THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010075
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY BONKO
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
REMEMBER THAT Paul Williams song made famous by the Carpenters in the early 1970s.
``We've Only Just Begun.''
It's the theme at the broadcast house at 720 Boush St. in Norfolk, from where they've been beaming a television signal since 1949. Elden A. Hale Jr., president and general manager of CBS affiliate WTKR, was on the job only a few weeks when he began reshaping Channel 3's news department.
Hale stripped in an early-morning newscast on the weekends. Four days ago, he brought in LeAnne Rains to co-anchor the news at 6 and 11 p.m. with Tom Randles. New anchoring assignments were handed to Ed Hughes, Jane Gardner, Ann Keffer and Kurt Williams.
Soon, Hale will give Channel 3's local newscasts a new look. They call it brand identity in the advertising game.
``You'll see some significant changes before the end of September,'' Hale promised earlier this week in his office, where he keeps an eye on the competition.
There are three TV sets built into one of the walls.
In Hale's latest move, Tom Snyder's ``Late, Late Show'' slides over from 2:07 a.m. to 12:35 a.m., after David Letterman, starting Sept. 11.
The ``TV3 News'' signature, with its clocks in flight, the set doused in orange and musical breaks that sound like pots and pans falling, will likely be history soon. Hale said, ``We need a look that is crisper, cleaner, friendlier, a look that represents who and what we are all about.''
Stay tuned.
Because Hale is new to this market - the New York Times Co. named him general manager soon after closing the deal to buy WTKR - it isn't likely that he ever saw Rains' work when she was at WAVY before she left in 1993. And yet he decided rather quickly to give her one of the best jobs in TV - co-anchoring the news at 6 and 11 in a top 40 market.
How come?
``No, I had not seen what LeAnne can do until our news director, Barbara Hamm, brought me her tapes when we learned that LeAnne was available,'' Hale said. ``LeAnne told us that she was looking for a reporter's job. From her tapes, I saw that she was really good, an excellent reporter. The more we looked at her tapes, the more we thought of how well she would fit in with our team at 6 and 11 as a co-anchor.''
Rains arrives at WTKR without the blond look she had at WAVY. Her hair is darker these days.
``Natural,'' is how she put it.
Hale and Hamm chose to bring Rains aboard with no fanfare whatsoever. It wasn't announced that she had the job until a few hours before her first newscast on Tuesday, during which she paused to say she was happy to be part of the team at 720 Boush.
Hale wanted to spare her the pressure that Randles faced when he arrived from Miami a couple of years ago. His face was on a zillion billboards. Tom Randles would make Channel 3's news soar, said the station's previous owners.
He didn't.
Rains has been working in TV with the Associated Press in Europe and touring the Continent with her husband for the last year or so.
Hale did not act as some Channel 3 employees feared he would when he arrived in Norfolk and saw that the station was third and last in news at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. Poor Carol Novotny Horton lost her gig as morning anchor and weather reporter, but everyone else's job seems secure.
Hale did not clean house.
He brought in Rains, and for the moment will be content to merely ``adjust and tweak all our newscasts.'' Soon you will see Hughes doing on-air editorials.
Hale estimates that it will take two years to turn things around at WTKR. This is no place for sissies, he said.
It's ratings war.
Welcome back to the battleground, LeAnne. by CNB