Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 71

1 ARTS ENTERTAINMENT SUNDAY, JULY 2 2000 STAR TRIBUNE PAGE F5 IMAGERS from Fl at home. It's me looking at me, me listening to me." That may sound narcissistic, but what he means is that he trusts himself to react like a typical viewer. And the numbers indicate his instincts are sound. newsroom put career to rest I I 1 i '1 I iUlttr Paul Anthony Magers Age: 46. FamRy: Wife Kathy; daughters Emily, 10, and Anna, 5.

Home: Lake of the Isles area, Minneapolis. Education: Bachelor's degree in speech and economics, University of Washington; doctorate in law, Hamline University. Careen Reporter, KATU-TV, Portland, 1979-81; reporter-anchor, KGTV-TV, San Diego, 1981-83; anchor, KARE-Channelll, 1983-present Hobbies: Golf, singing, practical jokes. Quote: "Your circle of friends, it's difficult to keep it expanding like the universe. You can't take care of it And so I don't.

I try to keep my friends limited to a pretty small core group that I really respect and trust and, if I had some problem of consequence, I know I could call anytime, day or night And 1 hope they feel the same way." The final stop? Almost seven years have passed since the possibility of Magers jumping to NBC or CBS was the talk of the Twin Cities. KARE made it worth his while to stay, and his moment may have passed. Fitzpatrick says the economics of TV have changed so much in recent years that neither the networks nor the largest local stations are paying the sort of salaries that offset the hassles of commuting or the disruption of family life. By all accounts, Magers is devoted to his wife, Kathy, and two young daughters. He calls them from work in the afternoon and often dashes home for dinner after the 6 p.m.

news. He mentioned in conversation that Channel 11 's studios long ago were located at the Calhoun Beach Club, not far from his house. He fantasizes about driving his motor scooter back and forth to work. Magers doesn't sound like a guy with a great urge to tackle Manhattan or LA Does he ever get bored? he was asked. "I get bored walking into the same building, parking in the same parking lot walking through the same doors," he said.

"But I don't get bored by the job. When I'm out there 5, 6 and 10, I'm really focused. Time kind of whips by for me. That's about as pure as my mind is. It's pure concentration.

Plus, it's fun when you have sidekicks you like." No doubt Not just anybody will let you pelt them with flaming balls of death. ATI III I rrf i --J 'Vitality of TV thoughts of law More often, Magers' pranks are as simple and silly as leaping from behind a door to startle colleagues. "He's done that to us three times in the last two weeks," Beeson said. But as much as Beeson enjoys Magers, he also respects him. "If you were going to clone an anchor, if you were smart enough to do it, he's the one you would cast," he said.

Anchor in the making Magers is the youngest brother of Ron Magers, KSTP-Channel 5's star anchor in the 1970s. But Paul Magers' decision to pursue a TV-news career was a relatively late-breaking development. Bom in California, Magers grew up in Toppenish and Ellensburg, Yakima Valley towns that he compares to Willmar or Hutchinson, Minn. He insists he was not a "golden boy." He says that he ran track and played basketball in high school but wasn't a big star, that he was liked well enough but wasn't a BMOC. Like his four siblings, he was expected to have a job and help pay his way.

He baled hay and worked in a food processing plant "We thought we were middle class, but we weren't," he said. "Ron can remember our mom and dad celebrating because he got a raise to 75 bucks a week." While Ron, 10 years his senior, developed an early interest in broadcasting, Paul never deejayed, never acted. He majored in speech and economics at the University of Washington, then enrolled in law school at the University of Puget Sound After their father's death in 1975, Paul accepted Ron's invitation to summer in the Twin Cities with his family and get reacquainted. Ron got him a job at KSTP working as a dispatcher. Magers said he was packing up his old Dodge Colt, preparing to drive back to Washington for the fall semester, when Ron talked him into staying.

With a little help from KSTP owner Stanley S. Hubbard, Magers got an interview at Hamline University's law school and was able to arrange a transfer. While doing odd jobs at KSTP and as a doormanbouncer at the West Bank bar Sgt Preston's, he got a law degree from Hamline two years later. Friends whom he made in law school, such as businessman John Allen, say Magers would have made a terrific lawyer. But he never took the bar exam.

Magers said he while he liked the law, the "vitality" of a TV newsroom proved irresistible. He got his first TV job reporting for a station in Portland, then moved on to San Diego before landing at Minneapolis' WTCN. The station had recently been acquired by Gannett and was soon renamed KARE; he was installed as anchor in September 1983. To appreciate why Magers is worth the widely estimated $1 million a year that KARE pays him, It's essential to understand how far the station has come. In 1983, Channel 1 1 was a non-factor in the TV news race.

KSTP and WCCO-Channel 4 together attracted 80 percent of the audience at 10 p.m. Channel 11 split what was left with public TV and whatever then-independent KMSP-Channel 9 was running. Star Tribune photo by David Brewster Thinking on his feet: News anchor Paul Magers munches on a snack while talking to producer Allison lacone in the KARE newsroom. With Magers, Diana Pierce, Paul Douglas (now at WCCO) and other much-maligned "KARE bears" in place, Channel 1 1 began one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the annals of local TV news. By the end of the decade, KARE's 10 p.m.

news was in a seesaw battle with WCCO for first place in total households. Long before that, however, KARE took command of the contest that really matters to advertisers: the battle for the eyeballs, if not the hearts and minds, of the 25-54 crowd. In this key demographic, KARE has lost only one sweeps period in the past 14V4 years. In May, KARE had 50 percent more of these coveted viewers than second-place WCCO. The consensus of TV industry observers is that Magers, more than any other factor, is the secret of KARE's success.

"There's not an anchor in the country more important to his station than Paul Magers is to KARE," says KSTP news director Scott Libin. Top cat To borrow a line from the Who, "How do you think he does it? What makes him so good?" It goes without saying that Magers, who is of Portuguese and Scotch-Irish descent, is a good-looking guy. But his colleagues say that it's what he projects despite his matinee-idol appearance that has made him the anchor to beat in the Twin Cities market People in the business talk about his great voice, deep and resonant but not too studied and pompous, and his photographic memory. But mostly they talk about his quickness. "He can really think on his feet," says Don Fitzpatrick, a "head-hunter" and consultant who has tapes of thousands of anchors and reporters on file at his San Francisco office.

"He's a great ad libber. He'll be reading a story, and he's 'tossing' making a transition to Pat Miles or Diana Pierce, and he'll add just one piece of information often it's humorous that shows he really knows the Twin Cities." Beeson says Magers is "terrifically glib, which is a skill in its own way. To make a comment that makes sense and is to the point and pithy and sums it up, I've never met anybody who does it better than he does." Miles, who jumped to KARE from WCCO in 1988, says Magers is "very disciplined. He reminds me of former 'CCO anchor Dave Moore in that way. He's very particular, almost perfectionistic about going through the scripts and knowing exactly what he's reading and how he wants to read it and how it should be presented.

Paul will sit and read his scripts out loud two or three times before a newscast. Dave Moore used to do that Bud Kraehling used to do that" According to Lindner, Magers serves as "a viewer representative. Paul will rarely watch a story before it airs He'll see it fresh like the viewer will." Magers himself says he never visualizes his audience. "I've always imagined that I read to myself," he said. "It's always me on the couch r- Zj Zz SZl--- A Sr A TRUE STORY.

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