I'm not sure, but Don was probably the only remaining KGO-TV reporter left from the Van Amburg News Scene era. He must have seen a lot of changes in TV news in his 40 years, including the end of Channel (er, sorry) ABC 7's dominance in the local news ratings, and the more or less concurrent transformation of his station's news programming from totally awful (News Scene era) to being a good news organization.
I'd like to think that viewers are to sophisticated these days to fall for that "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" sensationalism.