Lee Rosenthal has been named news director for San Francisco Bay Area FOX affiliate KTVU.

“After an extensive nationwide search, Lee’s pedigree in Journalism, his leadership skills, track record of news expansion, ratings growth and his passion for Social Media make him the perfect fit to lead our Newsroom,” said Tom Raponi, KTVU-KICU vice president and general Manager.

Rosenthal comes to KTVU from Indianapolis FOX affiliate WXIN. His first day at KTVU will be April 22. Read more

Since August, three out of the four news directors in Indianapolis have exited their posts. The Indianapolis Business Journal takes a look at the unusual timing of the vacancies and talks to the one remaining news director, WXIN’s Lee Rosenthal, about the departures:

“I ran a TV news operation for 25 years, and I do not recall ever having seen a market, any market, that has had three news directors gone at one time,” said Mike Cavender, executive director of Radio Television Digital News Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association. “It will be interesting to see what impact these new hires will have coming on board around the same time.”

“It’s certainly an unusual situation, but it doesn’t totally surprise me,” said Dave Rust, the former director of broadcast and electronic media at Indiana University and a nine-year TV news veteran. “That job today is a pressure cooker.” Read more

Eva Pilgrim, anchor/reporter for the Indianapolis FOX affiliate, WXIN, will be joining Philadelphia’s ABC Affiliate WPVI.

Pilgrim announced the move on her blog saying in part,

“I’m moving. Wednesday is my last day=( I’m taking an anchor/reporter job in Philadelphia at WPVI, the ABC O&O station there. I am excited to get back to the east coast near family and friends… but the move isn’t an easy one for me.”

WXIN news director Lee Rosenthal posted a farewell to Eva on his twitter page, saying “So proud & happy for a great @fox59 talent & an even better person, we’ll miss u @evapilgrim but we wish you the best!”  You can also view a screen grab of the tweet after the jump. Read more

Indianapolis Fox-affiliate WXIN will launch a 6 p.m. newscast this fall, the station announced today.

“Our hour at 6:00 will continue our mission — at any hour of the morning, day or night — of being the go-to place for the big stories as they happen,” news director Lee Rosenthal said in a statement.

WXIN said several new on-air faces, as well as production staffers, will be hired in preparation for the newscast’s September 10 debut. The newscast will bring WXIN’s weekday local news hours to 50 per week, the highest in the Indianapolis market.

A story about an anonymous lottery winner in Shelbyville, IN, took a strange turn recently when the winner was incorrectly identified by WRTV, the ABC-affiliate in Indianapolis.

Several local news outlets, including WRTV and Fox-affiliate WXIN, identified the winner as James Prather. On February 24, WRTV interviewed Prather’s estranged wife, Ericka, who hired an attorney to stake her claim to half of the $34.5 million jackpot. She told WRTV’s Chris Proffitt that her husband called her and asked her for a divorce after he won the lottery.

“I was like, is it because you just hit the lottery?’” she said in the interview. “And he’s like, ‘huh?’ He tried to say he didn’t, but then he’s like, ‘Yeah, I did.’”

One problem: Prather may not be the lottery winner.

Read more

Well, it doesn’t look like America’s (and the world’s) financial woes will stop being front page news anytime soon. So we emailed a handful of local TV newsers, asking them for advice on how to cover the current financial crisis. Here’s a quick list of tips based on their responses… Read more

Indianapolis Fox station WXIN has changed its Facebook profile image to a picture of missing Indiana University student Lauren Spierer.

Spierer, from Greenburgh, NY, has been missing for a week, last seen at 4:30am last Friday three blocks from her apartment in Bloomington, after a night out with friends.

“We wanted to do something that constantly reinforces the need for tips from the public and volunteers for searches,” WXIN news director Lee Rosenthal tells TVSpy.

WXIN’s page has more than 86,000 likes, the largest in the local news market and one of the largest for a local news station in the nation.

“We have a lot of eyeballs on our Facebook page,” says Rosenthal, “and they now see her photo constantly with the number to call with information.”

An employee of WXIN helped police nab two men who are believed to be responsible for a recent string of burglaries in the Indianapolis area.

Jeff Degler, the Fox-affiliate’s interactive sales manager, was at home Monday night when a man kicked in his front door. The would-be burglar was startled to see Degler at home and, after a tense stare-down, he started running.

Degler gave chase and, when the man jumped into one of two cars waiting outside, quickly called 9-1-1 (video above). Police arrested the burglary duo just a few minutes after receiving Degler’s 9-1-1 call.

“We heard one of our online content managers talking about how Jeff got his door kicked in, and then we realized, ‘Wait, this has to be the same thing police just alerted us to.’ (They sent a news release about a quick thinking homeowner who helped catch these guys),”  WXIN news director Lee Rosenthal told TVSpy via email. “We called Jeff right away– and sure enough, he was the guy, at home, with a piece of plywood covering his door.”

In January, WXIN became the first station in Indianapolis–and one of the first in the country, for that matter–to begin its weekday sign-on at 4:00 a.m. The Fox-affiliate’s aggressive expansion of its morning news programming, which now includes six hours from 4-10 a.m., appears to have paid off, with the station seeing big increases during the February sweeps period.

After expanding to 4:30 a.m. in 2009, WXIN saw its morning newscasts gain on NBC’s “Today” and now, with the new 4:00 a.m. start time, the station inches even closer to NBC-affiliate WTHR during the 7-10 a.m. hours.

In February, WXIN was up 18.1% from 7-9 a.m. and a whopping 48.1% in the 9:00 hour, compared to the 2010 sweeps period.

While WXIN’s early morning newscasts themselves didn’t display strong gains last month, it’s apparent that they served as a solid lead-in. The station’s 6:00 a.m. hour was up 36.3% following two full hours of local news.

WXIN news director Lee Rosenthal attributes his station’s ratings growth to, among other things, the amount of local news that they currently offer. “We’ve become a station of every time you turn around, we’re on,” he told TVSpy.

Reporter Tisha Lewis has some good news to counter the skewering she received from Jon Stewart earlier this week. Lewis has been hired by Chicago Fox-affiliate WFLD, jumping from Indianapolis Fox-affiliate WXIN.

Channeling Lebron James, Lewis tweeted today, “I’m going to take my talents to North Michigan Avenue… and join the team at FOX Chicago News!”

Lewis was the butt of “Daily Show” jokes on Tuesday night when Stewart called out WXIN for conducting what was essentially a homeless talent show. Inspired by the story of Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden voice, the station sent Lewis out on the streets of Indianapolis to see if the city’s homeless had any secret talents.

While the story may have been poorly executed–WXIN news director Lee Rosenthal released a statement saying, “our story came across the wrong way”–Lewis displayed an impressive commitment to her reporting. When one homeless woman stumbled while singing “Amazing Grace,” Lewis pitched in and sung a few lines. “Daily Show” video inside… Read more