Anchored In Seattle -- Margaret Larson Forgoes Prime Time With Network For Quality Time With Family, Much To Kiro's Delight

Margaret Larson lives near Lake Sammamish. She escaped from back East, and she still glances that way, toward the Cascades.

"I know it probably sounds ridiculous to people who have lived here a long time, but when I leave that neighborhood on a clear day and I see that view, I can hardly believe my good fortune," Larson says.

Nor can the folks at KIRO-TV, rebuilding their No. 3-rated news, which had been in a sort of parody of leadership purgatory and, even today, is in ratings hell.

On Monday, Larson will join Steve Raible as co-anchor on Channel 7's newscasts at 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.

If Larson were arriving to Seattle television the usual way, making a move up to the 13th-biggest television market in the country from, say, No. 19 Sacramento, this would be no big deal.

But Larson - pinch the staff at KIRO, please - is not just anybody. She was on a rapid rise at NBC, as a network anchor and correspondent.

She is regarded as a skillful writer and reads the news with a serene intelligence, flawlessly, as you'd expect from someone who was chosen to join Katie and Bryant on "Today" every morning.

And she's a seasoned reporter. Larson was stationed in London for a year and a half and covered Europe and the Middle East. She covered the floods in the Midwest last summer, working about half-time for NBC while living here with her husband, Tim Larson, a former anchor himself and a co-producer for KIRO's 4 p.m. magazine, "Hour Northwest."

Margaret Larson is only 35 years old. But she is giving up network globe-trotting so she can live a "life better in balance," as she puts it.

And KIRO was happy to accommodate her desire to put down roots, to put her infant son to bed most nights, and to ensure she will be seeing that Cascades view for at least three years, the length of her contract.

Family-friendly work schedule

How's this for a working parent's schedule?

In the late afternoon, Larson will drive from the Cascade foothills to KIRO's studios in the shadow of the Space Needle. She will do a little writing and editing before going on the air.

Two nights a week, after the early-evening news, Larson will return home and feed Kyle, 16 months, and put him to bed. Then she'll go back to the station to anchor the 11 p.m. news with Raible.

"For Kyle's reality, I will only be gone three or four hours," Larson says, "at a regular time each day instead of disappearing for a couple of days" at a time.

Two evenings a week, Larson will stay in the newsroom. On Friday nights she won't anchor at 11 except during rating periods and when there's compelling breaking news. She'll start her weekend early, being at home for Kyle three nights out of five.

It's a piece of work, a professional mother's dream.

"Bill Lord," KIRO's news director, Larson says, "has three kids in diapers, so he's well-acquainted with the challenges I've been trying to meet and was able and willing to formulate a work schedule and work environment that would allow me to have a job that fit around my family rather than forcing my family to fit around my job."

Shift in priorities

Until now, parenthood for the Larsons has been wrapped around Margaret Larson's career.

When they returned to New York from London to make things more manageable, "Tim decided to stay home with the baby for a couple of months, which stretched into eight months" while Larson was anchoring on "Today" and doing occasional reporting. A nanny search was a "terrifying experience," so it was put off indefinitely.

"At one point Tim said to me, `Look, I don't have a life, I don't have a job, here I walk around with a baby strapped to my chest, you're gone all the time. Where is this going? What is the future?'

"So we began to have very congenial but pretty soul-searching conversations about what life is about, what we wanted. Tim has followed me around, allowed me to do what I wanted to do, for 10 years. And we just reached a point where the price for him had turned out to be pretty great, and the potential price for our child was greater than we were willing to pay."

So they made a list of places. "I said, `You know, I'm ready to be off the treadmill. You go get a job someplace doing something that you like and enjoy and someplace you think we can make a life and I'll go with you and we'll see what happens.' "

Three weeks later, Tim Larson got the producing job at KIRO.

At the end of last May, they moved to the Eastside, with Margaret intending to continue as a part-time reporter for NBC.

As soon as they hit town, the rumors began. It seemed inevitable Larson would end up with one of the three major-network affiliates.

"I have to tell you that whatever was written or said at the time was not in the plan," Larson insists.

But the plan soon changed. The travel for NBC was a grind. "One of the things that happens when you are working in network television is you're on the plane a lot, you zip in, you zip out," Larson says. "A lot of the relationships you develop are truncated and empty, and I found myself longing for a place in a community."

With her husband already working for KIRO and newly appointed Lord trying to decide on a female co-anchor to join Raible, the metaphysical force of inevitability was fulfilled. KIRO announced her hiring last month.

Faces tough competition

OK, so she's hot stuff, but KIRO is a distant third in the evening and late-night news ratings. Can Larson really make a difference?

She anchored on "Today" and filled in occasionally for Katie Couric, but many here won't recognize Larson. There are three network morning shows, and while "Today" is No. 1 in the Seattle market, most folks watch one of the other two, whose combined audience is larger.

"I think in a lot of ways she will face the same obstacles anyone coming into the market will face, working to get established," said KING-TV News Director Andy Beers.

Before NBC, Larson worked in Sacramento at KCRA-TV. Bob Jordan, the former KING-TV news director who's now at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, was her news director in Sacramento, where she was hugely popular. Jordan once called Larson one of the 10 best anchors in the country.

But in Seattle, Larson has tough competition.

The most stable anchor team in town, Kathi Goertzen and Dan Lewis on KOMO-TV, has been together six years, and they don't stumble on the set, either. When Channel 4 isn't winning the ratings at 6:30 p.m., it isn't far behind No. 1 KING at 5 p.m. and 11 p.m.

And while Jean Enersen and Barry Judge on KING have been anchoring together only three years, 25-year Channel 5 veteran Enersen might be the most recognizable woman in Western Washington, on or off television, and she can't seem to shake the magic words U.S. Senate prospect.

So now comes Larson, the most notable of a number of faces joining KIRO's effort to reach some ratings parity with KING and KOMO. Tony Ventrella, the sportscaster who left KING last year, will begin doing sports on KIRO in April, and Joyce Taylor, another KING defector, will be on the air in June at noon and 6:30 p.m. - after "no-compete" KING contract clauses expire.

"Everybody's chomping at the bit," says Raible, a relative newcomer to the anchor game and to news, who was tapped in the fall by Lord to be the main man after a long stint in sports.

"I've been lucky enough to work with some very good co-anchors - Susan Hutchison and Nerissa Williams - and I'm looking forward to working with Margaret," he says.

Says Larson: "Everybody I've ever anchored with is a friend to me today. A major part of my decision was meeting Steve and knowing that he's someone I can enjoy spending this kind of time with.

"This is going to be a fun mission. This is a station - nobody should kid themselves - that has been through some tough times. . . . I want to be a part of a group of people trying to accomplish something rather than the Lone Ranger riding around on airplanes with a laptop computer."