(determined music) - When it comes to television news, in the early '80s, there were channel five houses, channel four houses, and channel nine houses.

There weren't that many channel 11 houses.

They were struggling to get a foothold.

- (indistinct) of our well-oiled news department.

- WTCN was actually a very successful independent station at first, and they were broadcasting outta the Calhoun Beach Club, and it was probably best known (chuckles) for "All-Star Wrestling," kids' programs, sporting programs.

It had the Twins; the North Stars, too.

So news was not exactly something that was top of mind.

- Bravo!

- Then do it again.

- It looked like it was a station that would be number four in a three-station market.

- Striking Northwest Airlines pilots.

- The newsroom was definitely underfunded.

They had nine news cameras, which would not work when it was below 20 degrees.

Well, it's below 20 degrees in Minneapolis, St. Paul, ya know, five months of the year.

- [Tom Oszman] In 1982, channel 11 actually discontinued weekend newscasts, and they were discontinuing weekday newscasts.

Their staff was down- - Those stories and more- - to nothing.

- coming up next.

- [Interviewee] There was a broadcasting company called Metromedia that bought WTCN, spent a lotta money building a new TV station out in Golden Valley, beefed up the newsroom.

They spent money on new news anchors and a new set, and they called it The Million Dollar News Team.

- Good evening.

Despite (indistinct).

- [Interviewee] With all of that plus the gift of winning an NBC affiliation in that network swap back in 1979, there were some pretty big expectations.

- Channel 11 had a promotion when the network switch happened.

We bet a million dollars you will tune into our product.

Everyone on their newscast came from somewhere else.

No one pronounced the names of our cities correctly.

- In fact, it was an abject failure, and it was universally and roundly panned by columnists at "The Star Tribune" and the "Pioneer Press."

It was that bad.

(momentous music) - [Rick] There were more on-air mistakes at WTCN.

- Good evening, everybody.

I'm Stan Bohrman.

Here's what's happening at 10 o'clock.

First off, you saw me get a drink of water.

We apologize for that.

In any event.

- [Newscaster] And watch this block of Tkachenko's.

(Stan laughs) - [Stan] It's always something, isn't it?

- They just didn't seem to be quite as professional in operation as their competitors.

- In Tehran this evening... And I've lost my place with the prompter.

I'm sorry.

- [Nick] Well, they try, but they just can't compete.

- They'd prefer to wait out the current wave of... (beep) Piece of (beep).

Shove it up your (beep).

Alright, say when.

- [Paul Magers] Someone had said it'll be a cold day in hell if that station's ever number one.

- Good evening.

In the news this Saturday.

- Turned out viewers tuned out.

Channel 11 found itself losing the nightly news race again.

- [Newscaster] We continue with our series.

(TV buzzes) - The continuing.

(TV squeals) - [Newscaster] 100 (indistinct).

(TV sizzles) (button clunks) (TV buzzes) (TV chirps) - [George] It gives Minnesota a fresh start.

- [Announcer] Special limited edition ice cream from Kemps.

- [Announcer] Bright white, dynamite white.

- Welcome to Minnesota and one of the newest members of the Gannett family, WTCN.

I knew Gannett was gonna buy the station.

I don't think I had any inside knowledge, but I knew.

They are a great group.

We took over this facility just about a year and a half ago.

(expectant music) - Gannett wanted to be a player in the bigger markets.

Any of the stations that Gannett owned, they wanted them to be superstar stations, basically.

- Pennsylvania, this is the backyard.

- [Nick] So at the time Paul was looking for his next job.

Well, Metromedia reached out to him.

- I had a very high confidence level that Gannett was going to come in and invest in people and invest in technology, bring in new management.

And so I thought, "Alright, nothing's ever a given, but it seems like things are in place for the station to go somewhere."

- This has been a long day for Paul Douglas, trying to track all of this severe weather.

- When I got there, it was a great team.

It was John Bachman and Cora-Ann Mihalik.

- (indistinct) herpes.

- Tom Kirby got there, I think, in late April or early May.

Tom told me that this would be the challenge of a lifetime.

And so I said, "Well, okay, well, lemme come up and take a look at it."

(intense music continues) We walked through the studios, and you began to see what might develop.

(momentous music) (intense music continues) (intense music continues) Tom and I had both worked at stations where you had done the weather outside, and I looked at that wall.

I said, "Tom, is that a load-bearing wall?"

And he said, "I don't think so."

And when I came back in July after I accepted the job, I walked into the studio.

The wall was down, and they were building this unbelievable window-type thing where Paul could walk outside the door.

It was a great way to do weather television and involve the viewer in what was going on and have a window on the weather, so to speak.

(engine buzzes) - The station itself was a work in progress, but they said, "Look, we have this secret anchor.

We can't tell you who.

We're going to hire somebody to be our main anchor, and he's going to be amazing.

Trust us."

And I did.

- Some say he was.

- [Nick] Ron Magers, who was one of the most popular anchors that the area had ever seen.

He had left to go to Chicago.

- So all of the talking is done.

- But we couldn't get Ron, so...

He had this brother, who was out on the West Coast and was a darn-good anchor.

"Maybe we can get him."

- Investigators now know what caused a four-alarm fire here in Portland yesterday.

- Well, once you get over the nauseousness of being called Ron (laughs) every day of your life...

When I got here and people called me Ron or said, "Oh, are you related to Ron?"

"Yeah, Ron's my brother."

People have such profound strong positive memories of him that I would say to Ron, "I'm proud of you."

People are walking up to me and saying, "Boy, I really loved your brother.

Boy, I thought your brother was really a professional," just all compliments, and you know, that sort of...

I had to remind myself of that to carry me through being called Ron, ha ha ha.

Channel 11 was so miserable and so far back of everybody else I said to myself, "You know, if you go there and you fail, there's no expectation of success, so you're really not a failure.

But if you go there and you move that meter just a little bit, you could be a hero."

- Good evening, night Paul Magers.

- [Diana] And I'm Diana Pierce.

- We'll be returning to the movie in just a minute.

- [Diana] We had a long ways to go.

We were number four, and Paul used to joke that we could probably name five or six people right at the start of the newscast just to welcome the six viewers that we had.

- You know, we were being beat by "Star Trek."

I think we're getting beaten by "Leave It to Beaver" in the ratings.

People preferred to watch those reruns over and over and over to us, and that was, you know, a little bit disheartening.

- We had such an attitude at WCCO at that time.

Nobody could compare to us, you know?

- CCO had 30%.

KSTP had 30%.

That left 40% (laughs) for them.

That's what they figured.

And he said, "Let's go for that market.

Let's go for the people who don't watch news."

- Those two I viewed like two big bears sitting alongside a log that was full of honey, and they would just sit there and scoop out their honey, and what fell on the ground didn't matter, 'cause they were both satisfied.

There was a lotta honey on the ground, and for a station like us, it was a lot of nourishment.

(TV buzzes) - Friends, look what's going on at the Giant.

You bring me $49 down, ya drive this car home today.

- [Announcer] From Superstores.

- The drug arrest of car magnate John DeLorean.

(expectant music) - Gannett was really intent on expanding that newsroom.

There was a little newsroom to start with, but they started hiring people left and right to come in.

And so we grew exponentially.

As quick as they could hire people, they did.

- [Announcer] "News 11" with Paul Magers, Diana Pierce, Tom Ryther on sports, and meteorologist Paul Douglas.

- [Paul Magers] We had really good reporters.

We had really good producers.

We had really good assignment desk people.

We had unbelievable photographers.

- [Diana] We started to change the way we were doing things right off the bat.

- I believe we were the first station in the country to extend the 10 o'clock newscast to 10:35.

- The theory was that, if people were watching another station at 10 o'clock, they would come and catch the last couple of minutes of our station before then "The Tonight Show."

- Starring Johnny Carson.

(blissful big band music) - The first few ratings periods, November, February, May, we managed to drive viewers away.

We were shedding viewers.

We were getting smaller, not bigger, and it worried me a little bit.

And I went in to see the boss, Tom Kirby, and I mentioned it.

And he said, "We don't want those people anyway."

He said they were used to the old channel 11.

He said, "If they like that, that's not us."

Coverage of the day's news, including.

- By the mid '80s, once they got Paul Magers in place, once Diana Pierce came, it all came together kinda spectacularly for that station.

- [Announcer] The momentum builds.

- Joe Franzgrote was our general manager.

He was the best.

Tom Kirby was our news director.

He was the best.

And then our assistant news director, Nick Lawler...

The philosophy was we wanna give our viewers what they want and then, in turn, we will get what we want, which is viewers watching.

- But the managers were inspired: Franzgrote, Kirby, and Nick Lawler.

They took calculated risks to differentiate.

- We didn't start out to be sensational.

We started out to be emotional, to touch the viewer.

Life is not all serious.

People love to laugh.

They love to be tickled.

They love to smile.

And again, it goes back to that broad definition of what is news and a newscast.

- [Paul Magers] We didn't ignore the news, but we treated the news, unless it was a huge story, more like "let's cover the hits, runs, and the errors of the day, a box score."

This was the day in your community.

- I dunno.

I can't figure this out, Martya.

What is this, anyway?

- I dunno.

This is an awfully tall piece, whatever it is.

- [Interviewee] There were some familiar faces from other stations that popped up at channel 11, including former KSTP sports anchor Tom Ryther and reporter Lou Harvin.

- One of the largest search operations I did not like the style of news channel 11 was doing.

I hated it, and I told the news director I wanted nothing to do with that type of news at all.

I mean, they were all into the flavor.

They told us they didn't care about facts.

- [Paul Magers] In the top eight of the most livable cities.

- If we wanted facts, we could just read the newspaper.

- [Paul Magers] St. Paul is indeed a very livable city.

- Well, I'm pleased to know.

- And I did not like this so-called flavor news, and I realized "maybe I made a mistake, I should go back to five, where they liked to cover news."

- A week later, Lou Harvin was my producer.

- [Interviewee] Lou Harvin wasn't the only person upset with channel 11.

The other news directors in town were incensed with tactics allegedly used by the station's consultant, calling it ratings rigging.

News wars were really getting ugly, and it was public.

- Why don't you get some research professionals to endorse this study as a research study?

- [Tom Kirby] Are you saying Ron Atkinson is not a professional?

- I think he sold his soul.

- He's been in this business for more than a decade, Sir.

- He's sold his soul.

- [Tom Kirby] And he has a national reputation.

- And I don't think your company has a conscience.

I don't think your station has an ethical bone in its body, to do this.

- [Host] Ron.

- [Tom Kirby] Lemme respond to it, if you don't mind.

- There's going to be a anti-news station who will suck up the people who don't like the news, have turned away from it: "Too much crime.

Too much politics.

It's over my head.

I don't wanna think about things like that."

"Oh, that'll be easy to beat.

That'll be easy to beat.

They're not doing any news."

- One of the anchors...

I won't mention his name but Don Shelby.

(chuckles) (Nick laughs) - I don't think I had a rivalry with Don.

I just sorta did my deal, and Don did his rather unusual, strange deal.

(laughs) Can you say that?

(laughs) - I peeked into the weather office there.

You were with your feet up taking a snooze.

(reporters laugh) I saw you.

- It was just a little snooze, 10-15 minutes.

All right, it was 30 minutes; all right, an hour.

- [Paul Magers] Okay.

- I said to Dave Moore, "What do you make of the anchors over at 11?"

And Dave said, "They're such a comfort to one another."

(Don laughs) - You know, it's us against them.

You need that... You need an enemy, so I just sorta turned them into enemies, and we were dumped on a lot in the beginning.

Our backs were against the wall: "We're gonna show 'em."

- [Announcer] Thanks, Twin Cities.

You're building the momentum.

"News 11," momentum worth watching.

- We really wanted to be a community station.

We wanted to reflect what was happening in the community.

- They encouraged us to go out and do school talks, to do every single charity event.

- [Paul Magers] I don't think Di or Paul Douglas or myself ever really had a Saturday off for a long time, because we were speaking somewhere.

Was it a chore?

Well, of course, it was.

Would you like to have your Saturdays off?

Of course, you'd like to have your Saturdays off, but we did what we needed to do, and we realized the importance of doing it.

People needed to meet us, and hopefully, we made a good impression.

- We got a lotta grief for, you know, the kids at school waving, but it got their parents to tune in.

- I must admit, the waving at the camera, (laughs) you know, when I first saw that, it was like, "Oh, this is...

This might be a bit embarrassing, you know?"

- I mean, it's showbiz.

You're putting on a show here.

You can do it badly.

You can do it in a cheesy way.

You can do it with some self-respect.

- [Cathy] The criticism was "the journalism, soft" and the promotions were cheesy.

- [Paul Magers] That's just a perfect combination, isn't it?

What's wrong with soft and cheesy?

♪ WUSA, let's all ♪ - Oh, the station's promos are hilarious, and they're out sledding together, and they're having snowball fights.

♪ Whatever we do ♪ ♪ Whatever we say ♪ ♪ Wherever we go ♪ (Brian laughs) - We had two people dress up in green tights, and they were; we had a balloon made with the 11 on the side; standing in front of a steam engine.

We were dressed in period costumes.

Here I'm blowing this huge bubble as we're... You know.

- We did some things that were interesting.

(laughs) - I mean, we had some gimmicks.

Don't get me wrong.

We had some gimmicks.

God.

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- Yeah, there were some... We evolved, just like everything evolves.

We ended up being a long way from where we started.

- They had the right mix of people on the air, no doubt.

I mean, Paul was a huge talent, in particular, and he drove a lotta people there to watch their newscast.

- I would watch Ron and Paul, and I'd go- - Continuing to investigate the murder- - "Oh man."

- of a (indistinct) year-old woman in that area.

- "Do I even have a future in this business?

They're doing stuff I can't even conceive of."

- The whole image, I think, of KARE.

Like, somehow, they got immersed in the community, and I think they went really hard into the community, capitalizing on, literally, the word KARE, K-A-R-E. - MS changes lives, but your pledge can change MS. - [Diana] How KARE came about was Gannett had our call letters at WSA.

♪ WUSA ♪ (exuberant music) - And they then bought the Washington DC station, so they wanted to change the call letters in Washington DC to WUSA, so we had a very short amount of time to find new call letters.

And the thing that... Our viewers kept saying over and over and over again we were the station that cares.

- So there will be a new station in the Twin Cities next week, called K-A-R-E. That's pronounced, of course, care.

The station says KARE stands for its philosophy.

So, can you hear all the slogans coming outta that?

- How will you know who will be on KARE?

And who will care (crew members laugh) if you know who will be on?

- We made fun of them on the air.

You know, we called 'em the KARE Bears, and you know, it was all fluff, and blah-blah-blah.

(TV buzzes and squeaks) - Update the details outta Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Three tornadoes.

(questing rock music) - Stan Turner is on vacation, and John DeLorean is a free man.

- [Paul Magers] Down there.

- Oh, that's right, yeah.

- How cold is it?

(laughs) - It's cold enough.

I brought my backyard with me.

We were always sensitive: "Well, yeah, you know, it's happy talk, and they have fun together, and that's great.

But can they actually cover the news?"

I think the tipping point there was the tornado.

- That cemented the deal.

That demonstrated to everybody that we could cover a big story and cover it well.

- [Nick] Tom Empey had never been in the helicopter before the photographer.

And so he was kinda sent up to get familiar with the helicopter, shoot some shots.

- We were doing a live shot for the Aquatennial block party, and they were up.

Crowd was gathering.

All of a sudden, Tom, with a special lens; it was a different lens that they had borrowed for that day; saw this tornado.

- [Paul Magers] This breaking news story we'll continue to be updating.

- This is just as the five o'clock news is beginning.

- "News 11" with Paul Magers.

- [Paul Magers] So we run out onto the set.

- [Announcer] Jeff Passolt on sports- - The open- - and meteorologist- - begins the newscast.

- Paul Douglas.

- And then they toss it to me.

Now, Paul Douglas is right over here right now to bring us up to date; Paul.

- Max Mesmer is our Sky 11 pilot, and he is currently up in the vicinity of Brooklyn Park.

There was a reported touchdown in Brooklyn Park.

- [Paul Magers] And then as I'm talking, they go to the video.

As you can see.

It was unlike anything I've ever seen.

You can see debris being tossed up.

- And I'm looking at Paul, who's doing this.

There was no playbook for this.

There was no playbook for narrating a tornado live during a newscast.

- (indistinct) now for 15-20, maybe even 30 or 40, minutes.

There you saw another high-tension wire being hit.

Now, I have a question.

Did we have a warning up on the air about (indistinct)?

- [Nick] They make broadcast history.

It was the first time in history that a live tornado was ever shown from a helicopter.

- [Diana] We had a solid number-one hit that night because of that tornado.

- And we did monstrous, shocking numbers, shocking numbers.

Of television sets in the Twin Cities, something like 90-some percent of them, 92% of 'em, were on, and of the 92% that were on around 90% were on us.

They are under the gun, and you should be moving to the basement immediately underneath a stairwell, under a heavy piece of furniture.

I have never seen anything like this, Paul.

- [Paul Douglas] Yeah, it is.

- That single event, that single coverage, kind of gave KARE credibility that they had not had before.

They had been seen, pretty much, as this happy-talk station, and suddenly, their news department was given some credit.

And then of course, it became a three-way race, which it's been ever since.

- Someone had said, "It'll be a cold day in Hell if that station's ever number one."

And I can't remember who said it, but it always stuck with Joe.

- My goodness.

No one saw them coming, and somebody should've seen them coming.

And they won, and they beat 'CCO soundly for years.

- It was a moment in broadcast history where David took on Goliath and David won.

- [Cathy] I don't think you'll ever see what happened at KARE happen again anywhere.

Everything came together perfectly.

- [Ron] A columnist referred to him as one of the top news anchors in the country.

- I have no possibility of winning the ratings race, because I'm going up against the best anchors in America.

- And I called him and said, "Paul, that's impossible.

You're not even the best news anchor in your own family."

(Diana and Paul laugh) - [Paul Magers] I'll see you back here at 10.

(protester roars) Not everyone at today's march was sympathetic.

Say you're stationed in St. Paul.

A plane full of Minnesotans crashes in Reno.

Your options for getting pictures back were often remote and/or expensive.

- The innovation drive that Hubbards did, looking for other ways to get breaking news, to get live-action news, live cameras.

- [Cathy] KSTP had a brilliant engineer, Ray Conover.

Some folks at KS called him Dr.

Dish.

In the early '80s, he and his team were tinkering with satellite technology, satellite dishes, in the back lot behind the station.

- It became clear to me that, one day, it would be possible to do, essentially, the same thing we were doing with microwaves but with satellites.

- You could do satellite shots before, but it was a huge truck, and you had to book your time days in advance and get an FCC permission.

It was a whole megillah.

- The thing I liked most to do in the world was play hockey when I was a kid, but I was never very good.

- Hubbards have a great love of hockey, and Canadian hockey was big, and the Canadian broadcasters had come up with these small trailers where they had a satellite dish on it, and they could haul it around all these different venues and do hockey games.

Well, that caught the eye of the Hubbard family, who immediately said, "Well, why couldn't we use this for broadcasting?"

So they bought one of these trailers.

They hauled it around Minnesota for a year doing local hockey games as an opportunity to test the technology.

- We were basically told, "If this doesn't work, there are gonna be major, major, major, major cuts in staff because there is no insurance, this is a Hubbard endeavor, and they're paying for it outta their pocket.

If this thing blows up, you are all down the tubes."

And we were all sitting there going, "I hope this satellite works."

(laughs) - It was stressful.

We all felt it.

We knew it even though nobody ever talked to us about it, but we knew how much was on the line with this technology.

- And then they built a truck, and we used that truck.

We hauled it all over the place.

- [Lou] (laughs) And it all worked, and we were saved.

- [Cathy] Ah, that thing was a behemoth.

It was called Newstar.

It was groundbreaking because it really untethered local news stations, and they could broadcast from nearly anywhere.

- Well, with an action cam truck, we are pretty much limited to 25-or-30-mile radius of the Twin Cities.

With our transportable Earth station, we can go virtually anywhere in North America and park the truck and get a signal back to the station.

- [Announcer] Thanks to Newstar 5, the nation's first satellite news-gathering van.

- Well, the networks were not happy, because you had to rely on the network for national or international news, and all of a sudden, a local station could do its own thing.

- [Mark] And from there, it became CONUS, which was a cooperative amongst stations, a mini network, if you will.

- We were jealous.

We had a hard time catching up, and I think that gave them an advantage.

- You were right there at the zeitgeist.

Not only this was important in the world of broadcasting.

This was important all over the world for all kinds of reasons.

- [Chris] So it was a big breakthrough in technology.

That technology's still being used.

(tires screech) - [Donut Vendor] Time to make the donuts.

- And so, for one more time, coming up on tonight's 10:00 PM report, (indistinct).

- And eventually, Dave gave up the 10 o'clock news.

- Look, are these 40?

We say 40 or 50.

Are they scattered throughout the state?

- Dave Moore was getting older.

He'd been on TV for some 30 years at that point.

- First place in community reporting.

- [Cathy] All the other news anchors in town were younger, had more polish.

- Originally, you will recall, that decision was to have been announced tomorrow.

- It wouldn't have been a surprise to know that there mighta been a quiet push to find a younger successor to Dave.

(page rustles) - Oh, we're running over, folks.

Do not worry about the state of this news program.

Columbia, DuPont, and Peabody people have already recognized Don Shelby as an exceptionally gifted journalist.

- Replacing Dave Moore, replacing my hero, the hero of the entire state.

- In the history of Twin Cities television, Dave Moore will stand out at the very top of the list.

None will be recalled with the same kind of love and respect as Dave Moore.

- His last newscast, we were saying our goodbyes.

And I thank you.

And I'll never forget it, but he said to me, "You know, Pat."

- If you want any help with the big words, I'll be around.

- All right, (chuckles) that's gonna do it for tonight's 10:00.

Was such a horrible thing to say, but nobody even blinked.

Nobody blinked at it, except for me, and I just smiled, and.

♪ "Hmm, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm, hmm" ♪ And I remember going home and just being sick to my stomach.

I cried, and I felt terrible.

Building has (indistinct).

I thought, "You know, I have a master's degree in journalism.

I have worked my butt off to be good at what I'm doing."

Scores of other.

"What a demeaning thing to say."

Former attorney T. Eugene Thompson.

And then I just got up and went back to work the next day.

That's what you did back then, but what...

I'm still not over it!

I'm still not over it.

- [Announcer] 10:00 PM report with Pat Miles and Don Shelby.

- [Don] The promotions department would shoot pictures of us, suggesting, maybe, something was happening.

- One of the weird promotions for us was "Pat and Don tonight together," you know, which had all these sexual overtones.

We were like, "Oh my God (chuckles)."

Goodnight, Dave Moore wherever you are.

- [Don] Oh, thanks, Jimmy.

Goodnight, everybody.

- [Announcer] Renault Alliance, sedan, convertible, or.

- [Newscaster] The disaster at Chernobyl.

- Stan Hubbard, the man who owns this company, has been in the headlines time and time again over the comings and goings of the anchor people who have sat behind this desk, people like Ron Magers, Cyndy Brucato, Marcia Fluer, Bob Vernon, Dennis Feltgen, Roy Finden, Skip Loescher, Randall Carlisle, Tom Ryther, Ruth Spencer, Barry ZeVan, pshw, just to name a few.

- The Hubbard MO was to shake things up, even if it was working.

It doesn't mean it was gonna last forever.

They would find a reason to shake it up, if nothing else, just for the game of it.

However, authorities still haven't located.

- Cyndy Brucato was really the figurehead at that station for quite a while, but ultimately, Frank Magid and associates decided that the numbers weren't there and it was time to make another change.

(brooding music continues) - When I was fired from KSTP, I almost became clinically depressed.

That hurt me so much from inside out.

And all of a sudden, in one stroke, I was told, "You're not qualified to do this."

It was such a shock to everybody.

Channel 5 coulda been a little more graceful, heh, about it.

I should've gotten a cake!

Heh.

(button clunks) (crowd roars) - [Reagan] Tear down this wall.

- [Newscaster] Of Jamaica one.

- [Announcer] Pat Miles, Don Shelby.

- My contract had expired at WCCO, and nobody had talked to me about renewing it.

It was just taken for granted that I was gonna stay there no matter what.

The saga of the garbage house continues tonight.

And I don't think it was ever thought that I would have an opportunity to do something else.

Well, seeking the city's cable television franchise.

I had two small children.

My kids were just a year apart, and I was really struggling at WCCO.

I was doing, I think, at the time, the five, six, and the 10 o'clock news.

We're talking about the Red Cross.

It was a really hard schedule for a young mother.

I wasn't home.

I was never home.

I was working all the time, and KARE offered me a job just to do the six o'clock news, which seemed like, you know, a miracle.

(bitter rock music continues) It was a heartbreaking move in so many ways.

Kinda ruined a relationship for me with some of the people at 'CCO that I decided to choose to do what I thought was best for my family as opposed to doing what was best for WCCO.

So that was heartbreaking, and it was risky.

I was told, at the time, that the odds of me being successful were pretty much nil because, if you jump ship and go to another station in most markets, you don't do well.

(weighty music) - KARE 11's Pat Miles recently walked through the entire process from arrest to conviction.

She joins us with more on a good, stiff lesson.

- Thanks, Joan.

You know, I was really amazed when I started working on this story how many people.

Boy, KARE was a great experience for me.

I got to do a Pat Miles special.

I worked with really great, great people, and we did some very serious journalism.

And I was very proud of the work that I did at KARE 11, and I thought they were terrific.

I look back now and think, "Wow, what were we thinking?"

So I take all the KARE Bear stuff back.

(laughs) And thanks to you for watching.

We hope you'll join us again this fall.

- [Newscaster] Another piece of the past fell today in Berlin.

- [Newscaster] Nelson Mandela, a free man.

- [Newscaster] President Gorbachev leaves for Minnesota.

- The North Stars played tonight.

We'll have that story.

They won their game.

- "All I want is a normal life."

I had that coffee cup.

There was never anything normal about anything about the life.

It's really hard in your personal life.

It's very, very hard: a lotta hours, a lotta sacrifice.

Your wife ends up being, you know, really, the single mom because you're working every single night, lotta weekends.

So there were times that I felt, like, "boy, I just"...

I wish I'd had a normal life.

But then you know, the drug that was local television and the buzz you get still of being there for the big story, whatever it might be.

- My job was as important as my family, no two ways about it.

- You're gonna work holidays.

You're gonna work weird hours.

You're gonna work weekends.

You're gonna work birthdays.

You're gonna work anniversaries.

You're gonna miss things: people's weddings, people's funerals.

- When you're in a scary situation when you're carrying that camera on your shoulder, you got a blind side.

- [White-Hatted Man] Yes, I do.

- Mean, you've gotta have your head in a swivel, and you've gotta be conscious of where you are.

- This job, you just have to always be able to take care of yourself.

There's nobody coming for ya.

The station can't save ya.

- [Officer] Tom, I've been down.

- Crimestoppers raided at a drug house in St. Paul somewhere, and they caught someone from the cartel in Columbia, and this guy was angry.

He blamed me.

- [Crew Member] And it's scary, and it's dangerous, but it's exciting, and it's fun.

- [Announcer] Lifestyles of the rich and famous.

(button clunks) (adulated music) - [Rick] A convention buster right from the start.

- Process is as much fun as a solution.

Did you develop anything you thought was actual close, you know, relationships with any of the anchor stars of your era?

- [Rick] None of the anchors, none of the stars.

- Yeah, yeah, they were always kind of operating on a different level, and they always seemed a little bit more wary.

I mean, there was more to risk from talking to jackals, like us, in any kinda candid way.

- Our guests this morning are the anchor women from the different television stations around the Twin Cities.

- [Rick] Women were the focus of attention when you were covering local news media more than the men, possibly because of the novelty of it.

People like to comment more on women.

They like to comment on the way women looked.

- [Caller] It's hard to believe that you can get a group of women together as pretty as you all seem to be and as wonderful, and I think you all just have a very fresh, wonderful look.

- We offer more to criticize.

A man sits out there, and no matter how professional/good he is, every night, he looks the same.

His hair looks the same.

The suit's the same.

But a woman gets out there, and she'll look a little different.

She will laugh a little different.

She might be pregnant.

It costs a few dollars a bottle.

If not.

- It was hard.

It was hard.

Was a lot to live up to.

I was getting a lot of attention, and it was scary for me.

I felt like I couldn't make a mistake.

(scampering music continues) - I mean, that was part of the fun of it, you know, kinda taunting 'em, tweaking 'em, like that.

But you know, they knew.

One of the women shows up with some radical new style-of-the-moment hairdo, and who's not gonna notice.

- A woman was kind of upset with me because I wore the same earrings three days in a row.

But you know, the guys got it, too.

You know, they didn't like Paul's ties, or they didn't like a suit that they wore, or you know, somebody from the sports department, their jacket was too flashy.

- People are supposed to take an interest in you, in your life and what you're like.

You've become a friend to them, you know, someone...

The old cliche.

It's in their living room every night.

Anybody that struggled with that wasn't made for the game.

- You're out there doing your job every day in front of people, and they get to criticize ya.

It's just part of the deal.

It's just part of the deal.

- Viewers would call in, and they would record every single comment: the good, the bad, the ugly.

And they would circulate it throughout the whole building.

- After a while, it's kinda like you expect it, and it's like, "Well, at least, they're watching, right?

At least, they're watching.

They might not like what they're seeing on the...

But they're watching," you know?

- It's kinda funny.

You used to hear from women going, "Hey, I go to bed with you every night and wake up with you every morning."

Huh, (chuckles) thanks, I appreciate that.

- Eight o'clock.

Paul?

- Diana, it's the most (indistinct) night I've experienced yet out here on the backyard.

Just to give you.

Sometimes, when the wind chill was like 30-40 below, my mouth would freeze up, and I would slur my words, and I had people calling and saying, "Paul, have you been drinking?"

The extent of the blowing.

- Portions of Minnesota.

- [Interviewee] Woe be to the weather guy who got the forecast wrong!

- But not the Twin.

- I felt sorry for our weather people because they would catch hell- - [Weather Person] This is a national weather service in the Twin Cities.

- [Don] for interrupting programs to tell people in Waconia that a tornado was bearing down on them and all the calls from Burnsville that came in saying, "Where are my shows?"

- [Weather Person] Thunderstorm.

- [Don] They would catch holy Hell just doing their job.

- [Weather Person] Weather service.

- [Brian] I mean, all pub is good pub.

You put their name in the paper.

It added to their Q factor with the audience.

You couldn't write enough syrupy profiles of the anchor people.

- "Mpls.St.Paul Magazine" did a whole spread on local women in the news, and my mom was part of that.

- Some women's national women's magazine, and they named the top 12 best local news anchors, and I was one of 'em, nationwide.

I guess that was good for your ego.

- [Paul Magers] I'll handle it the way Paul Douglas handled it.

- Yeah!

(audience cheers and applauds) - [Audience Member] Whoo!

- Nick Coleman had written a media column for "The Star Tribune" for quite a while.

You know, if your crowd mighta gotten restless or annoyed with me tweaking them about their haircuts, Nick would eviscerate them.

(laughs) - When I got here in 1983, Nick Coleman called me weatherboy, and it made me furious, calling me weatherboy.

- [Don] "Don Shelby is a very odd-looking duck."

I am quoting on this.

- I do the weather for free.

They pay me to put up with the BS.

- It is combat pay.

They're being paid for their journalism, obviously, and they were good journalists, but it was the fame, the recognizability, that boosted their salaries.

You're taking extra bullets that the rest of the people in your newsroom don't have to take.

- You're dedicated to it, so you overlook those things, and you were well-compensated, which made it a little bit easier, right?

- [Rick] The salaries were already starting to become kind of amazing.

What the top anchors were making certainly was impressive.

- No, I had that conversation too with Ron Handberg.

I said, "Hey, I asked Don how much he was making, and he told me, and I'm not making that."

And I think the response was "well, you're a woman."

You have to understand these were those times.

That was the time that we lived in back then.

You just said, "Okay, I'm a woman."

(laughs) And you know, I look at women today that are so irate about this, that, and the other, and I think, "Oh, you have no idea (laughs).

You have no idea."

- Throw in a free TV, and I don't think there's a better buy in town, and that's business as usual.

♪ It's a laugh going up ♪ ♪ It's a scream coming down ♪ (lively piano music) - The newsroom is a competitive place with deep hard-felt opinions about everybody else's work.

- The news director at the time was a screamer.

He would stand in the middle of the newsroom and scream what you were doing wrong to everybody and anybody.

- I go over to one station to talk to somebody.

They know I'm there.

Doesn't matter.

The news director is throwing a fit.

(laughs) He's actually slinging chairs.

It's like, "All right, just me get this out here and stuff (laughs)," you know?

- Well, I've got 1,000 of those stories, but I should adhere to my rule that what happens in the newsroom stays, (snickers) (Don laughs) because people are sometimes at their most unguarded (timid music) and that can be extremely funny or extremely painful and they may be suffering the pain and injury of the stuff they're covering.

- [Diana] Minneapolis, and inside the blood-spattered car was the body of the child.

- [Paul Magers] Tuesday, the body of a 68-year-old man was found beaten to death in a seventh-floor apartment just a mile away.

- You hear about police officers, doctors, firefighters.

They have a thing called psychological help when you go through too much trauma, et cetera, et cetera.

And you can go talk with someone.

In TV news, there is no such thing.

Maybe there is today.

But there wasn't when I was in the business.

You did not go to your news director and say, "Uh, those stories are so sad."

They would see you as a wimp.

You had to shut up and keep going.

One employee who was not laid off today.

I never cried at a news story no matter how sad it was, and I've covered little kids being murdered, I mean, just crazy things; however, I will tell ya honestly, I could be sitting at a dinner table at Thanksgiving a year later, and it would hit me.

And it would just soak in.

And then my mother would wonder, "Why is he so quiet?"

And those things...

It always this delayed (laughs) reaction.

- What everybody understands as 'morgue humor That's how we could stay sane with shouts of expletives coming from desks, and it would not be PC in any place else.

Some of 'em who have imposter syndromes beat themselves up terribly.

Yeah, that is endemic in our field.

You're never good enough.

You're never good enough.

Now, that can turn very dark and become a mental problem.

- I would have panic attacks, honestly.

I had to go and do biofeedback for a long time to be able to not have panic attacks on the air.

In fact, one of 'em I had, and I was with Dave Moore.

And we went to a commercial, and he said, "Are you having a heart attack?"

And I'm like, "Oh my gods, he noticed."

I'm surprised we actually survived it.

- According to the state agriculture commissioner.

- [Newscaster] Pitch you in here.

- Ruh!

(bat clonks) - [Newscaster] Anchorman goes berserk live at 10:00.

- [Newscaster] Or way.

(laughs) - [Office Worker] (belches) Urgh.

- One of the safest out in the- (tires screech) God.

- [Newscaster] Hit home to become a North Star.

- Pass the lemonade, would you, please?

- Urgh.

- [Newscaster] That affect Minnesotans, - Please, join us on "Eyewitness News at 5:00" for our focused...

If service stations close.

- Oh, hello there.

I was listening to the music.

I didn't know I was on.

- [Dave] Those hideous ghoulish billboards, those of us here on channel four- - [Pat] Urgh!

- [Dave] my friends, these are not us.

- [Pat] General George Fisher.

- [Newscaster] Brian Augustine.

- [Interviewee] So much happened in local TV news between those early newscasts and the end of the 1980s, the end of the decade saw this continued rise of cable news outlets that covered the news 24-7 in a very crowded market.

The handful of network affiliates in the Twin Cities found themselves competing for people who had a smorgasbord of other viewing options literally at their fingertips.

What never changed, though, was the trust viewers placed in those who reported the news, the people who were dedicated to doing the important work of journalism: the anchors, the reporters, producers, and photographers who focused on getting the news first, reporting it accurately and fairly.

- The FBI has now officially entered.

- I was so blessed to work with the best people in the business at the time when news was so important.

The local news was everything.

- But first, yesterday, we reported.

- It's been a wonderful trip down memory lane for me to go back through all these years.

Looking back on it, I know it's not easy.

Looking back on it, I know how often I took it for granted.

- [Pat] I was in TV news at the absolute most special time.

We had the budget.

We had the means.

We had the time, and we had the support.

- This two-day sweep is only a part of the crackdown on crime in Minneapolis.

We wanted to be good at what we did.

We didn't just wanna be number one.

We wanted to do it well.

- That's the human part of what we do, a privilege of sharing those stories that might inspire somebody else.

- News people provide a function in this community that is often too little appreciated, often misunderstood, but, in the end, does an enormous amount of good.

- What we have on our shoulders is a camera that can be that voice for that mother whose kid just got killed.

- We were going to reveal things that were wrong, and you would have to go fix it, the public, and that's a responsibility that I think all citizens have: to take action to rectify wrong.

- Amen.

That's the end.

(TV squeals and buzzes) (cassette player clunks) (amusing music) (apprehensive music) (beaming music)