The Message

In many ways, DeHaven's timing is good. CBS, Channel 4's owner, has a well-deserved reputation for cheapness, and because the network's ratings during much of the '80s and '90s were fairly moribund, relatively little dough was left over for stations in regional markets like Denver. Lately, though, CBS's fortunes are looking up; in May, it led the field in ratings overall and was a close second behind NBC in the 18-to-49 demographic most coveted by advertisers. Whether this performance is clearing the way for stations like Channel 4 to cash in is an open question, but it certainly seems that DeHaven has more money to play with than Rockford did. Not only was he allowed to open up his wallet for Benemann, but word has it that another high-profile anchor currently at another station could wind up at Channel 4 soon. And no, I can't tell you which one.

At the same time, big bucks are being spent pimping Channel 4 news on cable. During the average evening, channel surfers can hardly avoid seeing such promos, no matter where they stop to rest their trigger finger. "We're hitting the CNNs and the USAs, but we're also hitting a lot more," DeHaven says. "We can cover nine, ten, eleven networks over the span of a night." Just as important, he goes on, the content of the promotions has been entirely altered. "The way we used to promote was very image-oriented: 'Try this and you'll feel good.' Now it's focused on immediate benefit. It's a call to action: 'If you watch us, this is what you're going to see.'"

Indeed, anchors Molly Hughes and Bill Stuart (who will have a diminished profile after Benemann comes aboard in August) spend these ads specifically teasing stories that will appear in the late newscast that evening. Many stations do likewise for promos shown on their own frequency, but DeHaven wanted to broaden the concept. "A year ago, we couldn't do this," he says. "But we worked with the folks here and told them, 'This is important to us, because it has immediacy to it.' And luckily, it's become technologically easier to do. Now we can produce a spot at six o'clock, run it through a wire and have it on the air wherever we want at seven. That's allowed us to be much more aggressive in the amount of spots we're running and the messages in them."

Better yet, the newscasts these commercials hype have actually grown more substantive -- an advance that may stun those familiar with DeHaven's recent stint at WBBM-TV in Chicago, where he had a reputation in some quarters for caring more about slogans than hard news. Again, money has something to do with it. Channel 4 has staffed up, especially at 10 p.m. Simply put, DeHaven says, "We have more reporters, more people on the street. If you're watching at ten o'clock, you'll see a minimum of five reporters. The other stations aren't doing that."

Also receiving more attention is the Channel 4 investigative unit, which consists of Brian Maass and Rick Sallinger. Both reporters have done impressive work of late, with Maass in particular scoring on a slew of significant stories. Among other things, he unearthed videotape of a handcuffed and shackled Denver County Jail inmate being tossed around by his keepers and showed how one-time-use surgical instruments are sometimes being improperly reprocessed. But his biggest recent coup was a February series that caught command-level officers with the Denver Police Department skipping out during work hours to make extra shekels directing traffic.

For the folks at Channel 7, the perennial also-ran among Denver news purveyors with old-school network affiliations, the bang Channel 4 got out of Maass's cops scoop must have been exceptionally galling. At the same time Maass was confronting crossing guards, Channel 7 was devoting huge chunks of airtime to the scandal at the Air Force Academy. Protestations aside, the station didn't break this story -- Westword reporter Julie Jargon was out with the basic information two weeks earlier -- but its presentation was strong, and it deserves kudos for bringing the subject to the halls of Congress. On top of that, the station recently imported anchor Mike Landess, who's just as smooth and slick today as he was when he was helping to generate huge audiences for Channel 9 in the '80s and beyond. Nonetheless, Channel 7 didn't receive any tangible ratings boost in February, and its overall May numbers were numbingly mediocre. At this point, it seems that nothing short of having Landess and weatherman Marty Coniglio dress up as Chippendales dancers will get most Denverites to tune in.

Like John Ferrugia, his counterpart at Channel 7, Maass received the original tip that led to the unraveling of the Air Force Academy mess. "We responded very quickly to it and tried to talk to those people, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen for us," he says. "It was well done by Channel 7. They've done a terrifically thorough job with it." On the other hand, Maass has a theory about why many of his reports resonated with viewers in ways that perhaps the academy exposé didn't. "The Air Force story started in Colorado Springs, but it's really a big, national story," he says. "And we've been doing stories that are very local, that have a lot of impact for people here and are literally happening in their back yards. These stories hit home with people because they're about real issues. It's not testing your kitchen counter for bacteria."