KING-TV - News Operation

News Operation

For most of the last quarter-century, KING has battled for first place in the Seattle news race with KOMO. However, for the past couple of years, KING has been in first place in virtually every local newscast. Some of its newscasts rank higher than all the other newscasts combined.

From the beginning KING was deeply committed to the Seattle area. Bullitt believed that a television station should serve the local public while remaining commercially viable. KING set up one of the first local news departments in the country and quickly gained national attention for its high quality and thorough approach. In 1952, KING kept Senator Joseph McCarthy from delivering a potentially libelous attack on the air. McCarthy threatened to have the station's license pulled citing undue bias (the Bullitts were staunch Democrats) but was forced to back down. Reporters such as Charles Herring, Ted Bryant, Mike James, Bob Faw and Seattle's first female news anchor, Jean Enersen, set high standards for television journalism in Seattle. KING-TV continues to be the leading station in the area.

After Alaska was hit by a major earthquake in March 1964, KING-TV worked with NBC News to get the footage of the quake's aftermath broadcast on the network. This was prior to the launch of a trans-Pacific television broadcast satellite and footage from Anchorage was flown to Seattle and driven to KING to be fed into the NBC network. NBC was the first network to show footage of the quake's aftermath preceding ABC and CBS by several hours.

KING-TV was a pioneer of diversity in the newsroom. In 1972, KING-TV broke new ground by appointing Jean Enersen as an evening news anchor. According to the Washington Post, Enersen was the first permanent female evening news anchor in the country and is considered to be the longest-running female local evening news anchor. Additionally, KING-TV appointed Seattle's first African-American evening news anchor, John Raye, who co-anchored with Enersen for several years in the mid-1970s. During this time the KING-TV news department also groomed several network news reporters, including CNN's Aaron Brown and Lou Dobbs, former CBS Early Show contributor Hattie Kauffman, former CBS correspondent Linda Taira, NBC correspondent James Hattori, and NBC Dateline correspondent Dennis Murphy. Future meteorologist and author Jeff Renner joined KING-TV in 1977. Also during this era, KING's staff of photojournalists, led for many years by Phil Sturholm and Ken Jones, were among the best in the nation. The National Press Photographers Association named KING the Television News Photography Station of the Year for 1979, 1981, 1982 and 2011.

KING was a pioneer with new types of newscasts. In 1979, KING debuted the first early morning newscast in Western Washington at 6:30 a.m., anchored by Don Madsen with Larry Schick as weather anchor; Don Madsen was known for coming in at 11:30 p.m. and working all night to prepare for his early morning newscast. The KING 5 Morning News became very popular with Western Washington viewers as well as viewers throughout British Columbia. In 1984, KING pioneered Top Story, hosted by Mike James and Lori Matsukawa, which aired at 6:30 p.m. weeknights; Top Story was a local version of Nightline focusing primarily on the top news story of the day with in-depth reporting and interviews. Despite efforts to produce a high-quality newscast, Top Story never became popular and was canceled in 1988.

In the late 1970s, KING-TV and its sister stations in Spokane, Boise, and Portland formed the KING Northwest Network. They often shared news reports during and jointly covered significant stories such as the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. The mid-morning talk show, Seattle Today, was renamed Northwest Today and expanded to 90 minutes. While the majority of the show was produced in Seattle, each member station had a local host who would provide short local segments.

In 1999, to compete against KOMO, KING began providing high definition newscasts; at the time it only had one studio camera that was HD-capable. In April 2007, KING upgraded all of its studio cameras, graphics and weather system to high definition, and began broadcasting its public affairs programming in the format as well."HDTV - KING5.COM". http://www.king5.com/HD/. Field reports are still standard-definition (480i converted to 1080i HD for air) but are taped in a 16x9 aspect ratio, giving the appearance of high-definition. According to KING, it is "Seattle's First HD Newscast". On April 16, 2007, KING 5 also started using the tagline "KING 5 HD" when referring to the station.

In 2008, chief newscaster Jean Enersen celebrated her 40th year at KING (36 of those years as primary evening anchor—the longest serving female evening anchor in the country) with a 1-hour special which aired August 1. Recently, she stated in the Seattle Times that she has no plans to retire anytime soon.