Last Wednesday, something happened—no one is saying exactly what—in the WKRN-Channel 2 newsroom. But sources said this much is clear: When it was over, anchor Reed Galin, a highly touted former reporter for NBC and CBS, had quit.
Whatever the reasons for his departure, sources said that Galin was bound to leave, sooner or later. After almost two years at Channel 2, it was clear the anchor’s low-key delivery didn’t fit the station’s tightly scripted, caffeinated broadcast style. The real mystery is why the station hired him in the first place.
Two years ago, news director Matthew Zelkind bragged about signing Galin. But the station did nothing to promote its new anchor and, after only nine months, yanked him off the 10 p.m. news. By then, sources speculated, Zelkind and station manager Mike Sechrist had already decided they’d made a mistake.
Like other past and present Channel 2 anchors, including Fred Graham, John Seigenthaler, and Bob Mueller, Galin is a talented journalist. But the station’s current format allows little room for anchors to demonstrate any skill other than reading a TelePrompTer. It’s the only talent some anchors have. But it’s a waste of Galin’s abilities, and friends said the veteran newsman had been chafing inside the station’s consultant-designed straitjacket.
Zelkind and Sechrist are looking at numbers. Although the station’s overall ratings have inched slightly higher over the last year, overnight reports last week showed the 6 p.m. audience had abruptly dropped to about 20,000 households, less than half the station’s normal rating. The next evening, Galin was gone.
In the long run, though, the numbers won’t improve until the station makes up its mind to go in one direction or the other. That means either keeping familiar faces like Mueller and Anne Holt and sending staffers like Turko back to Texas, or completing the transition to a high-energy, big-city style newscast and easing Holt into retirement.
Friends in trouble
The Tennessean barely took notice recently when WTVF-Channel 5 anchor Chris Clark divorced his wife of 30-something years, passing the news off as a gossip item in “Brad About You.”
WSMV-Channel 4’s Demetria Kalodimos wasn’t so lucky. Last summer, The Tennessean trumpeted the news that the anchor’s husband had filed for divorce, accusing the seemingly mild-mannered Kalodimos of threatening to kill him. Again last week, the paper prominently reported details of the divorce settlement. Staffer Kirk Loggins wrote that the ex-husband now admits Kalodimos never made any “serious” threats of harm. Loggins also reported that the Channel 4 anchor earned $226,000 in 1996, seven times as much as her husband.
According to several sources, Kalodimos, whose self-absorption is legendary, wept over the stories and still refuses to speak to Loggins. A Channel 4 executive complained that the paper had taken a cheap shot at Kalodimos by making a public spectacle of her private troubles.
Once upon a time, he would have been right. When local broadcasters were just journalists and still had last names, their private lives rarely made news. That’s one reason Chris Clark, a product of those times, still comes across as more a newsman than a “personality.”
But stations like WSMV endlessly replay promotional ads promising that “Demetria,” “Dan,” “Rudy,” and “Bill” love motherhood, apple pie, and you, the viewer.
When people like that are accused of threatening murder, it’s news. And after Kalodimos has been shown, seemingly hundreds of times, jogging through town carrying an Olympic torch, it’s silly to pretend that she shouldn’t be treated like any other publicity-loving celebrity.
If anyone victimized Kalodimos, it was her ex-spouse, whose sensational allegations were not “serious” but were apparently intended just to embarrass her. The Tennessean, though, can hardly be blamed for taking the bait.
Night for "The Roundtable"
Teddy Bart’s Roundtable will probably be off the air within a month.
Nashville’s oldest and most influential radio talk show will leave WKDA-AM “some time in August” when the station’s new owners take over, Bart’s cohost and partner, Karlen Evins, said last week. Evins told reporters that she and Bart are “in negotiations” with “a major station,” which will carry the show. But station executives at WLAC-AM and WWTN-FM, the only likely places The Roundtable could go, insist they’re aware of no discussions about the show. Rob Gordon, general manager of WPLN-FM, said Bart and Evins have proposed that the not-for-profit radio station carry Beyond Reason, another Bart-Evins production, but have said nothing about The Roundtable.
On Tuesday, Evins acknowledged that The Roundtable may be off the air for two or three months, but promised that the show will return. But sources familiar with the Nashville market say that few local radio stations would consider taking The Roundtable, a show that barely registers in the ratings despite its popularity with political insiders and media types.
Three years ago, when Bart and Evins bought WKDA, friends predicted the pair wouldn’t enjoy managing a station. They didn’t.
“We want to get back to what we do best,” Evins said, “and that’s producing radio shows.” But freedom of the airwaves, to paraphrase another media critic, belongs only to those who own a tower. Insiders suspect that’s what Bart and Evins, supported by a group of local investors, may have in mind.
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