I called Kirk Black in his office at KCTV-KSMO in Kansas City as soon as I got the news that Meredith Corp. was promoting him to GM of Atlanta's underperforming WGCL. Black apologized for not giving me the exclusive, saying that his longtime employer wanted to break the news. "But you're getting the first interview," Black said. What's that old joke about the shark not eating the lawyer who fell in the water, out of professional courtesy? Black is competitive, and he knows I'm competitive. Good instinct. He'll need that, and a whole lot more, if he's to pull GCL out of the ratings tar pit that is Atlanta.
Kirk Black engineered the turnaround of a fading television station and changed the way news is done in Kansas City — for better or worse. And as his reward, or penalty, Black, who has been general manager of KCTV-5 since 2001, was named Wednesday to the same position at WGCL, the largest, most lucrative and most troubled station in the chain.
The 42-year-old Black, who arrived here from running the Meredith station in Saginaw, Mich., will leapfrog to a market four times the size of Kansas City. And he will inherit a station that has been stuck in fourth place in news since Meredith bought the station a decade ago.
"I've gone from Topeka, which is like the No. 120 market, to No. 64, to 31, to eight," Black said.
"That sounds like an NCAA tournament bracket," I said, which got a laugh.
He's also going from a station with a half century history of excellence to one with very little of either. Started on the UHF band in 1971, WGCL became a CBS affiliate in the mid-1990s after Fox snatched away the then-CBS affil in that game-changing New World deal that also made WDAF flip from NBC to Fox. It is the largest non-O&O CBS station in the country, and Meredith has owned it -- and been trying to turn it around -- since 1998.
“It’s the most important part of our broadcast portfolio, and because we are a publicly traded company that brings additional pressure we didn’t have in Kansas City,” Black said. “But I like that. I like to fix things.”
When Black first swept into KCTV’s sleepy newsroom, he saw a lot to fix. If a station could be said to be mired in second place, it was Channel 5 in 2001. Its promotions, programs and newscasts appeared punchless against No. 1-rated KMBC-9. The news, in particular, had lost its sense of urgency and relevance. More alarming to Black, whose background was sales, the audience for KCTV news was getting smaller and older, which meant its revenues would continue to dwindle.
Black hired a new news director, Regent Ducas, whose frenetic newsroom style led to the newly energized product viewers started to see. Ducas adopted a “live, late breaking, investigative” format that had proven popular in other cities. Then, with the help of a team of younger, out-of-market reporters he hired to replace the older ones — many of whom left unhappily — KCTV-5 news took Kansas City by storm.
Though it was a self-run sting on Internet sex predators that gave the station its first huge ratings spike, KCTV kept its No. 1 position at 10 p.m. more often than not during subsequent ratings periods. Its newscasts have become more competitive in mornings and early evenings as well.
Black and Ducas also made the call to elevate the role of Katie Horner, the station's chief meteorologist. Horner became the face of KCTV-5, and her constant presence during storm season — even when severe weather only affected a tiny part of the viewing area — forced the other stations in town to follow suit.
(Coincidentally, the rising star in Atlanta breaking-weather coverage is a woman working at Black's new station. Her name is Dagmar, and like many people, I was mesmerized the first time I saw her -- or more accurately, heard her. "I want her to read me a bedtime story," I wrote that night.)
KCTV’s breaking-news coverage also jarred its rivals out of complacency. Ducas was known to order a news truck out onto the streets of Kansas City just to drive around and wait for something to break on the police scanner — which would give the station a jump on the competition.
While Ducas and his successor, Tracy Miller, kept the KCTV newsroom on its toes, the business offices that reported to Black were less drama-filled.
“In this business nobody has any patience,” Black said. “But go back and look at the work we did in our first six to 12 months here — the research, the due diligence, the planning and the people I hired. You can directly connect the success we have today, as the most profitable station in the market, to things we did back then. I’ve only had to let go one department head in my eight years here. I’m proud of that.”
In 2004, Black added KSMO to his responsibilities when Meredith took over the station and merged its operations with KCTV’s. To assuage government concerns that too few corporate owners were holding too many broadcast licenses in town, Black proposed adding local news and public affairs programming to KSMO. Those programs — which hadn’t existed under previous ownership — are still airing today.
Black later assumed oversight of Meredith stations in Oregon and Nevada, which he’ll relinquish with the move to Atlanta, though he remains a Meredith senior vice president.
His duties at WGCL begin Monday, but he will be commuting back and forth until mid-September to complete the transition, including weighing in on the company’s choice for his successor at KCTV-KSMO.
Kirk Black, who engineered the turnaround of a fading television station and changed the way news is done in Kansas City — for better or worse — is leaving.
Meredith Corp., the owner of KCTV-5, where Black has been general manager since 2001, promoted him Wednesday to the same position at WGCL in Atlanta, the largest, most lucrative and most troubled station in the chain.
The 42-year-old Black, who arrived here from running the Meredith station in Saginaw, Mich., will leapfrog again to a market four times the size of Kansas City. And he will inherit a station that has been stuck in fourth place in news since Meredith bought the station a decade ago.
“It’s the most important part of our broadcast portfolio, and because we are a publicly traded company that brings additional pressure we didn’t have in Kansas City,” Black said Wednesday morning. “But I like that. I like to fix things.”
When Black first swept into KCTV’s sleepy newsroom, he saw a lot to fix. If a station could be said to be mired in second place, it was Channel 5 in 2001. Its promotions, programs and newscasts appeared punchless against No. 1-rated KMBC-9. The news, in particular, had lost its sense of urgency and relevance. More alarming to Black, whose background was sales, the audience for KCTV news was getting smaller and older, which meant its revenues would continue to dwindle.
Black hired a new news director, Regent Ducas, whose frenetic newsroom style led to the newly energized product viewers started to see. Ducas adopted a “live, late breaking, investigative” format that had proven popular in other cities. Then, with the help of a team of younger, out-of-market reporters he hired to replace the older ones — many of whom left unhappily — KCTV-5 news took Kansas City by storm.
Though it was a self-run sting on Internet sex predators that gave the station its first huge ratings spike, KCTV kept its No. 1 position at 10 p.m. more often than not during subsequent ratings periods. Its newscasts have become more competitive in mornings and early evenings as well.
Black and Ducas also made the call to name Katie Horner its chief meteorologist. Horner became the face of KCTV-5, and her constant presence during storm season — even when severe weather only affected a tiny part of the viewing area — forced the other stations in town to follow suit.
(As it happens, the rising star in Atlanta breaking-weather coverage is a woman with a narrator-quality voice known to many Atlantans by only her first name: Dagmar. She works at WGCL.)
KCTV’s breaking-news coverage also jarred its rivals out of complacency. Ducas was known to order a news truck out onto the streets of Kansas City just to drive around and wait for something to break on the police scanner — which would give the station a jump on the competition.
While Ducas and his successor, Tracy Miller, kept the KCTV newsroom on its toes, the business offices that reported to Black were less drama-filled.
“In this business nobody has any patience,” Black said. “But go back and look at the work we did in our first six to 12 months here — the research, the due diligence, the planning and the people I hired. You can directly connect the success we have today, as the most profitable station in the market, to things we did back then. I’ve only had to let go one department head in my eight years here. I’m proud of that.”
In 2004, Black added KSMO to his responsibilities when Meredith took over the station and merged its operations with KCTV’s. To assuage government concerns that too few corporate owners were holding too many broadcast licenses in town, Black proposed adding local news and public affairs programming to KSMO. Those programs — which hadn’t existed under previous ownership — are still airing today.
Black later assumed oversight of Meredith stations in Oregon and Nevada, which he’ll relinquish with the move to Atlanta, though he remains a Meredith senior vice president.
His duties at WGCL begin Monday, but he will be commuting back and forth until mid-September to complete the transition, including weighing in on the company’s choice for his successor at KCTV-KSMO.
Note: In a previous version I wrote that Black and Ducas were responsible for Katie Horner's promotion. In fact, as I wrote in 1999, Don North did that.
About a year ago at this time, TVB broke with the conventional media response to the reports — which had been popping up in the National Enquirer since December 2007 — that John Edwards was stepping out on his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth. You may recall that the mainstream media had been reluctant to go with the story, despite the Enquirer's impeccable track record in high-profile cases of this sort dating back to O.J.
