For a few years we were pretty much a crime-laden, tabloid broadcast that wasn’t very substantive. Now we’re journalistically better.”

“Applegate is a very savvy general manager when it comes to news, and the Ito interview was a brilliant promotional strategy,” Wald said. “Getting Ann Martin was smart, just like Channel 4 going after Paul Moyer was smart. It puts them on the map, shows finally that Channel 2 is serious. It’s arguable whether they overpaid her, but she is a top talent, and now they have to figure out a way to fit their cast of characters and the kind of news they do around her.”

Moyer’s impact initially was rather minimal because he just didn’t seem to fit into the Channel 4 mold, Rios said. First he was teamed with newcomer Wendy Tokuda, and when that failed to produce results, KNBC paired him with familiar veterans Colleen Williams at 5 p.m. and Kelly Lange at 11 p.m. It was only then, Rios believes, as the show was molded to fit Moyer’s style of delivery, that ratings started to go up.

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Sometimes it takes a while for viewers to get used to seeing an old favorite among new people on a different set. Moyer was at KABC for 13 years, following a previous stint at KNBC in the ‘70s; Martin for 18. Wald believes in some kind of intangible comfort factor--that, for example, KCBS anchor Linda Alvarez was far more effective at KNBC simply because viewers were accustomed to her there, and she melded well with the broadcast and the other personalities there. Sometimes it can backfire on the new station, he said, with viewers seeing the anchor as some kind of “greedy turncoat.”

Carol Black, KNBC’s general manager, claims that Moyer has helped expand the station’s appeal to the most-prized news audience, adults 25 to 54 years old. She praises him as an “extraordinary addition” to the station, but she resists giving him the lion’s share of the credit, stating that he’s just that, an addition, “a truly excellent” cog in a complicated, collaborative machine.

“It is a team effort, and one person can’t make a newscast.”

Now that they’ve lost many of their stars in the last few years, can KABC, the dominant news station in this market for most of the last two decades, still thrive? KABC’s general manager did not return phone calls to comment, but the consensus among competitors is that in the afternoon, as long as the station has “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” it will retain its cushy lead. “Oprah” nearly triples the audience of its competitors on Channels 2 and 4, providing KABC with a great advantage in the 2 1/2-hour news block that follows.

Much also depends on the “bench strength.” The station still employs familiar faces in Christine Lund and Harold Greene. “They might have some (ratings) problems, but they are still a well-oiled machine, with a very good newscast and some very good people, and they’ve had that for a long time,” Wald said. “It’s what Channel 2 really is trying to emulate because they’ve always had the exact opposite--a very checkered career in covering the news with a news director and format du jour. Now they seem to be on the right road, but let’s see if they stick with it.”

Said KCBS’ Applegate: “We have languished in third for years, and it’s going to take a long time for us to surpass the competition. But some of our gains already came at the expense of KABC. It’s hard to say if losing all those people is going to impact them dramatically, but conventional wisdom will tell you that if you lose several of your key anchors in a short time, that’s got to hurt you.”