The latest makeover at CBS4 aims to combine a new personality and new technology in one viewer-friendly package.
Karen Leigh takes over as co-anchor with Jim Benemann this week, succeeding Molly Hughes in the role, and the station unveils a new set with dazzling high-definition capabilities.
The set is alive, visually active, streamlined and glitzy.
Clouds float by in the cityscape behind the anchors. Eventually, live shots can be beamed to the background screen in place of the skyline. Well-compensated experts have spent hours laboring over the crisp look and futuristic design of the thing. To the untrained eye, it must be said, it looks a lot like, well, a set.
For her part, Leigh is an accessible presence who mentions “hard news” every chance she gets.
In the midst of rehearsals last week, the newcomer said she is finding Denver to be “warm and inviting, although that might change when I get on the air.” The Little Rock, Arkansas, native long ago overcame her accent (no more “droppin’ Gs,” she observed). She bought a house in the Bonnie Brae neighborhood, and is glad to have exchanged Minneapolis (TV market No. 15) for market Denver (No. 18), trading up from crack-of dawn duty to evenings at 5, 6, 6:30 and 10 p.m.
After previous TV stints in Little Rock and Nashville, Leigh declares herself tired of moving. “I hope the community accepts me.”
Not surprisingly, Leigh’s role model growing up was Katie Couric.
“She was the first person who could be herself, who didn’t have to fit a cookie cutter image,” Leigh said. Now that Couric is widely rumored to be on the way out as the beleaguered “CBS Evening News” anchor, Leigh is circumspect about her role model’s next move.
Couric would be good as host of a Larry King-type CNN interview show, Leigh said. But, with the station’s PR-woman sitting at her elbow making helpful suggestions, Leigh declined to predict whether Couric might leave CBS after the presidential election.
The main problem Couric faced on the evening newscast, in Leigh’s estimation, was, “she didn’t get to show who she is.”
Leigh, single guardian of a Basset hound, said her divorced parents live in Arkansas. Her father is a retired high-school teacher, football coach and member of the Army Reserves from Smackover, Arkansas; her mother is a teacher’s aide at the Little Rock elementary school where her only sister works. Her father follows the Razorbacks on the road each fall in his RV.
Leigh is accustomed to working against a dominant Gannett-owned TV station. KARE is the Minneapolis equivalent of local ratings steamroller KUSA. The best way to compete, she says, is to be “a tough, hard-news organization.”
She’s not averse to feedback. “I encourage constructive criticism,” she said. “I’m used to it. After all, my dad was a football coach and in the Army.”
For the moment, KCNC has bragging rights as the sole station with HD weather and the only live HD on-the-scene coverage in Denver.
The set boasts a moving background (not to worry, it doesn’t move fast enough to have viewers reaching for Dramamine) displayed on a 12 x 7-foot screen. The small minority of viewers with high-definition reception and HD-equipped sets will find stunning clarity.
“I feel like I’m on a spaceship,” noon anchor Brooke Wagner said.
After spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to bring the station to the next generation of HD design, KCNC General Manager Walt DeHaven said he is worried about only one thing:
“Lint.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
