Mike Renda to succeed Pat Mullen atop WFLD, WPWR

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: The Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal is back from vacation and back on his Tower Ticker blog. Here is a big local media story from Phil from this morning: : ............................ : Mike Renda to succeed Pat Mullen atop WFLD, WPWR, sources say : The Fox Television Stations group is expected to announce today that Pat Mullen is leaving after more than three years as vice president and general manager of Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32 and My Network TV sister station WPWR-Ch. 50. : Sources say Fox is expected to name Mike Renda (pictured right), who has been in charge of its Philadelphia station since 2007, as Mullen's replacement. : WFLD and WPWR staff members were to be told of the change at a meeting this morning. Calls to the stations were not immediately returned. : Mullen took over the News Corp. duopoly in Chicago in April 2006, six months after his exit as head of Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.’s entire broadcast division. His departure comes around three weeks before the final broadcast of the 10 p.m. Channel 32 weeknight newscast launched in 2007. : Back in Philadelphia, Renda last month announced plans to add a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast next week at Philadelphia's WTXF-TV to the hour that station already does at 5 p.m. That 5 p.m. newscast ranked No. 1 in the Philadelphia market during last May's ratings period among viewers age 18 to 49, as well as in the 25-to-54 demographic. : WFLD does not now have a late-afternoon newscast, although it does five hours in the morning and another hour at noon in addition to its 9 p.m. hour. : Tribune Co.'s WGN-Ch. 9 -- Channel 32's chief local news rival in the mornings, at noon and at 9 p.m. -- eschewed competition at 10 p.m. against ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7, NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5 and CBS-owned WBBM-Ch. 2 in favor of launching a 5:30 p.m. local newscast against the national network news airing in that half-hour. : Renda's WTXF was on the cutting edge of the content pooling trend in local news markets around the country. His station and NBC's WCAU-TV partnered to establish an independent local news service to share video resources on non-proprietary coverage in a pilot program that has become a template for similar operations in several cities, including Chicago, where WFLD, WGN, WBBM and WMAQ participate. : "From a content standpoint, [the local news service] allows us to be in more places," Renda told the trade paper Broadcasting and Cable last month, crediting the partnership with enabling the Philadelphia station to add an hour of morning news programming as well as the 6 p.m. newscast. : Renda previously spent a decade as vice president and general manager at Cleveland's WJW-TV in Cleveland, a station Fox brought in to run in 1997 after taking over the station from New World. He had worked there in sales from 1982 until early 1993 but had spent the interim in sales as director of sales at WLWT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati. : WJW, under Renda, won a 2006 duPont-Columbia University Broadcast News Award for a nine-month investigation of Cleveland's school busing program that revealed millions of dollars were being wasted because the roster of substitute drivers had been inflated and ridership data was falsified. : Earlier in his career, Renda had been national sales representative at Storer Television Sales in Chicago and New York. : It has been a difficult time for all media companies as technology and the tough economy have contributed to a splintering of the audience and revenue declines. Mullen had to make staff reductions in recent months. : The station in July also parted company with morning co-anchor Mike Barz, a former Channel 9 sportscaster who was a features correspondent and fill-in weathercaster for ABC News' "Good Morning America" when Mullen hired him to in 2007. Barz left after an investigation into allegations of misconduct at the going-away party for a WFLD reporter whose contract was not renewed. : Shortly after Mullen's arrival at Channel 32, the station did not come to terms on renewal of Walter Jacobson's contract as newsman and commentator, ending a run of more than 38 years as Chicago TV mainstay. Mark Suppelsa, who earlier had replaced Jacobson as WFLD's 9 p.m. co-anchor, left Channel 32 last year to become primary anchor for WGN. Jeff Goldblatt was hired from Fox News Channel as Suppelsa's successor alongside Robin Robinson. : During his WFLD tenure, Mullen always seemed proudest of his 2008 expansion of the station's morning show into the 9 a.m. hour. : Mullen became president of Tribune Television in 2001 and head of Tribune Broadcasting, which includes both Channel 9 and WGN-AM 720, in January 2003. He earlier had been chairman of Fox's affiliate board when he was running WXMI-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich., which had become a Tribune Co. station in 1998. : Mullen's 2005 Tribune exit came with a lump sum payment of $808,500, or 18 months of his base salary, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing at the time. : Posted at 09:07:15 AM

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