Well, she is the news director at KIRO, and it has been a tough run when you consider that Apollo/Cox, the owners, just want cuts. One insider called her the worst ND they ever had, but I have no idea if she descends to that level. But she presides over a station with no sports department; no weekend morning newscasts; went about four months with reporters and freelancers doing important weekend weather until finally making a hire; has morning weather anchor Nick Allard doing double duty as a traffic reporter; lost Jesse Jones, one of the premier personalities of Seattle TV; will lose her best reporter Deborah Horne next month; hired a quasi sports/news guy from Canada but uses him poorly, along with other cutbacks along the way. She was interim ND at KING but left to work for Apollo/Cox at WHIO Dayton a powerhouse in Ohio always on automatic ratings pilot. She came back here to a major market, but so far, I don't see many positives under her tenure. I find it sad how far KIRO has declined. When I arrived in Seattle back in 2004, it was a powerful breaking news station with great anchors. Now, not so much. Especially when Cox got rid of choppers. I am sure she is vigilant about following corporate mandates and budget restraints. I empathize, but, it seems to be a station walking in place, hoping to find a new viewer hook. And I don't see digital power either, yet she possesses a Masters in Digital Strategy. Maybe I am missing that strategy when I go online. I am sure she is working hard. Not criticizing her, just looking for results. Thoughts?
KIRO locked out their photographers last Friday and Saturday. Took all of them off the schedule then flew in scabs from God knows where. She and Pat Nevin are incredibly anti-union and are trying to break the photographers. I hear their negotiations with SAG and the on-air people isn't going well either.
ReplyDeleteI would like to expand on this, but some corroboration.
DeleteWhen did she leave KING for WHIO? I don't know a lot about WHIO, but I do know that they have a legacy of punching well above their weight for a market the size of Dayton in terms of resources and quality. They may have even punched above the weight of nearby stations in the Columbus and Cincinatti markets, but I can't confirm that. I also know that their on-air roster of talent started going down right before COVID and it hasn't recovered. It stands at 15 people as of tonight, plus one retired personality. It used to be closer to 30 people. They don't seem to have a sports department anymore and their helicopter is long gone (went away in 2008, if I remember correctly). Obviously, not all of these changes were made when Evans was at the helm of WHIO, and I certainly don't want to pin anything on her that she did not have a hand in. I'm just trying to understand where her arrival at WHIO fits on the timeline of the changes that have happened there to see if there was any foreshadowing of what has now happened to KIRO.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had my advertising agency back in the day, KIRO was a powerhouse. I usually used them and KOMO for my TV buys for clients of which two were automobile dealerships that fit in well at the stations. Now retired at 74 years of age I must admit to not following personnel at the stations much any longer.
ReplyDeleteShe left King in 2021 after four years for Cox/Dayton and lasted a little more than a year and a half there before going back to Seattle for the KIRO job.
DeleteThat timing roughly lines up with when WHIO's reporting ranks really thinned out. Its only recently that they seem to have built them back up a bit (if I recall correctly, there were down to just four reporters listed on their website (there may have been more that weren't listed) at one point...they once had upwards of 20), but to a level nowhere near what they once had.
DeleteThe sports department appears to have been axed in 2020 as that is when their longtime sports director retired (there was no one else in the department, as far as I know). KIRO's sports department hung on until 2024.
The weather team began undergoing a complete turnover during Evans' time there, but that continued unfolding long after she left for KIRO, concluding in 2024. KIRO hasn't expierenced that as Morgan and Nick have both been there longer than Evans.
I don't know if WHIO had a Jesse Jones style consumer unit or not. They don't seem to have one at this point in time.
With all of that being said, I'm not seeing a whole lot of foreshadowing of the changes that have taken place at KIRO under Evans' tenure based on her time at WHIO. Both stations have taken suffered severe cutbacks in staffing and resources, but much of what has happened at WHIO seems to have been before and after Evans' tenure.
My guess is that Evans went to Cox with the intention of coming back to Seattle and would do Cox's bidding for a short time. Too much distance between then and now.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good guess. Perhaps I'm barking up a tree that really doesn't have anything, for lack of a better term, to bark up.
DeleteAccording to some KING insiders with whom spoke on anonymity, she really was gunning to "officially" become ND at KING when she was acting as the interim ND after four years as the No. 2. When that didn't pan out, she then left KING and joined WHIO-Dayton. You can check out her LinkedIn resume and see where it fits in the timeline. Her time in the Buckeye State seemed to be rather short as she then transferred (on her admission or Cox's own doing or a combination of both) to come back to Seattle and KIRO. If anything, Evans is really playing fire with fire considering the chaos that is going on at 7, fueled more now that Debroah Horne is retiring this upcoming fall and leaving KIRO without any legacy folks left.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion to checked LinkedIn. It reaffirmed my assessment that Evans' tenure at WHIO lines up with when their reporting ranks, which were already thinning out, really began to shrink. That being said, from what you said about Evans wanting to be KING's news director, and knowing that KING has long had a larger reporting roster than KIRO, even when KIRO was better staffed, I'm starting to think that the thinning of the reporting rosters at both WHIO and KIRO may have more to do with larger cutbacks being made by Cox Media Group, especially considering Cox was hit with a major cyber attack in 2021 and made major cutbacks at their Boston station, WFXT, not long afterwards (like WHIO and KIRO, WFXT's reporting ranks have been cut greatly, dropping by upwards of half, even as they have more recently adopted a super-intense weekday news schedule) and not Evans. Would Evans have let the reporting ranks at KING thin out as much as they have at KIRO if she had landed the news director gig there? We'll never know for sure, but it seems unlikely.
DeleteNo doubt these cuts are Apollo/Cox mandates. Tegna has not been nearly as Draconian, so I don't think the two are comparable as you characterized it. Evans has kept ship barely afloat while adapting to major, cuts but also because some key people don't want to work there any more. Would not want that job!
DeleteI believe she left KING after Julie Wolfe got the job. Wolfe was News Director at WHAS in Louisville, where the KING GM also worked. They knew each other, so it was a buddy hire and Evans likely left after that occurred.
ReplyDeleteThat would make sense.
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