KTLA Reporter: Kingsley Smith’s Departure Part of ‘Ill-Advised Dismantling’ of KTTV

By Merrill Knox 

KTLA reporter Sam Rubin takes to Facebook to offer his version of the events that led to KTTV news director Kingsley Smith’s resignation from the Los Angeles Fox O&O. Rubin, who covers media and entertainment for Tribune’s CW affiliate in LA, writes that “a smarter and stronger executive would have stood up to those giving the orders” as KTTV “went from feeling fun and brash, to heartless and cold”:

The real reason that Smith lost his job is that for the past two years or so he has been a willing and active participant is the ill-advised dismantling of a once popular and important news gathering organization. So after Smith followed orders, fired a ton of people at Fox 11; including very talented and popular on-air types like Mark Thompson and Dorothy Lucey; the ratings are a disaster, the news gathering abilities are destroyed; and guess who gets the blame …. the sap who followed the orders, coming from higher-ups in New York incidentally, to cut KTTV to beyond the bone.

What really matters here, and this is where “executives” always make the biggest mistake, is that television news in 2013 is a personality business. There is simply nothing more important than “feel,” how a show sincerely feels to those who watch it.  KTTV went from feeling fun and brash, to heartless and cold. Nothing more effectively communicates feeling than television. And when the atmosphere behind the camera is mean and mean-spirited; that stuff actually shows up on the air.

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TVSpy hears that Smith may soon surface at another station group. [h/t NewsBlues]

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