Fort Lauderdale News from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 329

11 Ch. 7 team irked at ratings spot TO By Bill Kelley TtlrvMoa Writer Miami's NBC affiliate, WSVN-Ch. 7, landed in the poll roughly where it lands in the ratings third in its market It's a place Channel 7 has occupied as far back as anyone can remember. "I'm sick and tired of reading that Channel 7 is a 'perennial third place' station," WSVN news director David Choate says churlishly. "We've come a long way." Channel 7's current Monday-Friday, 6 and 11 p.m.

anchor team is Peter Ford and Sally Fitz, who have shared the WSVN anchor desk for two years. Their teaming is one of the latest moves in a six-year drive to upgrade the station's ratings a campaign that began with the forced retirement of Wayne Fariss, Channel 7's anchor for 20 years, in 1980. Steve Rondinaro and Donna Hanover and then Rondinaro and Fitz preceded the current team. "I've been on the air seven years now at Channel 7 although not as an anchor," says Fitz, who used to do the five-minute, local news cut-ins for Today, "and I can remember when we were beaten by Star Trek on Channel 6 at 6 p.m. We've grown a lot since then.

One ratings book Nielsen now shows us in real good shape one Arbitron in not as good shape." Generally, Arbitron shows WSVN's newscasts in third place, while Nielsen shows them in second place. WSVN's performance in the Nielsen books, which supposedly have a younger sampling, reflects the age 18-49 demographics it inherits from first-place NBC. Fitz says WSVN's "Celebrating South Florida" campaign in which she and Ford originated 20 days of newscasts from 20 communities unified the staff and impressed South Florida viewers. know where they want to be, which is happy and upbeat with lots of features." On Aug. 1 at 5 p.m., WSVN will premiere Live at 5, a one-hour newscast, heavy with features, co-anchored by Denise White and Frank Robertson.

(This week, sources at Channel 10 indicated that Robertson, a Phoenix anchor, was turned down for departing Channel 10 anchor Mike Schneider's job.) Even Channel 7's harshest detractors readily concede that it has improved significantly since the Wayne Fariss days. Terenzio, however, remarks that he's not surprised Channel 7 didn't do better with its "Celebrating South Florida" campaign. Says Terenzio: "I'm surprised they didn't do worse. If there had been some real news in May such as the Eastern Airlines takeover, the event in Haiti I think they'd have been hurt Viewers don't turn to them as an authority." Choate angrily dismisses the criticism. "We brought the news to the community, which made our reports a little more focused," be says.

"We bad a couple of exclusives such as Stephanie Stahl's story on the grand jury report on nursing homes. The next day, we were already following that up with another report as the other stations were just breaking it. More important, there wasn't a single story we missed while we were out there. "Here is a Nielsen book that calls us a solid No. 2 at 6 and 11 p.m." although the sampling is not as cut and dried as Choate describes it "and no TV columnist picks up on that and writes about it "I'm just wondering what's going to happen when we're No.

1 and we are going to be No. 1." Anchors Peter Ford and Sally Fitz. She says she's not surprised it didn't sharply affect WSVN's ratings. "Ratings services can trail the public by several months in measuring a trend!" she says. "I don't want to sound corny, but I enjoy the camaraderie now, and that was increased by that month of broadcasts." Choate says the "Celebrating South Florida" campaign was the latest step in a massive makeover of the Channel 7 newscast.

"We first changed all the cosmetic things you can do, even the call letters from WCKT to WSVN," explains Choate. "We had to position ourselves to know what we were. The first thing we did was to create a news organization we could be proud of. We wanted to be looked upon as the 'hometown just as the slogan says, the place where you get everything from your entertainment to your news." One of Choate's competitors, WPLG-Ch, 10 news director John Terenzio (whose newscasts beat WSVN's according to Nielsen), says: "Say what you will about them and I don't think much of this 'hometown station' stuff they Segretto Continued from page 5 worked as a "go-fer" for a year and a half, before receiving his first check for $12.50. He worked a variety of menial jobs in the news department, eventually producing WTVJ's weekly shows on coaches at the University of Miami (where Segretto was a student).

In 1973, he was named sports anchor of the Monday-Friday noon newscast Segretto thinks 13 continuous years on the air at WTVJ have contributed to his popularity among viewers. Readers who ence. They're all either jocks, ex-jocks or guys who wish they could be jocks. So they're very opinionated. And you know fairly quickly whether they like you.

"Because the network news doesn't cover sports, we're giving the national sports news as well as what happens locally. There's a balance to maintain there, and you have to have a feel for it" Asked if he is tempted to either leave South Florida for a bigger market, or try for a network job, Segretto replies: "I've thought about both, sure. But I'm very comfortable here, I have a home and ties here, and right now, this is an area that's been good to me." added comments to their ballots praised Segretto's knowledge of South Florida sports, and his upbeat but simple style. Nonetheless, having worked nowhere but WTVJ has occasionally stalled Segretto's ascent at Channel 4. "You can be at one station and become president of the company, but they still look at you as an intern," he says, "while outside the company, my reputation was growing.

WTVJ tried a lot of split-anchor concepts in 1975-76, which they didn't stay with for long." Segretto became sports anchor for the Ralph Renick Report in 1978. He reflects: "Sports fans are a unique audi.