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KGAN goes anchorless

T

The Outsider

KGAN Cedar Rapids aired it's last, fully live newscast on March 20. A number of on air personnel, including one of the news anchors, the weekend anchor and both members of the sports department are gone as well. The only part of the newscasts that is live is the weather. The rest is mostly stories from the MMJs, stories from other Iowa stations like KCCI, CBS and Sinclair packages and a few recorded spots from the anchor desk. Sinclair kills off another news department.

3/23/26 anchorless newscast A Block
 
Wow! Back in the mid '60s when I lived in Cedar Falls, Channel 2 was THE newscast for Eastern Iowa. Channels 7 and 9 were also-rans to put it mildly. I still remember when they flipped from B&W to color in 1967. Bob Bruner and Conrad Johnson have to be spinning in their graves.
 
I think 2 really benefitted then from the synergy between WMT radio and TV in those earlier days. Anywhere you could receive channel 2, you could receive 600, and both were ratings leaders. That changed in the 1980's when channel 2 was spun off as KGAN, and channels 7 and 9 found their footing. When I lived in Cedar Falls in the 90's, KCRG led in Linn and Johnson counties, while KWWL was strongest in Waterloo and the more rural parts of the market.
 
Eventually we'll probably see someone tryng out a newscast "of the future" with AI anchors, AI meteorologists and AI sportscasters - mark my words. One or more of these companies will try it out in a medium or small market.
(It's already happening on the radio side, I have heard weather forecasts on stations in MN and MI that were AI generated...and not the Weatherology stuff either)

KGAN might as well clear The National Desk at this point (or syndicated sitcom repeats).
 
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KeithE4 said:
Wow! Back in the mid '60s when I lived in Cedar Falls, Channel 2 was THE newscast for Eastern Iowa. Channels 7 and 9 were also-rans to put it mildly. I still remember when they flipped from B&W to color in 1967. Bob Bruner and Conrad Johnson have to be spinning in their graves.
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Believe it or not, in the southern Iowa town near the Missouri border where I spent part of my childhood, our local cable system had all three Waterloo-Cedar Rapids stations. WMT (Bill Quartom et al.) owned 50% of our cable system; the local radio station (KCOG) owned the other half. Big channel-specific Yagis were mounted on a tower in the highest part of town to pick up those stations.

It all worked for the most part. Once in a while, WMT would suffer interference from the channel 2 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and there were problems during E-skip openings that were unavoidable. But the signal was usually very watchable. The unusual thing that WMT did for its "Report to Iowa" was to have the weather last during the newscasts. Often, we would switch over from one of the Des Moines stations' 10 pm newscasts to see Conrad Johnson do the weather. He was an innovator in weather reporting, one of the first if not the first to put weather radar on the air. This was in Sioux City before he went to Cedar Rapids.

There are a couple of video clips of WMT's "Newswatch" online. The Report to Iowa's switchover to color in 1967 has been preserved; this is the best version I could quickly find:
ngriffin said:
I think 2 really benefitted then from the synergy between WMT radio and TV in those earlier days. Anywhere you could receive channel 2, you could receive 600, and both were ratings leaders. That changed in the 1980's when channel 2 was spun off as KGAN, and channels 7 and 9 found their footing. When I lived in Cedar Falls in the 90's, KCRG led in Linn and Johnson counties, while KWWL was strongest in Waterloo and the more rural parts of the market.
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We had access to stations in both the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids markets. While Des Moines was the bigger market, the Cedar Rapids stations held their own. It seemed to be more competitive. The ABC affiliate (KCRG) seemed to be especially aggressive. The competition helped raise the quality of all the stations. Not that Des Moines stations were bad, but WOI didn't seem to make that much of an effort in news, and KRNT (now KCCI) and WHO, while good, seemed to be slower to adopt new techniques and technologies than the Cedar Rapids stations.
 
I'm reminded here of the news conference with President Eisenhower which switched from black and white to color.

Mr Bruner is not to be confused with Bob Brunner (two Ns) in West Virginia (WSAZ and WOAY). I said "huh?" for a moment when I saw the name.
 
crainbebo said:
Eventually we'll probably see someone tryng out a newscast "of the future" with AI anchors, AI meteorologists and AI sportscasters - mark my words. One or more of these companies will try it out in a medium or small market.
(It's already happening on the radio side, I have heard weather forecasts on stations in MN and MI that were AI generated...and not the Weatherology stuff either)

KGAN might as well clear The National Desk at this point (or syndicated sitcom repeats).
Click to expand...
From what I heard the last few mornings on KCJJ when this was being discussed, KGAN runs The National Desk instead of a morning newscast, and has one person (I don’t know if it’s a local anchor or not) doing what’s called a “local minute”.
 


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