Anchor’s Away

The first time the Phoenix media ever paid attention to Kent Dana, he was 5 years old and won the “Mr. Little Arizona” contest. It was 1947 – World War II was comfortably finished, but Korea was looming – and the cute little boy was a big deal. Mr. Little Arizona had no way of knowing then that he’d remain a big deal in Phoenix for the rest of his life.

Over the last quarter-century, Kent Dana has become the single most recognizable icon on Phoenix television. He’s unquestionably the city’s No. 1 news anchor; he is universally liked and respected; and for viewers, he’s been a voice so firm and solid and trusted that some call him “the Tom Brokaw of Phoenix.”

While the Valley’s television stations have bounced all over the map, changing national affiliations and shifting anchors with regularity, Kent Dana remained steady on steady Channel 12 – it’s always been the local NBC affiliate, and he has always been its mainstay anchor.

You could say that Kent Dana – the home-town boy who made good – grew up with Phoenix television, and Phoenix television grew up with him.

So it was big news – shocking, really – to learn last fall that the icon of KPNX-TV was jumping ship and moving over to Channel 5, the local CBS affiliate.

Huh? Going from the No. 1 station in the market to a station that’s been at or close to the bottom of the ratings game for a very long time? Leaving the home where his co-anchor, Lin Sue Cooney, is such a close friend that he walked her down the aisle? Skipping out on the station that now also employs his youngest son, Joe? Abandoning a job that already was paying him the highest anchor salary in town? Walking away from the station that shares the same owner as the city’s only daily newspaper, which often ignores the other media in favor of promoting Channel 12?

What in the world is happening here?

“They threw a ton of money at him,” was the first assessment as the news spread, and that part is true – signaling KPHO’s gamble that along with Kent Dana comes viewers.

But it doesn’t explain it all, and once all the pieces fit together, you find some hurt feelings, some testosterone-driven decisions and the big question: Which of these stations has made a big mistake?

People think they know Kent Dana because they’ve seen him in their living rooms for so long – a loving, teddy bear kind of guy who seems so real, he could be your brother. But it’s a fair bet that most people do not know much about this friendly face with the soothing voice and the infectious laugh – a man who’s charm, one friend says, is that “he doesn’t have a clue about how to be egotistical.”

It helps to know where he came from and how he got here, to understand why he’s making this move.

“People don’t believe it, but I walked to my elementary school through the old dairy farm that still had horse-drawn wagons – that’s where Park Central sits today,” Dana says, marveling that the story is really true.

Phoenix was nowhere near the city it would become when he was born the third of seven kids of Joe and Dora Dana, growing up in what is now considered Down-town Phoenix. His dad tried to support his family with media jobs – KOY radio and a Western variety show on, ironically, Channel 5 – but wages weren’t what they are to-day, so he went into the propane business. “But his heart was always in the [media] business,” Dana remembers, of the father he lost last year.

Dana is a former paperboy for The Arizona Republic and was a “disappointing” student at West High School – mainly because the sisters who preceded him were so smart. About the only time he remembers getting into trouble was when he was a senior and was dubbed one of the troubling “rebel kids.” He laughs at the memory from 1960, and how their terrible sin even warranted a story in the local paper.

“Two weeks before the prom in our senior year a bunch of us decided to wear Bermuda shorts to school,” he says, as he sits in his beautiful North Phoenix home. “There was an immediate announcement – ‘Anyone wearing Bermuda shorts… report to the office.’ Instead of jumping in our cars and running home to change, we went to the office. It was a big deal – all of us wearing Bermuda shorts!”

He grew up in a work-ethic-based Mormon family that went to the chapter house that still operates on Ashland Street in Central Phoenix. His dad insisted that all of his children work during summer vacations – both to develop the habit and to save money for the religious missions the boys would make. Dana started at 50 cents an hour building the gorgeous homes in Arcadia, and work-ed his way up to $3.50 an hour building Chris-Town Mall in the summer before he went to college.

He spent two-and-a-half years in Uruguay on his “Mormon Mission” (saving the $2,500 it took to pay his share of the expenses). “I would not trade it for any two-and-a-half years in college,” he says. “I really learned about people. I learned rejection. I learned sacrifice. I learned a whole different culture. It was a good life-building experience.”

Although he hasn’t been an active member of the church for years, both of his sons made missions – Michael to Arkansas, Joe to Argentina.

After his mission, Dana attended Arizona State University for one year, where he thought of becoming a lawyer. But a friend owned a radio station in Provo, Utah, that needed a summer DJ, so he went to work at KIXX – “Listen just for Kicks.” He made $3.50 an hour, the same amount he’d made pounding nails into support trusses at the shopping mall on Bethany Home Road.

“I found I liked doing radio and switch-ed to BYU [Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City] and got a degree in radio and television.”

He graduated in 1968, by then, a married man with the first of four children he’d have with his first wife, Carol. (He also has two daughters with his wife of 25 years, Janet, and 8 grandchildren, ranging from a baby to a 14-year-old.)

His family and his hometown eventually called him back, but his start was somewhat disappointing.

“I could not get a job when I first came back to Phoenix, but Union 76 had a management training program, and I worked with my uncle,” he recalls. “I ended up owning a couple of self-service gas stations.”

It was Christmas Eve in 1971 when his dad’s old friend, Bill Close of KOOL radio and TV, called to say they needed a part-time guy to write five minutes of radio news for on-the-hour broadcasts on Saturdays and Sundays. Dana jumped at the chance. That job soon led to him filling in on KOOL-TV, which shared the building with the radio station.
“I was a part-time reporter who wasn’t paid very much, but I still had the gas stations,” he remembers. That came in particularly handy during the oil embargo of the early 1970s, which created a severe gas shortage. “Bill Close had me open up the stations at midnight, without the lights, to fill up the news cars,” he reveals.

In April 1973, he got his first chance at anchoring, when he was given the weekend spot. “I was a wreck,” he remembers. “Saturday morning I had the biggest pimple on my nose since I was 16.”

He cut his teeth at KOOL for the next six years, hoping his experience on the week-ends would eventually move him to the daily side, where Bill Close was the anchor in Phoenix. (Close often pulled in 35 to 50 percent of the entire television viewing audience for his newscasts – a popularity no one has even approached in the years since.)

But in 1979, KOOL-TV made a colossal move in the history of Phoenix television – the No. 1 station in town put the city’s first-ever female anchor on the air. Mary Jo West – the same woman who is now the communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix – became an instant sensation. In-deed, West was the first media celebrity in Phoenix. She was young and beautiful and smart, and she changed the course of Phoenix television.

The Bill Close-Mary Jo West combination was dynamite, and Kent Dana could clearly see it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. So, when Channel 12 came calling, he made the switch.

“In 1979, when I left KOOL, I was making $30,000 a year, and for the first time, I felt rich because Channel 12 doubled my salary.”

Those who have been around will re-member that since then, Kent Dana has co-anchored with an impressive list of female journalists: Linda Alvarez (now in Los Angeles), Patti Kirkpatrick (now at Channel 3), Jineane Ford (now the host of Channel 12’s morning program), Lin Sue Cooney and Fay Fredericks (both still with Channel 12).

And over those years, Phoenix television has made many leaps forward. “When I got my first job [in the Valley] in 1971, Phoenix was the 36th largest market in the country. Today, it’s the 15th. I’ve moved up that many spaces without having to pack my bags,” he notes.

And, he does more than just read the news. Kent Dana is one of those old-fashion-ed anchors who also does reporting.

He is just as well known as the host of “Wednesday’s Child” – a profile of special-needs children available for adoption. “I’ve profiled over 1,000 kids over the years, and close to 80 percent were adopted,” he says with awe and pride. “That [show] really changed lives, and it was a fun thing to do.” His home office displays the Emmy he won for “Wednesday’s Child.”

He also did a series where he’d take on a new job for a day – butcher, baker, conducting the Phoenix Symphony. And it is easy to see this is a man who likes tradition when you consider two traditions that be-came fixtures on Channel 12: Every Father’s Day, he’d anchor the news with his father (with the third generation, Joe, joining them in the last couple years); and every Christmas, he’d wear a red plaid jacket during the newscast.

Over the holidays this year, viewers saw that same jacket on Channel 5, but they’ve yet to hear Kent Dana’s name or see his face on the new station.

He is forced by a “non-compete” clause in his Channel 12 contract to stay out of the market for six months – a sentence that will expire on April 4 when he begins his new job.

In the meantime – in a move that had to irk Channel 12 – KPHO ran ads with that familiar red plaid jacket, teasing viewers that an unnamed Phoenix icon was soon to join the station.
The station needs to be careful, though, because the Dana clan has a strange legacy in broadcasting.

“My father was on the board of KOY radio the morning of Pearl Harbor,” Dana says. “My first morning on the radio, Robert Kennedy was shot. The first day on the job for my son, Joe, was 9-11.” He pauses to let that string sink in, and then adds with a laugh: “You don’t want to hire a Dana, be-cause something tragic is going to happen.”

Channel 5’s new general manager, Steve Hammel, had never gotten a standing ovation before, but he got one the day he told his staff he’d nabbed Kent Dana. “The staff is pumped – from the photographers to re-porters to the anchors,” he says. “We know from viewer surveys and research that he’s the No. 1 anchor in town. He’ll be a leader in our newsroom, and he is a leader in the community.”

When asked why he thinks he captured this star, Hammel says, “I contacted Kent at a time in his career when he wanted to make sure that his career was growing, and when KPHO-TV was the station on the move. He wanted to spend the final years of his career on an up note, and at a station going in the right direction.”

And… oh yes, Hammel admits, “He’ll certainly be earning more.” Kent Dana was already the highest paid anchor in Phoenix at Channel 12 when Channel 5 called with its amazing offer.

Dana won’t discuss actual numbers, but it’s clear he was making solid six-figures at KPNX. Best guesses are that he’ll make in the high six-figures at KPHO – $650,000 is the number being bandied around town. Oh, and by the way, that’s an annual salary on a five-year contract that has an option for a sixth year.

That salary is in a stratosphere all its own – it’s about a quarter-million dollars above the average anchor salary in town. He will laugh when you quote it, but then he laughs a lot these days, like a guy on his way to the bank. But he does allow this: “When I called my son Michael to tell him about the offer, he told me, ‘Dad, you aren’t worth that kind of money.'”

Hammel doesn’t want to discuss specific numbers, either, but he is obviously pleased that everyone realizes he’s spending a fortune – a clear indication that Channel 5 has big plans to transform itself from an afterthought station to a frontrunner. At that level of salary, he expects Kent Dana to be both his golden goose and his golden egg.

“We believe that in this community, view-ers like to see familiar people in their living rooms,” Hammel says. “Over the 24 years he was on 12, Kent developed a rapport with viewers, and he will bring many of those people with him.”

Whether viewers have noticed or not – and ratings show that many have noticed – Channel 5 has been working to pull itself out of the basement by offering a news product it advertises as “live, late-breaking, investigative.”

“Four years ago, we were in fifth place at 10 p.m. [in a town with five television stations],” says Hammel, who joined the station two years ago. “In the November book, we were tied in first place at 10 p.m. with Channel 12.” And that milestone occurred with Kent Dana off the news at 12 and not yet able to join the news staff at 5.

At the other news slots – 5 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. – Channel 5 still has a long way to go (right now it’s only beating Chan-nel 15, while losing out to 12, 10 and 3). But Channel 5 recently debuted the only newscast at 6:30 p.m., and Hammel reports it is doing “gangbusters” in the ratings.

The station’s new success at the 10 p.m. slot gives Hammel a lot of encouragement that things are going the right way. “The first thing you have to do is make sure the information you present on the news is what viewers want and is relevant,” he says. “Our content has tremendously improved. Our staff is doing a great job.”

Hammel also stresses the need for Chan-nel 5 to become more active and visible in the community. “For a station to be successful, it needs to be a part of the fabric of the community.” So, you’ll see Channel 5 sponsorships on a variety of projects, from Zoo Lights to the Tempe 4th of July festival to Friendship House to “The Power of 5” – a program encouraging people to volunteer their time and money.

From Hammel’s perspective, things can only get better with the addition of a star like Kent Dana. And it does not hurt at all that CBS is the No. 1 prime-time network, and so the “lead-in” to the news has a ready audience. (Even with remote controls, television people still believe that most viewers will not change the station after the 9 p.m. movie or series ends, but will stay with that station for the news – just as they’ll then turn off their televisions to find it on the same station the next morning when they begin their day, a plus for the early morning shows.)

So, he’s holding his breath until April 4 when his expensive gamble once again sits behind an anchor desk, sharing the anchor duties with Catherine Anaya and Diana Sullivan.

When asked whether he thinks Channel 12 flubbed this one, by letting Dana go, he says, “I don’t want to say they made a mistake, but all I know is we are the beneficiary of having someone with more than a quarter-century of experience on the air. Kent will tremendously help us.”

While Steve Hammel is gloating, the guy who lost Kent Dana, Channel 12’s General Manager John Misner, isn’t.

“We thought we had an agreement with Kent at the same time he was talking with 5,” he begins, sounding a bit hurt. Then he adds: “There is no great story here, his contract was up, and he chose to leave.”
But did you try to keep him? he’s asked. “Absolutely, we tried to keep him. Do you think I’d be dumb enough to want Kent Dana to leave?”

There’s mention of “lawyers” getting involved – in the familiar script that management sees no problem with consulting its attorneys, but bristles when talent does the same thing. But Misner stresses he is “very fond of Kent” and wishes him the best (but probably not the very best).

So, how does Kent Dana remember the events that have changed his life?

“My contract was up in October 2004, and generally, they talk to you four or five months out,” he says. While he waited to hear from the brass at 12, he got word that someone else was interested, “and when the overture came, it was extremely strong.”

He said he told Channel 12, “I’m not asking you to match the offer, but give me a sign you really want me to stay.” He says there was no sign – just a tiny raise that seemed, at this point, more of an insult than a serious effort to keep him.

Insiders in the business say it bogged down as a testosterone fight – lots of men worried that they’d look weak or silly if they budged, so nobody budged. “Channel 12 was lollygaging with his contract, and ended up low-balling him,” says one observer, quoting the common gossip around town.

It’s been suggested that if there’d been just one woman in the negotiations, things would have been tempered and Kent Dana would have stayed put. As it was, the Channel 12 news staff was in “shock” when it learned he was leaving, and some were none too happy with the management. The words “completely blown away” and “devastated” have been used to describe the staff.

“The mood at Channel 12 is so awful,” says one observer. “People have been together a long time, and it was the one stable station, but no more.”

While Misner has to contend with a staff that’s disappointed at losing its favorite guy, he has other bottom-line concerns. Is he worried that Dana will take enough of Channel 12’s audience with him to affect the ratings? “Kent Dana has strong name recognition, but there are lots of examples around the country of dominant anchors moving to competitors and not having much impact.” Does he know of the opposite – of dominant anchors moving and stealing the audience? “I don’t know of any,” he insists.

“A TV station’s popularity has as much to do with the entire newsroom and other members of the anchor team,” Misner says. “For fair and balanced news coverage, people count on Channel 12 – that hasn’t changed.”

While the conventional wisdom is on Channel 12’s side, some veteran Phoenix broadcasters say there’s a difference here.

“Absolutely, I think the audience will follow Kent,” says Pat McMahon, himself a fixture on local radio and television. “I can’t think of another guy with the credibility Kent has – he’s also got the Arizona connection, with three generations of Danas in the media.”

“Kent is almost a brand name,” explains radio veteran Bill Heywood, “but it’s hard to say if the audience will follow him. I know Channel 5 will do massive promotions, but if people don’t like the rest of it, they’ll go back to 12.”

Phil Alvidrez, the former news director at Channel 3, says it’s a “real crapshoot” how these efforts turn out, but he expects it will “hurt KPNX more initially than it will help KPHO.”

But Alvidrez knows that the traditional view that audiences do not travel with anchors doesn’t always hold true – he broke that tradition himself when he put Patti Kirkpatrick (formerly of Channel 12) on Chan-nel 3 as its main anchor. “If Kent does as much for 5 as Patti did for 3, it’s a great deal,” Alvidrez notes.

“I‘ve been real lucky,” Kent Dana says as he looks back at his career. “The list of the cities I would have gone to have shrunk to none – Phoenix is a great place to grow with.”

He admits he never thought he’d be leaving Channel 12, but adds he’d never have gone anywhere else but Channel 5. “I wouldn’t have fit on any other station.”

“They are definitely on the upswing, be-coming a much stronger force in the community,” he says. “They have solid management, an aggressive attitude and a better lead-in from CBS. I’m extremely pleased with the support and welcome – I really hope this works out for everybody.”

The one surprising thing is what a six-month “vacation” means to someone who’s been used to a busy and regular schedule his entire adult life.

He’s spent the time arranging his home office, boating on Lake Powell, keeping himself fit, getting a little cosmetic work done, and wrestling with an unexpected bout of depression.

He admits he could not believe how lost he felt a couple weeks into this contract-imposed exile. “One night, I found myself driving around, not knowing where to go,” he says. He ended up in the Channel 5 parking lot, realizing he didn’t know the security code to get in. Somebody came by and let him in, and he was assured he could hang out there whenever he wanted. He hasn’t had to since. These days, he’s just anxious to start the next chapter of his career.

And Phoenix will see it unfold, starting with the 5 p.m. newscast on April 4, when Kent Dana, a.k.a. Mr. Little Arizona, is finally back on the air.