KNBC - News Operation

News Operation

KNBC presently broadcasts a total of 32½ hours of locally-produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours on weekdays and 2½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). The station runs a special hour-long newscast on Sunday nights following the Fred Roggin-hosted sports-themed game show The Challenge, during the NFL season where NBC Sunday Night Football telecasts preempt the 6 p.m. newscast. On election nights, KNBC runs a special extended edition of its 11 p.m. newscast to show early election results.

The station's newscasts generally have more of a "serious" tone covering issues (such as politics, government, education and the economy) than other Los Angeles area newscasts. KNBC is notable in the Los Angeles area for not showing live car chases. Thus, when its various competitors switch to police chase coverage during news programming, channel 4 instead prepares a regular news story on the pursuit to air during a later newscast. For most of the last 30 years, KNBC has waged a spirited battle with KABC-TV for the top-rated local newscast in Southern California, becoming a three-way race with KCBS-TV's ratings resurgence in 2006. Throughout the late 1980s and into the early 2000s, KNBC's newscasts were the most-watched in the region, beating out every other station viewership-wise, which coincided with NBC's overall ratings at the time. Channel 4's 11 p.m. newscast currently sits in third place. Most of the station's other newscasts, including its once-popular morning news program, Today in L.A., the area's first local morning newscast (which debuted in 1986), now rate at or near the bottom of the local news ratings.

KNBC has had a very stable news team over the years: weeknight anchor Colleen Williams (who also occasionally reports for MSNBC and NBC News), sports director Fred Roggin (who serves as sports anchor for NBC's Early Today and is a sports announcer for NBC's Olympics coverage) and chief weathercaster Fritz Coleman (who like Roggin, also occasionally appears on The Tonight Show, and once hosted a late night variety show for KNBC called It's Fritz from 1989 to the early 1990s) have each been at the station more than 25 years. Former KNBC anchor Paul Moyer worked two stints at channel 4; first from 1972 to 1979 (when he began a 13-year run at rival KABC-TV) and from July 1992 until his May 2009 retirement. Like Moyer, anchor Chuck Henry was also a mainstay at KABC-TV, before making the move to channel 4 in January 1994. He currently produces (through his self-titled production company) the travelogue series Travel Cafe, which airs weekends on KNBC. Kelly Lange, Stu Nahan, John Schubeck, Tritia Toyota, Jess Marlow, David Sheehan, John Beard and Nick Clooney are other notables who have worked on KNBC's newscasts in the past.

Former Today co-host and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw began his NBC career as an anchor and reporter for KNBC from 1966 until leaving to work exclusively for the network in 1973. Others of note that have worked at KNBC early in their careers (prior to joining the network) include Bryant Gumbel, Pat Sajak, Kent Shocknek, Bob Abernethy, Keith Morrison, Tom Snyder and consumer reporter David Horowitz, whose long-running syndicated series, Fight Back!, began on channel 4 and was produced and distributed by NBC and Westinghouse Broadcasting. In 1987 during an afternoon newscast, a gun-wielding mental patient gained access to NBC Studios, and took Horowitz hostage live on-air. With the gun pressed to his side, Horowitz calmly read the gunman's statements on camera. The unidentified man was caught with a toy gun, and was arrested by local police. It led Horowitz to start a successful campaign to ban "look-alike" toy guns in several states, including California and New York.

Channel 4's news programs were known as KNBC News Service during the late 1960s and early 1970s, before adopting the NewsCenter 4 title in the mid-1970s. NBC made similar changes to newscasts in other markets around the same time, and channel 4 shared the NewsCenter title with its sister stations in New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. KNBC's newscasts were the last to drop from the NewsCenter moniker, rebranding to News 4 LA in 1982 before becoming Channel 4 News in 1985. While KNBC became known on-air as NBC 4 in 1995, the Channel 4 News branding was so well established in Southern California that the nickname was retained for 26 years until 2011, when it became NBC 4 News. In 2002, longtime weather reporter Christopher Nance was fired from KNBC after years of what staffers claim was "menacing and profane off-air behavior" contrary to his flamboyant and cheerful nature on-air. Shortly after his firing, Los Angeles magazine published an article further detailing Nance's behavioral problems, including allegations that he was involved with a station intern, and engaged in altercations with many staff members. Nance alleged on his website and the article that KNBC fired him due to his Christian beliefs. In 2004, the African American Nance sued the station, citing he was dismissed due to racial and religious discrimination.

In 2006, KNBC launched a local news channel on digital channel 4.4 called News Raw. That provided hourly news updates, previews news stories scheduled to air on the main channel's newscasts and provides additional information on breaking news stories. After Universal Sports was launched in 2008, News Raw became a part-time channel, first on 4.4, and later on digital channel 4.2 when KNBC expanded Universal Sports programming on the former subchannel to 24 hours a day. That same year, the station debuted The Local Story in July 2006, which featured an in-depth look at a single major local news story and was hosted by Ross Becker; the program was canceled in September 2006 and replaced by The Ellen DeGeneres Show, but continued as an online-only program until it returned to channel 4 in October 2006, before being dropped for good in mid-November. In September 2006, KNBC debuted YourLA TV, featuring videos about interesting things happening in Southern California, with user-submitted videos and comments via MySpace mixed with profiles of ordinary people in a format similar to PM Magazine.

For many years, KNBC produced a late afternoon newscast at 4 p.m., which was dropped in 2002, in favor of Dr. Phil (that program moved to KCBS-TV in 2005, and was replaced by The Ellen DeGeneres Show). The station also had an hour-long 11 a.m. newscast, which later was trimmed to a half-hour before ultimately being canceled at the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The station revived its midday newscast as a half-hour program at noon in early 2012, which expanded to one hour that September. KNBC became the fifth station in the Los Angeles market to began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition on July 14, 2008 (Spanish-language sister station KVEA and former sister KWHY-TV also converted their newscasts to HD at the same time). On December 6, 2011, KNBC entered into a partnership with public radio station KPCC as part of a larger effort by NBCUniversal to partner with nonprofit news organizations following its acquisition by Comcast.