‘Action News’ changed viewership and continues to do so 50 years later
The history of television news is Philadelphia has three important dates.
The first is 1948 when a nascent Channel 10, owned by a newspaper and affiliated with CBS, sells air time to velvet-voiced radio broadcaster, John Facenda, who has the idea of bringing the headline newscasts he did on one medium to another and does so with great success.
Facenda, who sold ads to a cigar company, built his five-minute spot into a 15-minute show that later expanded to include five minutes of weather and 10 of sports stories. Within a year of appearing on WCAU-TV, he is hired by the station, which takes over production of the show and puts Facenda in the position of being the first important news personality in the market.
The format was the model for television news at budding stations throughout America. It continues to be so to this day.
The next date is 1965 when Westinghouse Broadcasting, Group W, wins a long-fought legal battle to restore Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate at the time, Channel 3 (WRCV-TV) to its fold after NBC claimed the station in 1958 and ran it as an owned-and-operated outlet.
Group W changes the call letters to KYW-TV but goes much, much further. It takes the format Facenda devised and expanded it, combining news, weather, and sports into one show, adding time slots for news, and turning its half-hour evening show into into an hour program that kept ‘RCV’s prime anchor, Vince Leonard, but augmented its staff with a brash hard-hitter, Tom Snyder, hired a woman, Marciarose, to be an anchor, brought on other women as reporters, and broke the market color line by taking Malcolm Poindexter from print and radio and carving a place in history with the first black woman reporter and anchor on local television anywhere, Trudy Haynes.
Channel 3’s new “Eyewitness News” format was a hit.
Facenda and Group W had tremendous influence in their days, but the big story is the third major event in local TV news history. It occurred on April 6, 1970 with the creation of Channel 6’s “Action News.”
“Action News” surged constantly until it was contender to eclipse Channel 3’s “Camelot” team in the ratings. By 1973, it had driven John Facenda from the air, as it became the model for a Philadelphia newscast, and Channel 10 decided it had to update and bring pep to its product. By 1977, with its inaugural anchor, Larry Kane, departing for New York, and handing the reins to Buffalo import Jim Gardner, “Action News” attained Number One ratings status. It continues to have it today, 43 years later. With Jim Gardner still presiding over its important 6 and 11 p.m. shows.
At 8 p.m. Thursday, Channel 6, WPVI-TV since 1971 and burgeoning during the years it was owned by Capital Cities which eventually bought ABC, celebrates 50 years of “Action News” with a special program taking viewers back in history with Jim Gardner, Jim O’Brien, Don Tollefson, Lisa Thomas Laury, Dave Roberts, Gary Papa, Marc Howard, Chris
Wagner, Cathy Gandolfo, Monica Malpass, and others and keeping them current with the market’s most luminous star, Adam Joseph, and his colleagues — Cecily Tynan, Ducis Rodgers, Karen Rogers, Matt O’Donnell, Tamala Edwards, Brian Taff, Rick Williams, Sarah Bloomquist, Sharrie Williams, Jeanette Reyes, Alicia Vitarelli, David Murphy, Melissa Magee, Annie McCormick, Nydia Han, Walter Perez, and Matt Pellman.
Those names and others such as Vernon Odom, Don Polec, Denise James and Nora Muchanic are part of a decades-long glory that started with a combination of monumental risk and nothing to lose. Like Channels 10 and 3 before it, Channel 6 had to invent, and invent it did.
In April 1970, Channel
6 was an afterthought in terms of television history. The station received most of its acclaim for its children’s shows with Chief Halftown, Happy the Clown, and Sally Starr, and from being the origin of the iconic teenage dance program, “Bandstand,” later “American Bandstand” with Dick Clark.
Facenda, Leonard, and Snyder owned the news in
1970. Channel 6 probably got most of its news audience from viewers that remained tuned to the station after kids finished watching cartoons introduced by Their Gal Sal.
Channel 6, WFIL-TV at the time, was in freefall and in flux.
It couldn’t compete with the intelligence, energy, and modern techniques offered by a soaring Channel 3. It couldn’t answer the tradition, class, and resources of
Channel 10.
Both of those station dared at one time to be different. Channel 6 was ready to take the same dare.
Lively, sophisticated Channel 3, a revolutionary player, would be the model. And the target.
Keep in mind KYW’s revolution was five-years-old and reigning as the established format in Philadelphia.
Channel 6 had to think about what it would take from Channel 3, how to avoid the stagnating traditionalism of Channel 10, and create something of its own. The answer was youth. WFIL was tied to the most popular radio station for high schoolers, junior and senior, in the area. That station had deejays that had a fan base. Rather than a known player like McDowell, a by-now fatherlike figure like Facenda, or high stakes player like Snyder, the station would go with the new.
In several directions. “Action News” architects Larry Pollock, Pat Palillo, and Mel Kampmann passed over some the radio station’s boss jocks to go with its newscaster, Larry Kane, who in his days in Miami radio, earned the distinction of being the only American reporter to travel with The Beatles on their national tour of the U.S.
Larry Kane had more than that to recommend him. He was young but an old-fashioned newsperson who enjoyed calling and developing sources and finding news in addition to reporting it.
He was brash in a way that was different from Tom Snyder and fresh in a way that contrasted with John
Facenda.
Jim O’Brien, Don Tollefson, Joe Pellegrino, Gary Papa, and Lisa Thomas Laury would come along later. Kane would be the new face, teamed with Dr. Francis Davis, a Drexel academic on weather, and former Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, Bill White, on sports.
Success didn’t come overnight, but attention did.
“Action News” climbed constantly. People liked the retained style of reading two headlines before breaking into “the big story.” They liked consumer spots introduced by Kane saying, “‘Action News’ want to know.” They liked seeing themselves on television. “Action News” made a point of going to school functions and other gatherings that would put a lot of everyday faces on television, everyday faces with friends and relatives who would tune in to see the image of someone they knew on TV. Even the hope of seeing that image would bring new audience.
As much as Channel 3 in
1965, Channel 6 changed the look and tone of news.
The speed, too. “Action News” limited story time to
90 seconds, tops, no matter how much information there might be to impart. Early reporters such as Marc Howard, Mike Strug, and Chris Wagner learned to be masters that style. Howard once demonstrated for me how to fit all someone needed to know in that 90-second window,
The Kane-O’Brien-Tollefson team looked poised to become a long-lasting part of Philadelphia history. That wasn’t to be.
Which brings me to my favorite part of “Action News” and why it has stayed tops in viewers appeal for decades that seem unlikely to end soon, its adaptability.
Despite the charisma of Kane, O’Brien, Tolly, and the people who succeeded them, “Action News” has always been format-driven as opposed to personality-driven.
Format, quick adaptation, smart changes so subtle viewers barely noticed them, promoting from within, and not depending on personality, but giving viewers bright, likeable folks like Gardner, Joseph, Tynan, O’Donnell, Taff, Rogers, and Magee today, people who seem like part of the community or someone you can talk to in a supermarket aisle goes a long way.
Channel 10 is making an effort. Channel 3 is in the wondering stage. Channel 6 and “Action News” are Number One, thank you, and celebrating it golden anniversary with energy and glory to burn.