Nine months after he took the reins at CBS’ KCBS/KCAL duopoly in Los Angeles, Tim Wieland is eager to double down on local. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Wieland said he’s pondering more kinds of in-house local productions beyond news (which already takes up nearly 100 hours of weekly programming between the two stations).
“I am obviously very bullish on local, in the future of local, even amid all of the doom and gloom stories that are out there,” Wieland told reporters during a press event at KCBS/KCAL’s studios on the Radford Studio Center lot. “We will start doing more local programming, not less. So that means the traditional newscast that you see, but also we may in the future be doing more community oriented talk shows, other sort of quasi entertainment-type programming, commercial programming. I think we’ll be doing a greater diversity of programming to serve the community.”
Wieland now serves as regional president and general manager for both CBS Los Angeles and CBS Colorado (KCNC), but relocated from Denver (where he had been with the station since 2001) to Southern California as part of his new, expanded domain.
That means he was a relatively new transplant when the fires that destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and Altadena became one of the biggest local stories in recent memory. “In my career, I have never seen viewership like that on a story, not just in linear TV, but on every platform we have,” he said.
And that has continued with the ongoing immigration raids in Southern California, he added: “Viewership overall for our news is higher than normal viewership, and for readership on our website, higher than normal,” he said. “Social, streaming, it’s up because there’s something happening in our community right now that people want information about.”
Coming out of the L.A. fires, Wieland touted KCBS/KCAL’s “Rebuilding SoCal” initiative: “We went on air and boldly said that we’re going to have a team of reporters dedicated to this topic for the next year and beyond,” he said. “And we put different beats together under ‘Rebuilding SoCal,’ and you see it in our newscast, and we’re not letting up. Let’s face it, local news hasn’t always been great at that. We have a reputation that is well earned of covering a breaking news story or big story in the moment and then moving on… We’re not going to do that. ‘Rebuilding SoCal’ was an initiative driven by the journalists in our newsroom to make sure that we didn’t turn our backs on the community.”
At the event, KCBS/KCAL also spotlighted assignment desk producers Mike Rogers and Mark Liu, who regularly appear on newscasts (via “The Desk”) to give context on breaking news stories. And the duopoly unveiled its new AR/VR technology-driven studio, where it has started showcasing weather forecasts. (Wieland also revealed that KCBS/KCAL’s sports reports will also soon move to the new space.)
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