Hogstrom out at KCPT: A terrible loss

When you leave so abruptly that you have no immediate plans but to live in the town you arrived in just three years earlier, and when, after you leave the building, reporters learn that actually, you'd been doing a great job, it's fair to ask whether something unpleasant came up that required you to jump before you were pushed.

Victor Hogstrom exited as president of Kansas City Public Television and KCPT's general manager last week. Hogstrom's resignation wasn't announced until days after he'd left and a PR team from Fleishman Hilliard could be put in place to handle the transition.

The first person I called after getting the news was Eugene Williams, GM of KTWU in Topeka. Williams and PBS president Paula Kerger and I had met over barbecue in Kansas City on Monday. Kerger was coming to town to meet with KTWU staff and donors, and she was also supposed to have breakfast with all the pubcasters serving Kansas, including Hogstrom. Williams said that, yes, Hogstrom was invited, but he wasn't surprised when KCPT's program director Mike Murphy showed up instead because "I found out the other day that (Hogstrom) may not be with the station any longer."

I don't buy entirely the PR line that this since this is a "personnel matter," it is 100% private. KCPT is a publicly-funded and community-supported branch of one of the most powerful institutions we know: television. Hogstrom's departure can't be spun as anything other than a huge blow to its future, what with Hogstrom's penchant for revenue growth and a big-time capital campaign just around the corner. There's a story there to be told, though legal agreements may prevent the details from coming out.

In a story this morning in the Star, Hogstrom is credited with turning the station's finances around. Everything I have heard over the past three years about him suggests that this is true. He left his former station in Chattanooga with a six-figure surplus, and at the time of his departure, KCPT's surplus had just entered the seven-figure range.

Not everyone was thrilled with the interview show he hosted, but like every other new initiative under him, it paid for itself. And from the very start, Hogstrom made it clear to me that he meant business. Looking back at that story I wrote, this is the saddest pull quote of them all: "I have a lot of big dreams," Hogstrom said. "All it takes is money."

Great loss has visited the Hogstrom family (his daughter by a previous marriage was murdered in Atlanta by her estranged husband not long after Victor arrived here). So I'm sure he is putting it in perspective. But still, given the precarious nature of public television finances these days, it is just short of tragic that KCPT is now having to do without a gifted fundraiser and community presence who may, just may, not be replaceable.