David Espinoza-Hall seems like he'd make a great reporter, but not so much an anchor. I don't mind him being low key, but sometimes I feel like he's just literally reading words off the teleprompter with no emotion at all. A guy like Aaron Brown was low key, but he had a way of engaging you such that you would stick with him for an entire broadcast.
Seeing the comments here about David Espinoza-Hall just makes me think about how lucky KING was with their anchor talent for 20, nearly 25 years.
Before Belo sold KING, when was the last time KING brought in an anchor to be an anchor from out of the market?
Shannon Brinias replacing Lori Matsukawa on the weekend evening news in 1998? She didn't last long before she was replaced by Mimi Jung, who I believe was hired as a reporter.
Everyone else either came up from a reporter position, cut their teeth at NWCN and moved up or came from another station in the market.
Think about that. And think about all the strikeouts the other three stations in the market had at over the same time period.
Look at the history:
*KIRO, looking for something to push them over the ratings edge saw maybe their best team of all time (late 90s, early 00s) broken up when Tony Ventrella left, Wappler retired, and then they shoved Susan Hutchinson out the door. They replaced 3 out of 4 faces on their anchor desk within 18 months, and then spent a decade wandering in the woods. First Kristy Lee (too cold), then Margo Myers (talented, but weak chemistry with Raible), and finally Angela Russell (overly earnest). They cycled through weathermen ... first Andy Wappler (too dorky, wrong personality for a chief, but great for mornings), then Rebecca Stevenson (the ice queen). And they dumped sports all together.
KIRO watched tons of top tier anchor talent come and go through their morning and weekend newscasts. Sally Schulze, Margot Kim, Gulstan Dart, Brad Goode. Scott Haveson, Monty Webb, Patrick Hammer, and Rick Van Cise in the weather department. All very good, to excellent talent, all cycled through while KIRO flailed away finding the right team on weeknights.
*KOMO: The revolving door on mornings. They let Rick Van Cise, who was so good alongside Margo Myers, walk. Then they let Margo walk. Denise Whitaker, Molly Shen, Natasha Curry, Elise Jaffe, and Molly Shen again cycled through the morning news desk. Then they decided Todd Johnson was the problem on mornings (he wasn't) and replaced him with Jim Castillo. That didn't last long, and then they hired a winner in Paul Deanno, who left for a bigger market. Seth Wayne is subpar. And after Molly Shen went back to the evening newscasts, they're on their third female morning anchor.
*KCPQ: While they were assembling the misfit toys on the morning show, they blew through so many evening anchor combinations I can't even keep them all straight.
And now, after 20+ years of stability, KING is finding its not so easy to bring in new talent.
Like I noted on another thread recently, I don't mind KING bringing in a lot of late 20s, early 30s talent. The legacy talent that has retired over the last few years were all that age when they started, and whether they were gently pushed out or full on shoved out, they were all at retirement age. It was going to happen sooner or later.
The bigger problem is a lot of this talent just isn't that great. I believe that KING is trying to set up their anchor teams and style for the next generation of news watchers. And they're trying to capture a new audience and be the station that all the new people moving into the Seattle area want to watch.
Can they do that without alienating their long time base ... so far, the answer is no.
I watched a weather clip on the website tonight from the 6PM show. Rhonda Lee and Jordan Steel did a tag-team weather cast where Jordan popped in to cover an upcoming storm. Rhonda led into Jordan with some nationwide weather coverage pointing out some heavy storms in the Southeast. Then Jordan said something like "well for those of you not from around here, you know that Pacific Northwest storms just don't compare to severe weather in the rest of the country."
So Jordan Steel is actively talking to the audience who are "new to Seattle" as being "new to Seattle."
It was really something. If you are a Seattle native, or a long time resident, do you want to watch a station that gives context to their weather forecasts by talking directly to the crowd that's new to town (especially given how contentious growth has become across the region) by comparing Seattle spring storms to what happens in the rest of the country?
Or do you flip over to KOMO and watch Steve Pool, whose been around forever, Morgan Palmer on KIRO, who in his five years here always talks like he's been here forever, or Walter Kelly, who somehow, has been at KCPQ for nearly 20 years? Those guys talk about storms in Seattle by comparing them to historical storms in Seattle.
These are the problems confronting KING. They're big problems. I don't think hiring a bunch of homers is the answer. But they've got to figure out who they are even talking to.
Meanwhile - I watched some clips of last Friday's newscasts on KIRO on their web last night to see what I noticed. Monique Ming-Laven is the first female anchor that Steve Raible has really clicked with since they fired Susan Hutchison (something I noted and commented on here 5 years ago ... their newscasts improved when she filled in). And Dave Wagner, who anchors the 6PM with Monique, is outstanding.
KIRO knows they've got KING on the ropes. I disagreed with Bob Jordan's purge of some reporting talent a few years ago, but when you're able to lead the newscast at 5PM with a split screen of Essex Porter and Deborah Horne covering the top story, you're going to win.
I mean, really, when I saw they were leading the 5PM newscast with those two, I realized that KIRO, internally, is executing a well thought out strategy to capture KING's viewers.
