CBS46, the local CBS affiliate also known as WGCL-TV, is introducing five new anchors Monday in what could be dubbed “Extreme Makeover: TV Station Edition.”
New management, facing an operation in perpetual fourth place in the Atlanta local news world, felt the station needed changes in all three major facets of what it does: content, production and personality.
This meant overhauls in the digital department, behind the scenes, in the reporting den and most evidently to viewers, behind the anchor desk.
“We were having trouble attracting viewers and keeping viewers,” said Mark Pimentel, who arrived at the station as general manager in January. “We are working to improve our content. It will be an evolution. You’ll see it over the next year, year and a half.”
Among the journalists who have left in recent months: morning host Michelle Burdo, midday anchor and reporter Jocelyn Connell, evening anchors Scott Light and Stephany Fisher and sports reporter Larry Smith.
Pimentel said he wished he didn’t have to make such a grand overhaul: “We would have liked not to have made as many changes as we made. If we could have done this with what we had in terms of staff, it would have been much easier. … No one here is happy. We know lives have been disrupted. It’s not taken lightly.”
The new hires include a morning team of Bobby Kaple from Los Angeles and Gloria Neal, a self-described “unorthodox” broadcaster from Denver who also hosted a radio talk show. The new midday anchor is Kim Passoth, who came from an Oklahoma City station. The evening anchor team will feature Sharon Reed, who came from KMOV in St. Louis, where Pimentel was able to lift a third-place station to first in two years with Reed’s help. CBS46 also hired Ben Swann, who graduated college at age 15 and started his own Truth in Media news site, reporting stories he believes mainstream media avoid.
Michael Castengera, a senior lecturer for journalism at the Grady School at the University of Georgia and a local news consultant, called these radical moves “very unusual and very risky, especially in a major market.”
He said this is done only when a station has chronically poor ratings and research shows major problems connecting with viewers. Even so, he said it will take a long time for CBS46’s new talent to make much of an impression because the typical local news viewer does not watch obsessively.
“WSB is such a dominant force,” Castengera said, noting the longtime No. 1 station. “They’re built on tradition.”
Pimentel, an executive producer at Channel 2 Action News in the late 1980s and news director at 11 Alive from 1992 to 1995, acknowledges the challenges he faces in bringing eyeballs to the screen. “We have strong competitors,” he said, “but research shows there are opportunities, there are dissatisfied viewers looking for something new.”
Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith Corp., which owns or runs 17 TV stations nationwide including WGCL-TV since 1999, has shown little patience in its efforts to break CBS46 out of the basement. It has shuffled through general managers and news directors like the New York Yankees when George Steinbrenner owned the team.
Only two reporters have been at the station for more than 10 years, and current management has saved just one surviving anchor: Tracye Hutchins, who arrived at CBS46 in 2007.
Pimentel said he has been assured by his bosses that he and news director Larry Perret will be given a chance to fix things. “We both feel secure,” he said. “We’re not worried about a timetable.”
With so many new faces, Pimentel came up with a unique idea to bring in familiar ones: He invited 10 mostly former broadcasters from rival stations to provide rotating daily commentaries during the 5 p.m. news. He recruited them one on one, including retired WSB reporter Sally Sears and current Georgia Public Broadcasting host and ex-WSB reporter Bill Nigut. Combined, they have more than 250 years of broadcast experience.
The “Just a Minute” segments begin Monday as well.
“Atlanta TV needs to be shaken up,” said Kimberley Kennedy, who used to work at WSB and 11 Alive and is part of the “Just a Minute” team. “This is something different. I love giving my opinion!”
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