Departures of Ann Martin and Harold Green may signal a shift
Local newscasts seem to be turning away from high-priced anchors
Like the Hollywood sign and the Cinerama Dome, KCBS-TV Channel 2 news anchors Ann Martin and Harold Greene were fixtures of Hollywood, hard to miss on huge billboards plastered on the station's former headquarters as they smiled down on travelers zooming along Sunset Boulevard.
Mainstays on the local news for more than three decades at two stations -- the pair had also been partners at KABC-TV Channel 7's "Eyewitness News" -- Martin and Greene were reflective of the celebrity status bestowed upon anchors, the most visible and highest-paid members of Los Angeles news operations. Even their moves to rival KCBS -- Martin in 1994, Greene in 2001 -- created their own buzz, particularly for Martin, whose salary was reported to be between $1.2 million and $2 million a year.
But last week the longtime newscasters themselves became an L.A. story once again. The couple was let go by KCBS, part of a swarm of budget cuts at CBS affiliates nationwide. Their unexpected ouster crystallized a growing suspicion within the local news market -- that in a world of 24/7 cable news and intensifying competition from the Internet, local big-name anchors may no longer be necessary or even relevant.
"We're sadly seeing the end of an era in local news," said Karen Kearns, associate dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at Cal State Northridge. "Anchors were always the imprint for a station, their link to the community. But in the last 10 years, the way that people watch the news has changed, and they are not as significant as they used to be."
The most obvious sign that the pull of a marquee anchor has diminished is audience size, particularly for evening news shows. Familiar, friendly faces have been unable to stem, in many cases, double-digit declines in local news viewership in recent years -- much of it attributed to Internet competition and an ever-shrinking lead-in from network programming.
"When it comes to the nighttime, news anchors are no longer the silver bullet that can save you," said Rich Goldner, KTLA-TV Channel 5 news director (the station, like the Los Angeles Times, is owned by Tribune Co.). "They are still important, but not as much. There were all these longtime, big-money people, and the stations started saying, 'We're spending all this money, but where are we seeing this in the ratings?' "
Shifts in social habits haven't helped either.
