Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 20, 2008 at 09:47:06:
Bruno Cohen axing key players at WBBM-Channel 2
Will have trouble finding quality replacements, may have to turn to Channel 5
We have a hunch -- more than a hunch really -- that Bruno Cohen is going to be a busy man the next few months. The new president and general manager of CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2 has been in his new post full time only a couple of weeks, but already he's done a fair amount of housecleaning and made at least one significant programming adjustment.
Perhaps sending a sign he wants to really shake things up, Cohen showed Carol Fowler, the station's news director, the door earlier this week. Also gone is Jay Foot, who oversaw local programming for the station. And Cathleen Karp, who worked with Foot producing local programming, has just resigned to take a job as director of broadcasting and production for the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder team.
Getting rid of people is easy, of course. What will be much tougher for Cohen is finding the right news director and deciding who his anchor and reporting talent will be going forward. Cohen can basically go two ways in choosing a news director. He can go for an out-of-towner, who would inevitably need weeks or months to even begin to develop a basic understanding of how this city works -- something an effective local TV news director needs almost immediately.
Or Cohen can try stealing someone with the requisite skills and talent from a local competitor. But the question then becomes whether anyone with the necessary skills would even want to accept such a challenge.
Sources tell us the best talent at market leader ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 aren't likely to make themselves available to Cohen. If any potential news director is in fact game for what has to be done at WBBM, Cohen is more likely to find them at NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5 or Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32, which are about to engage in a joint local newsgathering venture that is fraught with uncertainties. Andrew Finlayson, WFLD's current news director, is one name we heard floated as a potential candidate for the WBBM news director job. But we're told that Cohen is, above all, looking for a news director with genuine leadership skills (an increasingly rare thing in corporate America, if you ask us), as well as someone with fresh, but sensible ideas about how to package local TV news content.
Aside from finding the right news director, Cohen soon will have to confront the hugely important but delicate issue of adjusting his anchor and reporting lineup to deliver the product he wants. That could mean a change, sooner rather than later, in the key 10 p.m. anchor pairing of Rob Johnson and relative newcomer Anne State, who, so far, hasn't had much of a favorable impact on WBBM's ratings.
Cohen, we're told, also is very mindful of marketing issues at stations where he has worked. One of the first things he did after arriving at WBBM was dump the "Heart of Chicago" advertising tagline for the station's newscasts because he didn't think the station was yet delivering on that promise. And there apparently won't be a new tagline until Cohen and his new news director have revamped the operation to their satisfaction. Cohen also wasted no time completely upending WBBM's "Eye on Chicago" Sunday morning public affairs program.
As of last Sunday, it is an hour-long newscast headed by weekend anchors Mike Puccinelli and Suzanne Le Mignot, and it includes a segment with Johnson, who hosted the "Eye on Chicago" show. Why the switch in format? Well, you wouldn't be wrong for presuming it involves generating more revenue. Ads that air on newscasts typically generate more income than those that run during public affairs shows.
(Lewis Lazare, Chicago Sun-Times)