Formats, Not Faces, Anchor News

Jeff Wald can’t match Jerry Dunphy in salary.

But in a significant move that turned heads at Los Angeles TV stations this week, KCOP Channel 13 decided that hiring Wald, an ace news director, is more important than throwing money after big-name anchors who can’t guarantee ratings.

Smart strategy? You bet.

This, after all, was the TV season when million-dollar-plus stars such as Dunphy, Diane Sawyer and Connie Chung proved that anchors are almost never valuable on their own.

It takes a strong format, a solid concept. And that’s exactly what’s been lacking in Sawyer’s “PrimeTime Live” on ABC, “Saturday Night With Connie Chung” on CBS and Dunphy’s hugely promoted newscast on KCAL Channel 9--all of which have bombed.

And that’s where Wald, 38, comes in.

Who is he anyway? And why did KCOP, hardly a leader in Los Angeles TV news coverage, pony up a hefty raise to swipe him away from powerhouse station KTLA Channel 5?

The answers say a lot about skepticism toward anchors in the age of CNN and its non-star news. And Wald’s hiring is a signal that TV news leadership in L.A. is suddenly up for grabs--a fierce battleground epitomized even by the grand failure thus far of KCAL’s nightly, three-hour, prime-time entry headlined by Dunphy.

Wald became KTLA’s news director in 1981, and during his tenure a remarkable thing happened. He had only a one-hour nightly showcase, but it emerged increasingly as the most civilized, adult and credible local TV news broadcast in town. Astonishingly, it did this without any of the crazed ongoing changes of anchors, formats and management at competing stations.

The keys were simple. Be calm. Be intensely local. Depend on people who know Los Angeles, its issues and rhythms. And present the news through familiar faces who, while not especially glamorous, are comfortable, intelligent and always there--Hal Fishman, Stan Chambers and Larry McCormick, guided behind the scenes by executive producer Gerald Ruben, whose skills at presenting a lean, uncomplicated and thorough broadcast are a model of textbook television.

The situation of Fishman as anchor and growing star is instructive, a perfect case of a strong format turning a journeyman newscaster into a personality. KTLA’s nightly news made Fishman a star, and now he is able to add that quotient back into the program. Put him someplace else--at another station, perhaps--and who knows?

Will Wald’s departure subtly begin to make a difference? We’ll see.

In the meantime, the notion of format first, anchor second, clearly creates the possibility that any station can do well. Thus the value of a Wald, who joins KCOP on April 9. Thus the reason that the station hired him.

And thus the thinking that KCAL, rather than spending all that money on Dunphy and perhaps excessive equipment, might have been much wiser to have hired, say, Wald or, from KNBC Channel 4, former news director Tom Capra and managing editor Pete Noyes, who helped mold that station into the top network-owned news outlet in Los Angeles.

You build a TV news operation from within, not at the anchor desk. Most local anchors are simply window dressing--nicely clothed, well-coiffed and pleasant news readers who can occasionally improve a good product with their amiability, but are helpless with a bad one.

Consider L.A.’s top anchors, and it’s easy to see any of them going into a nose-dive--like Sawyer, Dunphy and Chung--in the wrong format.

KNBC’s Kelly Lange, for instance, is a survivor, but she only achieved her current clout after Capra and general manager John Rohrbeck joined the station in the mid-1980s and, with Noyes, created a splashy and well-oiled news operation that allowed her to flourish as mother hen.

Paul Moyer of KABC Channel 7, another member of the million-dollar club, wasn’t exactly a hot-shot when he was at KNBC. At KABC, however, Moyer found his niche, joining what was then an impregnable, happy-talk newscast that trampled everyone in the ratings under former general managers John Severino and Tom Van Amburg.

Over at KCBS Channel 2, Jim Lampley is perfect proof of how little difference an anchor can make to a shaky station’s overall ratings performance, even if he comes in with a big-name reputation, which he had at ABC Sports. KCBS is still trying to emerge from a dreadful decade in which it lost its solid, reputable identity through endless experimentation. But are huge-salaried anchors the cure? Don’t be silly.

Nonetheless, the declining dependence on name anchors who can guarantee nothing seems to be a healthy trend in Los Angeles’ TV news. At KABC, Moyer and Ann Martin head a much-reduced team of well-known personalities. At KCBS, Lampley and Bree Walker also top a smaller list of stars. At KNBC, Lange and Jess Marlow are the only real name anchors; John Beard seems a nightly news invention, and sportscaster Fred Roggin and weatherman Fritz Coleman are wholly products of the Rohrbeck-Capra format.

KTLA’s position among L.A.’s independent stations is powerful yet fragile, maybe even precarious. In a way, Fishman is the one Los Angles anchor most essential to his program because the newscast has made him essential, almost indispensable. That is not so with Moyer of KABC, Lange of KNBC or Lampley of KCBS. Fishman, therefore, may be in a more powerful bargaining position than ever with Wald leaving.

What will KTLA do if Fishman decides to call it a day or Chambers thinks about retiring? Wald’s successor--not yet named--will have to start thinking about this immediately. And yet the wonderful thing is that the KTLA format seems so solid that it wouldn’t be difficult for another local anchor--say, KNBC’s Marlow--to step right in and take over. And the flip side of Fishman’s bargaining position is that he might well be like a fish out of water anyplace else.

Among KTLA’s independent-station competitors, Fox-owned KTTV Channel 11 is definitely a case of format pizazz--in the style of corporate owner Rupert Murdoch--over the glorification of on-air stars, perhaps to the detriment of anchor Pat Lalama, who seems quite competent but gets very little buildup.

Wald’s new employer, KCOP, has two reasonably well-known anchors in Warren Olney and Wendy Rutledge, but the excitement level is fairly close to nil, and the nondescript format is badly in need of a total rebuilding job. That is Wald’s specialty, and KCOP will not only be renovating its nightly news but also adding broadcasts on weekends and in daytime hours as well during the next year, says the station.

And then there’s KCAL, on which new owner Disney Studios has spent an estimated $30 million on hardware and a news staff of about 140, although from the ads you might think that Dunphy was covering L.A. all by himself.

But the cult of personality has been exposed and shown to be worthless. An idea is more important than an anchor.