Content area
Full Text
The End of the Elevator People.
If that sounds like a low-budget Channel 26 horror flick, it's as it should be. "Elevator people" is WGNO-TV's term for its own employees, who until now have ridden the ropes among the 20th, 24th, 28th and 29th floors of the International Trade Mart building.
"Lines of communication among departments were a shambles" when the Tribune Co. bought the station, for $21 million, in late 1983, says Dennis FitzSimons, who's just left as station GM to become a corporate vice president in Chicago.
But thanks to $2 million of Tribune Co. cash, New Orleans' oldest indie is now consolidated in refurbished offices and studios on floors 28 and 29. WGNO staff members have become Stair People.
With the purchase of KTLA in Los Angeles earlier this year, Tribune became the nation's fourth-largest broadcast group. FitzSimons says the media conglomerate has already pumped $20 million into WGNO programming, mostly movies, syndicated sitcoms and series reruns like "Hill Street Blues." The company is also making its own movies and series, such as the Dempsey & Makepeace male/female-genre cop series. The station now has access to "2,800 titles" of movies it's locked under contract.
"We're still working to overcome the Gomer Pyle image," FitzSimons says.
Good news spread quickly up the staircase two weeks ago from the executive suite to the technical complex, as WGNO got word of its best ratings performance in memory -- save for political-convention time last year when oratory-weary New Orleanians turned to Channel 26 movies in droves.
In July, for the second-straight rating period, WGNO finished soundly ahead of ABC-affiliate WVUE -- Channel 8 in two supposed "local news" time periods. At 5 p.m., 8 pulled a feeble 10 (percent) share of all sets in use. Channel 26, programming the "Good Times" sitcom, scored a 14. At 6 p.m., "The Jeffersons" on 26 outpaced Channel 8's limping newscast, 15 sharepoints to 10.
"Among adults 18 to 34...