Hope for sweeps redemption; KCTV and KSHB made big changes in pursuit of better ratings

As he does every Halloween, KMBC's Larry Moore told spooky stories on the news last night. But the real spine-tingling drama is taking place at Channel 9's rivals.

Thursday marked the beginning of the November ratings "sweep." It is Nielsen Media Research's first major audience measurement of the TV season. At KCTV, Channel 5, and KSHB, Channel 41, staffers will be anxiously awaiting each morning's overnight ratings. By Thanksgiving, they'll know what viewers think of their newly overhauled newscasts. This year KCTV and KSHB have each hired a new manager to run their newsrooms. In turn, these news directors have reshuffled their stations' on-air lineups and shaken up their newsrooms.

"My No. 1 priority is to get back to doing news," said Channel 41's Debbie Bush. "We need to settle down and do real news. We haven't been doing that."

"My number one goal is content," said Channel 5's Regent Ducas. By "content" Ducas means "live, late-breaking, investigative," the by now extremely familiar slogan KCTV adopted in July. Ducas uses the phrase often, and it rolls off his tongue as a single adjective: live-late-breaking-investigative.

KCTV and KSHB are playing follow-the-leader to KMBC, the perennial powerhouse, and WDAF, Channel 4. WDAF is actually third in overall viewers at 10 p.m., but nearly all its newscasts rank first or second in the key audience groups cherished by advertisers. It's pretty hard to lose money in local television. Still, industry watchers say channels 4 and 9 are raking in considerably more than channels 5 and 41. Revenues from commercials during newscasts are the reason.

Bush grew up on a farm in Kansas and was once a news director in Topeka. She knows that channels 4 and 9 have been eating her station's lunch for a long time. Her agenda for change is a simple one. "It's Journalism 101," said Bush, who arrived this summer from the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis. Like Ducas, she emphasizes the need for breaking news and investigative features that get viewers' attention.

Upon arriving in Kansas City, however, Bush's first order of business was finding a co-anchor for Elizabeth Alex. She chose Mark Clegg, a silver-throated afternoon anchor from Indy's top-rated NBC affiliate. For her part, Alex said she was ecstatic about the hiring of Clegg. Solo anchors, she said, have to do twice as much work as co-anchors. "You're just reading news all day long," she said. Bush is the third news director to try matching Alex with a male anchor. Both women agree that this time they picked a winner.

"What I like about him is he comes from a culture of winning," Alex said.

At Channel 5, Ducas has presided over more change this year than the station experienced in the entire decade before his arrival. On camera, viewers saw a new set, new anchor teams and the departures of seasoned veterans like Reed Black, Geri Gosa and Krista Klaus. Behind the scenes, Ducas has been pushing his reporters to do more live-on-the-scene shots. "The rule is, you're going to be live," Ducas announced at a staff meeting this summer. He also wants more pep in those live shots and has been coaching reporters in the art of walking-and-talking.

Ducas is equally obsessed about breaking news, particularly on the 4:30 p.m. newscast, the first afternoon local news of record in the market. When KCTV led off Tuesday with the John Robinson verdict, announced less than an hour earlier, the station scored the highest rating in that newscast's brief history. Live, late-breaking ... let's see, what's the third part? "We plan on having at least a dozen quality investigations in November at 10," Ducas said.

KCTV led off a newcast this week with a probe of the soda-pop contracts that public schools have signed to generate revenue. Some Channel 5 watchers wonder if the November ratings will determine the future of Anne Peterson and Russell Kinsaul. That's because of what happened to the anchors they replaced at 10 p.m., Dave Helling and Dee Griffin. Those two were re-assigned less than a year after being named co-anchors. Ducas, however, said he's made all the changes he cares to make. "I'm very, very confident with all the anchor teams right now," he said. Compared with "live, late-breaking and investigative," anchor business "is just not on the radar screen for me."

KSHB has several investigative reports planned for November. The most distinctive stories, however, may be those captured by Alex's video camera during recent trips to Gaza, Romania and Uzbekistan. A married mom, Alex has become the station's ambassador to children here and abroad. This fall she revived the weekly child-adoption feature popularized 20 years ago by then-WDAF anchor Cynthia Smith. Alex said that Smith was very supportive of the new feature, called "Monday's Child." Other stories include Alex's odyssey as she tried to bring a Palestinian child with birth defects to the United States for surgery, and an Olathe woman who's made it her mission to get Romanian orphans placed in loving families.