KCBS SF Fires Dean Danos, Veteran Anchor, Without Cause

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deandanos
Dean Danos KCBS

KCBS fired Dean Danos, it’s 14-year veteran late night news anchor, without cause. This blogger normally doesn’t cover local SF Bay Area Media news but what happened to Mr. Danos was just too awful to pass up.

According to Blogger Richard Lieberman, my friend from Skyline High School days (class of 1980), and who does cover the SF Bay Area Media exclusively (and has an old media focus that I question), Dean Danos (who’s bio starts with “I was born in San Francisco just three years after the stock market crash”) was canned and his last day will be October 11th, 2014. This is what Rich reports Danos said to him via an email, which, in turn, was sent to me via Rich’s normal round of daily transmissions:

 

Hi Rich:

Well, it was a total surprise. The other day I got a call from Ed, (Cavagnaro), (NewsDirector), saying that they would have to let me go. After recovering from the shock, I asked why. He said that they need to make a change so that they could have an outside reporter in the anchor position in the case of something like the quake might happen. He said that they could send that person out to cover it. I asked how they would do without an anchor. He said that they had done that before. Still no explanation how. Then he went on to say that my last day would be Oct11, and I would get a nine day severance, and that was it. A person at the union talked to Ed, and told me, from what he said, she couldn’t fathom why I was dropped. There are other part-time anchors that are not reporters. I found it interesting that, during the quake, as others came in to cover it, they gave me a thumbs-up, and said that I did a good job. I don’t know what is going on, because, during my 14 years at KCBS, I was always available when needed, and was proud to be a member of the news team.

Dean Danos

Since, reportedly, KCBS could have maintained Dean and still had an “outside reporter in the anchor position in the case of something like the quake might happen,” the move does seem to be without cause – real, defensible cause. In fact, Dean’s question of how they were going to do that without someone to announce who the reporter was, let alone the news story, is a good one. But I wonder, if it was a veiled way to push an older member of their staff out the door because he was old?

This is yet another example of why the best media, and indeed the media of the future, is more collaborative and do-it-yourself using inexpensive and widely available technology. You can’t count on a media organization to be loyal to its veterans anymore.

Stay tuned.

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