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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

NBC4 Executive Brings Changes to Station

When it comes to changing the game of Los Angeles television ratings, Steve Carlston has rewritten the playbook. Since becoming president and general manager of NBC4 Southern California last November, he has hired 16 new employees, added the “Ask Dr. Bruce” segment, launched the “Life Connected” series and continues to expand the Investigative Unit. His most recent moves — extending the noon news broadcast from 30 minutes to an hour and making major changes in the news anchor lineup — cemented the station’s position last month in ways the pundits couldn’t have predicted. On the heels of the network’s record-breaking ratings and revenues from its coverage of the London Olympics, a broadcasting deal that had been predicted to lose money, Carlston is still ramping up NBC4 with additional franchises. Among his current front-burner projects is “NBC4 YOU”– meaning, he said in an interview, “that our focus is you, the viewer.” “We want to get you to work on time, so we’ll make sure you know which freeways are moving. We want to make sure your family is safe, so we’ll tell you if something dangerous is happening. The message is that to get the information you need to live in Southern California, from the minute you wake up until you go to bed, you only need one channel,” he said. Carlston sees the noon news broadcast as key to delivering that. “I always liked the hour noon format,” he said, adding that he finds the standard 30-minute noon broadcast “a little too abbreviated.” An hour, he said, “allows you to expand on stories and do live talkbacks with reporters in field.” For example, he said, the 30-minute format can only accommodate an average of 17 to 23 stories, which doesn’t afford in-depth treatment. Having an hour at noon, he said, means that if a big story breaks in the morning, the station can expand on it throughout the day with live interviews from the scene and analysis. “Now we have enough air time to tell people what it means, not just what happened,” he said. To accomplish that, Carlston shifted and augmented the news anchor team last month. The morning show, “Today In LA,” added Michael Brownlee as co-anchor with Alycia Lane. Kathy Vara was moved from that program to co-anchor the weekend evening newscasts with Robert Kovacik. “Kathy is a true professional, a great journalist and a good friend,” Kovacik said. “She will be a tremendous addition to the weekend newscast, and I’m thrilled to be working with her.” Starting in mid-September, the weekday noon newscast, which Brownlee had anchored, will be co-anchored by incoming anchor/reporter Whit Johnson. Johnson joins the station from Capitol Hill and will co-anchor with Lucy Noland. Changes weren’t all that surprising after Comcast purchased NBC Universal from GE in 2011, a move that brought a paradigm shift to Burbank. “GE had a different business strategy,” Carlston said. The business model now, he said, is to highlight excellence and leadership. “We were always the news leader,” said the La Habra native. Calling the station’s target “a rebound to greatness,” he said he “decided to look at our team and see how to best use their strengths.” Since taking the helm at NBC4, Carlston’s mission has been to restore the station to the dominance it long held in Southern California. By this summer, indications were good that he was on target. The London Olympics turned out to be a signature event, with 84 percent of Los Angeles market households tuning in. An average of 11.3 million people watched the network’s 17-day Olympic coverage, with its primetime programming drawing triple the combined ratings of the general market competition.  In late July, NBC4 won seven Emmy Awards, becoming the first station to dominate the newscast categories for two consecutive years. It won for best daily morning newscast (“Today in L.A. at 6 a.m.”), best daily daytime newscast (“NBC4 News at 6 p.m.”) and best daily evening newscast (“NBC4 News 11 p.m.”). It also picked up wins in the categories of news special, entertainment, signal report and breaking news. Carlston has a track record of turning around low-rated stations and hiring a diverse workforce. He was drafted to lead the station through a period of sweeping change. And according to those who know him, there couldn’t be a better guy calling the shots. “When I talked to people about who they thought was the best general manger out there, his name kept coming up,” said Valari Staab, president of NBC Owned & Operated Television Stations, when Carlston joined the station. Since then, NBC4’s presence on social media platforms has grown exponentially. Facebook “likes” went from 20,000 in November, 2011 to more than 377,000 today on the station’s main page and to more than 520,000 including all NBC4 talent and show pages. Carlston attributes those numbers to “a strong social media strategy that focuses on community engagement and outreach.” The station’s most successful campaign has been the “Help pay your mortgage for a year” giveaway, which ran during the Olympics and more than doubled its Facebook likes.

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