Back In The Box -- A Year After Bill Lord Joined Kiro-TV, The Newscast Is Vastly Different. Will The Ratings Follow?

he ratings are still meager, but since he returned to Seattle a year ago to be KIRO-TV's news director, Burien native Bill Lord has transformed his department from a bizarrely decorated house of humiliation into some semblance of an in-your-face newsroom.

Last week, Lord, 47, was in his office watching a big monitor as anchor David Kerley introduced a story.

The moment Kerley stopped speaking, Lord snapped his fingers, as if that would summon up the videotaped report about the Eastern Washington fires.

But only the people in the control booth can roll the tape, and the video lagged Kerley's spoken cue by a fraction of a second. It was not a network-tight segue from anchor to tape.

After months of very visible changes, Lord's remake of Channel 7 has come now to scrutinizing tenths of a second, to fine-tuning. A huge banner with 18-inch-tall letters hangs above the Channel 7 assignment desk: "CLEAR & CLEAN."

The mission during the July ratings "sweeps," which end on Wednesday, has been to explain simply, to stop pushing workload up against deadlines unnecessarily and to eliminate the technical glitches that can imply incompetence.

No longer the laughingstock, No. 3-rated KIRO occasionally is beating KING-TV (Channel 5) and KOMO-TV (Channel 4) and the newspapers with modest "gotcha" stories and, every so often, outstanding coverage of big news events.

So far KIRO hasn't generated the kind of high-impact scoop to send other media scrambling. Neither have the other TV stations in town, not in a long time. But like its rivals, every so often Channel 7 leads its 5 p.m. news with a story no one else has.

In a crowded television-news field, that sort of distinction might make a difference if word gets around.

KIRO's presentation, too, is much improved. Channel 7 looks more like the other stations now, which is favorable because stylistic distinction in broadcast media is anathema, as "out of the box" proved.

"Out of the box" lasted only a few months but will take years to live down. With a sweeping million-dollar set, it was launched in February 1993 and promoted as a virtual television renaissance.

The "out-of-the-box" set looked like an art gallery but served a ballet: The anchors would stroll as they talked.

A lot was made of this in advance. So the first night generated enormous ratings. That was it, though. "Out of the box" bombed at the box office.

Soon the anchors were standing still. By last summer, they were sitting.

Vice president of news Andy Ludlum, who implemented the daring format, resigned. Longtime anchor Susan Hutchison quit. Anchor Gary Justice, who with Hutchison was accustomed to ruling Seattle television in the 1980s and now works the morning and noon newscasts, took the newsroom helm during an intense interim after the debacle.

Lord rode in last August.

"There's no question that when Bill came here we were at the lowest point as far as morale and journalism," said photographer Brian Miller.

Putting KIRO back inside the box hasn't been easy. For one thing, a lot of egos were bruised by inevitable personnel changes and new standards, and many of those bruises have been examined by print media - with an intensity that some at KIRO believe unfairly magnified problems.

Writing about KIRO had indeed become sport in recent years. The spectacular failure of "out of the box" was bad enough, but it came on the heels of more than a decade of directive leadership by former news czar John Lippman, who is blamed for turning KIRO-TV's newsroom into a den of dysfunction. A keep-your-head-down, wait-for-instructions ethos had evolved. Like no other newsroom in town, it leaked gossip. It still does to some degree. That's how many at KIRO coped for years.

Lord, a University of Washington alum and former NBC correspondent, came from WKRN-TV in Nashville with high recommendations. So there were high expectations.

But his low-profile management style, combined with managing editor Rick Shenkman's passionate and demanding demeanor, was confusing for some.

"I misjudged the degree to which this group of people had been managed poorly in the past," said Lord. "I thought I could come in and say we no longer are going to be an authoritarian regime - we are no longer going to be top-down.

"I thought I could come in and say, `You're free,' and I thought they would say, `Yippee!' Instead they said, `That's great. Now what do you want us to do?' "

So now Shenkman is taking every news staffer to lunch, one by one, and Lord says he is more sensitive to the fact he has to prove "change can be positive."

For Channel 7, change is imperative, although the low ratings are as much due to weak or erratic lead-in programming as the news itself.

Lord says the daily overnight Nielsen ratings generated by meters in about 400 Western Washington homes shows KIRO is making gains. But KIRO still is almost always solidly in third place behind KING and KOMO, and the viewership of the 10 p.m. news on independent KSTW-TV (Channel 11) has recently surged into the neighborhood of the big-three network affiliates.

Nonetheless, there is a sense in the KIRO newsroom that the embarrassing days are over and that it's time to promote the station's reincarnation. KIRO will do so this fall with a budget second only to that for "out of the box," which most agree had an overly brilliant ad campaign.

Comfortably back in the box, "We're going to go out and sell ourselves now," Lord said.

--------------------------------------------------. A year of evolution

The major changes at KIRO-TV's news department in the last year under news director Bill Lord:

-- A new logo and moniker, "News Channel 7," replaced "the KIRO News Network," which had welded the TV station's identity to KIRO-AM-FM's news-talk format.

-- A traditional anchor desk displaced the failed stand-up, "out of the box" delivery of news. The station hopes to remake the avant-garde "out of the box" newsroom set next year. -- A conventional "front four" team replaced the ensemble of half-a-dozen walking or standing anchors. Steve Raible emerged from the ensemble. Margaret Larson had moved to town after leaving NBC's "Today." Weather forecaster Harry Wappler was the one person the newsroom storm seemingly never hit. Sports anchor Tony Ventrella defected from KING-TV.

-- A new managing editor reorganized the reporter ranks and imposed new standards on writing and editing. Rick Shenkman is a published historian ("Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History") who had worked for Lord in Salt Lake City and has lived in Seattle for 10 years.

-- A de-emphasis of crime news and the creation of labeled "good news" segments.

-------------------------------------------------------. What they're saying

From the top

"I am trying to make this the place to work for someone who is a Northwest native who wants a long career in broadcast journalism - the local, hometown newsroom. KING used to be that place. I don't think it is anymore." - Bill Lord, KIRO-TV news director

"If we have a soul in this newsroom, and that's driving decisions, then the public will catch on." - Rick Shenkman, managing editor

From the trenches

"To achieve any success, you have to fail. KIRO, to its credit, is willing to take the bumps to get to that destination instead of playing it safe." - Julie Blacklow, KIRO-TV reporter

"I think after a year we're finally on our feet, and everyone's moving in the same direction. Now it's our job to convince everyone else. I think it was smart for us to get our own house in order before inviting people in." - Bryan Thielke, assignment manager

"Even Coca-Cola screwed up and came back with Classic Coke. Maybe people should try watching classic KIRO news for a change." - Herb Weisbaum, consumer reporter