by Jim Hanas
Over the last two decades – in newsrooms from New York to Los
Angeles and from Chicago to Syracuse – Bill Applegate, the new
general manager at WMC, has cultivated a reputation equal parts
fame and infamy. On the one hand, his skill as a ratings wizard
has led him to prestigious positions at stations in the nation’s
top television markets. On the other, his taste for tabloid news
and flashy promotion has drawn its share of critical scorn, while
his abrasive management style and his reputation as a corporate
hatchet-man have won him few friends in the industry. Articles
about his ability to boost audiences and cut costs, often at the
expense of staff morale, are a genre unto themselves, dating back
at least to his days at WABC-TV in New York a decade ago and following
him to each new market.
PHOTO BY DANIEL BALL
You may not know who Bill Applegate is. But if you follow what’s happening in local news, you will. As Bill Kurtis, who anchored news under Applegate in Chicago, puts it: “Memphis television news is in for some interesting times.”
Applegate’s arrival in Memphis was quiet enough. As with any executive, his appointment as vice president and general manager of the WMC family of stations was duly reported in The Commercial Appeal business section, two weeks after station veteran Mason Granger announced he was stepping down as GM. If history is any indication, however, Applegate’s tenure at Channel 5 won’t be quiet for long.
Taking over the reins of WMC-TV marks a first in Applegate’s sometimes impressive and often controversial career. While working for ABC and later CBS, he moved around to various network-owned and -operated stations as something of a savior, sent with a mission to turn flagging operations around. Channel 5, on the other hand, is Memphis’ perennial market leader.
“It’s refreshing to look at ratings and see big numbers,” he says during an interview in his new office at 1960 Union Avenue. He’s been in town for less than a month and the walls are still decorated with Memphis memorabilia left over from Granger’s tenure. A muted television set flashes away just a few feet from the desk. Behind it, the 52-year-old Indiana native leans back in his chair and speaks easily and confidently about his career. He displays the trademark decisiveness and charisma that even his critics grant him; a manner well described by one former employee who says, “It’s a certifiable fact he can strut sitting down.”
As he is fond of pointing out – particularly when responding to criticisms of his news judgment – Applegate is a third-generation newsman. He started as a print reporter in his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and moved into television with reporting and anchoring stints at stations in Lansing, Michigan, and Detroit. In 1973, he was hired by KNXT-TV in Los Angeles, where he would stay until 1976 when he was fired in a newsroom purge. Seventeen years later, he would return to KNXT – now known as KCBS-TV – as general manager, an irony topped only by the fact that he would again be fired from the station in 1995, effectively ending his career with the networks.
But after leaving Los Angeles the first time, his career was just beginning. He went on to a string of news directorships at stations in Eugene, Buffalo, San Francisco, and Boston. In 1983, he became news director at ABC’s network-owned Chicago affiliate, WLS-TV. During his tenure, WLS’ news went from third place to first in just two years. His growing reputation as a ratings rainmaker landed him the news director’s job at WABC in New York, which he likewise took from also-ran to market leader in just a few years.
Despite success in the ratings, Applegate was far from uncontroversial at WABC. He drew a storm of bad publicity for axing veteran anchor Roger Grimsby, and reports in the New York press document a number of newsroom defections, reportedly spurred by widespread distaste for Applegate’s management style. In 1987, Crain’s New York Business reported that while WABC was extremely profitable, many members of its on-air and production staff had left or were planning to leave.
“I don’t know two people who are happy in the newsroom,” a former WABC news producer told Crain’s. “It’s not a fun place to work, and despite the ratings, that shows up in the quality of their news.”
By the time he jumped networks in 1990 to become general manager of Chicago’s CBS-owned affiliate, WBBM-TV, his reputation as a harsh taskmaster and corporate axman preceded him. A Crain’s Chicago Business story announcing his return to the Windy City ran under the telling headline “Overachiever for underperformer; Channel 2 taps tough guy to nip ratings slump” and cited his reputation as a “tough, abrasive administrator.”
WBBM had a storied history as Chicago’s classiest news operation. Co-anchored by a pair of veteran newscasters, Bill Kurtis – who now hosts A&E’s American Justice and Investigative Reports – and Walter Jacobson, the station’s news style had been more or less the same since the two were teamed together in 1973. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, WBBM’s news topped the ratings, but by the time Applegate arrived in 1990 the station was struggling.
He made deep changes. He acquired the rights to the Illinois State Lottery drawing and moved it to 10:21 in the evening so it could be a featured part of the late news. He took Jacobson off the anchor desk and made the newscasts faster, flashier, and – according to his critics – more sensational.
“He really took them in a dramatically different direction, 180 degrees from the high-class operation it had been,” says Jim Warren, who covered media for the Chicago Tribune during Applegate’s reign at Channel 2.
The station’s new pumped-up style was constantly lampooned in the press. A 1992 item in the Tribune cited copy from the station’s newscasts that referred to Cecil Jacobson, a fertility doctor who was convicted of using his own sperm to impregnate patients, as a “double-dealing babymaker” and “the man they call ... The Sperminator,” and commented that the anchors seemed to be delivering the lines through gritted teeth.
The symbolic low point for many of Applegate’s Chicago critics, however, was a series called “Mean Street Diary,” which featured the respected Jacobson going undercover, flimsily disguised as a homeless person.
“It certainly offended me,” says former Tribune television critic Rick Kogan. “It was some weird reportage as comedy.... I thought it was shameful. It’s one that will always stick with me, when that proverbial line between news and shtick vanished.”
The critical reaction was strong, all the more so because it was WBBM, which was viewed by many as a sort of civic monument.
As Applegate is quick to point out, however, “it was a civic monument that was failing.”
“When I changed WLS, I was working with an ABC-owned and -operated station that already had a reputation in Chicago for being superficial and ‘happy talk.’ So when I made it more aggressive it didn’t cause any consternation among the print journalists,” he says, referring to his earlier stint in Chicago news. “[But] when I started changing BBM – the place where the Kennedy-Nixon debates took place, the hallowed halls of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson – it engendered a different reaction among a lot of the print people.”
There was also plenty of coverage of the station’s personnel upheavals, and former employees describe a newsroom ruled by fear and intimidation and a newscast guided by a sensational “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy.
Colleen Dudgeon, who was news director when Applegate arrived, left the station after a year.
“We obviously had very different ideas about what news was and how it should be covered,” Dudgeon says. “[And] to say his management style was extreme is an understatement.”
Walter Jacobson likewise left to go to a competitor, and defections became so common that the Tribune joked that the exit door at the station should be renamed the “Apple Gate.”
Although it is not difficult to find print journalists and former employees who are critical of both his news judgment and his management style, partiularly in Chicago, Applegate is not entirely without defenders.
“I know he had a reputation for being abrasive, but I thought he was straightforward,” says Robert Feder, veteran radio and television columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. “I found his candor to be refreshing.”
Feder, while allowing that the news style he brought to WBBM was extreme, says he respects Applegate’s abilities as a television executive.
“What the guy was trying to do was to bring back viewers who had stopped watching TV news all together,” he says. “The truth is, he had some success.”
WBBM rocketed to a first-place tie in the market for a brief period in 1993, just before the network promoted Applegate to general manager of KCBS in Los Angeles. Almost immediately, WBBM’s ratings plummeted to a low point, where they remain to this day. Applegate attributes the drop to a lack of resolve on the part of his successor, while his critics ascribe it to audience backlash.
“Bottom line is it didn’t work, and he dramatically damaged their reputation,” says Warren. “He burned a lot of bridges, lost a lot of high-quality people.”
“The operation here was in deep shit when he left,” agrees Tribune
media critic Steve Johnson. “And apparently he didn’t get punished
for it, because he went on to a job in Los Angeles.”
PHOTO BY DANIEL BALL
Applegate displays the trademark decisiveness and charisma that
even his critics grant him; a manner well described by one former
employee who says, “It’s a certifiable fact he can strut sitting
down.”
Everyone agrees that Applegate had a dramatic effect on the Chicago television news market as competitors scrambled to imitate his flashier newscasts. On the one hand, his influence is cited as evidence of his enviable savvy. On the other, it lends support to the oft-heard claim that he’s the man responsible for bringing “tabloid” news to Chicago.
“I’m a third-generation news guy,” says Applegate. “My father was a reporter in Chicago in the Thirties. He’s dead now, but were he alive he could tell you that tabloid journalism was invented in Chicago. Not in New York, but in Chicago. Tabloid gets this kind of bad name that it certainly didn’t have years ago, and I stopped using it a long time ago, and I used to tell my critics in Chicago what I was doing was the popular press. If you look at the broadcasts, there wasn’t any more crime in those newscasts than anybody else was doing. There wasn’t anything salacious or tawdry. The difference was that I marketed it more aggressively, more colorfully. And the broadcast itself was more aggressive and more colorful than had been in the market before.”
Nevertheless, his promotion to L.A. was not mourned. According to the Tribune, WBBM employees reacted with “undisguised glee.” One former staffer says that, after Applegate’s departure, an organizational consultant was brought in for what employees jokingly referred to as “rehabilitiation.”
Understandably, Applegate’s arrival in Los Angeles was met with trepidation.
“There was a great sense of apprehension when he got there, as there usually is, because he’s bigger than life,” recalls KCBS anchor Michael Tuck. KCBS was in disarray and hadn’t had a news director for several months; the previous director had been fired as a result of a mutinous memo from his staff citing a sensational and cynical news product.
“We were no longer hanging from the precipice,” Tuck says. “We were over the cliff of tabloid journalism.”
So, after taking heat in Chicago for his tabloid style, Applegate’s mission in Los Angeles was the reverse: to clean up KCBS’ over-the-top newscasts. Applegate went about the business of turning the station around. He hired a news director and shuffled the on-air talent, scoring a coup by luring popular anchor Ann Martin from competitor KABC-TV.
“I thought Applegate brought more relevant news than what we were doing before,” says Tuck. “I think he started a turnaround for us.”
But his work would go unfinished. He had had disputes with Westinghouse over syndicated programing, and when the electronics giant purchased CBS in late 1995, Applegate was among the first executives to be sacked.
“Anytime you have that occur, I think it’s a disappointment,” he says now, reflecting on the end of what he describes as his “pretty stellar management career” among the nation’s largest local television operations. “But they bought the company.”
With his career at an impasse, Applegate says he had a choice.
“I was under contract. I had a year and a half to run. I didn’t have to work for a year and a half if I didn’t want to. I could’ve done what a lot of guys do in that situation. I could have retired early. I could have gone off to write. Or I could have put myself in play to run another big television station. There are only a few of those out there, and the decision I made was to step back. I’d been high-profile for a long time.”
And so, in early 1996, the controversial executive who’d made a name for himself in the nation’s top markets took a job as general manager of WSTM-TV, the NBC affiliate in Syracuse, New York, Nielsen’s 69th-largest market. His reputation followed.
He replaced the news director and a homegrown anchor, and he presided over splashy news packages like “Hotel Horrors,” a series that used a black light to expose the presence of bodily fluids on hotel linens.
A feature in the trade journal Electronic Media last October detailed personnel shake-ups at WSTM under the headline “Hardball Boss Takes On Syracuse.” Applegate, who prides himself on taking criticism in stride, claims the story is not only exaggerated but inaccurate.
“[The reporter] was sitting there just waiting for somebody to leave from that news department, even though it was a year and a half after I got there, in order for him to write the classic piece of literature, which is: The big-city gunman comes into the small town and scares the hell out of the local citizenry. That was his motivation,” he says.
Several sources confirm, however, that life under Applegate in Syracuse was less than a picnic.
“We all knew he wouldn’t be here forever, but he left a lot of damage in his wake,” says Matt Mulcahy, who went to work for a competitor after being removed from his anchor role at WSTM. “People who are committed to a community or a television station, like me, are forced to leave, either because they’re asked to leave like I was, or because they don’t like working for him.”
For his part, Applegate steadfastly denies that he’s tough to work for. “I don’t think so. I think I’m demanding,” he says. “I love the business.”
Applegate stayed in Syracuse a little less than two years. Now he’s climbing yet another ladder, moving up the ranks of Raycom Media, the Montgomery, Alabama-based company that owns both WSTM and WMC. Raycom is an industry comer that now owns 25 stations. Memphis’ 42nd-ranked market is the company’s largest, pending an acquistion of a station in 13th-ranked Cleveland, a deal expected to close later this year.
In Channel 5, Applegate inherits a market leader whose vulnerability is beginning to show. “The station, while arguably number one, is not as dominant as it was,” he concedes. In the May sweeps, which ended Wednesday, WREG-TV Channel 3 made inroads into WMC’s dominance by taking the lead at 5 o’clock with a controversial car giveaway and some help from WPTY-TV Channel 24, which has drawn away some of 5’s lead-in audience by putting Jerry Springer head-to-head with Oprah Winfrey.
Furthermore, WMC is said to be a station that is underperforming financially, and, accordingly, Applegate’s actions so far have been directed at revenue rather than news. He has reportedly tightened the purse strings on the station’s day-to-day operations, and sales manager Scott Leslie recently resigned, although sources say it was at Applegate’s request. Leslie would not comment. The mood at the station is reportedly a cautious one as staffers wait to see what further changes, if any, their new boss intends to make.
And although he denies any direct involvement, evidence of the Applegate hype-machine can already be detected in the station’s promo spots. Recent plugs for “Food For Thought,” for example, promise to deliver a “disgusting” installment and encourage viewers to tune in for “all the gross details,” hype the weekly feature rarely lives up to.
“I didn’t write that,” Applegate says. “The advertising people came to me and I didn’t know what ‘Food For Thought’ was. ... I said, well, if you’re airing it and you think it’s worthwhile, then you ought to promote it. That’s my only involvement with that promotion,” he says, conceding that perhaps his reputation has once again preceded him and that “maybe there’s a little anticipatory craftsmanship going on” among his new staff.
He also says he hasn’t yet taken a critical view of Channel 5’s newscasts, despite his reputation as a general manager who takes a hands-on approach to his stations’ news operations.
“I had one guy tell me that the minute you get Bill Applegate as your general manager you become the assistant news director,” says Mark Carros, whom Applegate replaced as news director in Syracuse. “That’s true. For better or worse.”
And Applegate has definite ideas about news, although only time will tell if we’ll be seeing Rod Starns lurking in hotel rooms, searching for semen-stained bedspreads. But one thing is for sure. If Applegate doesn’t have a decided impact on the Memphis television market, it will be the first time.
“There were some who openly didn’t like him. There were some who openly did like him,” says KCBS’ Tuck, “That’s the way Bill is. Bill is a lightning rod and he likes being a lightning rod.”
Stay tuned for the extended forecast. 
As Bill Applegate’s illustrious career so vividly demonstrates, the television news business can get rough. That was made clear last week at WPTY-TV Channel 24, when news director Jeff Alan was unceremoniously canned after a two-year run that saw increases in both the station’s ratings and its revenues.
The word is that it was mutiny, fueled by some in the newsroom who were unhappy with Alan’s leadership and who actively lobbied for his ouster. On Friday, they got it.
Alan’s dismissal is a shame, and not only because it proves that news is indeed hell, that you can do right by the numbers and still find yourself out on your ear. It’s a shame because, with a few glaring exceptions, Alan ushered in a newscast at ABC 24 that deserved the name. On election day a few weeks ago, 24 bucked a trend by – get this – leading with coverage of local primaries and reporting on low voter turnout. Since elections ultimately affect everyone, you’d expect that to be a common news call. Of course, it isn’t.
By comparison, market leader WMC Channel 5 couldn’t even find room among its first five stories for the primaries in its election-night coverage. Instead, it led with a statutory rape case, a rehash of the Germantown brothel brouhaha, and some flashy but irrelevant surveillance footage of a pair of shoplifters making a getaway.
ABC 24 did have its faults under Alan. Airing videotape of the already-convicted Judge David Lanier having sex in his chambers – stretched over two nights and several newscasts, no less – is about as low as local news has gone in recent memory. And some might question the taste of jockeying Jerry Springer around in the schedule to tickle news ratings during sweeps.
But more often than not, Alan’s newscasts were made of news rather than stunts and fluff features. The least of all evils, sure, but that’s something.
Alan’s successor has yet to be named, and WPTY’s general manager,
Jack Peck, did not return phone calls on Monday. We can only hope
it’s not because he was too busy figuring out how to give away
some ratings-spiking cars before the end of sweeps. – J.H.