Louisville’s WDRB recently announced two new hires in the sports department, Eric Crawford and Rick Bozich. The pair joined the station from the Courier-Journal, where both have made a long career in the print medium. “The shrinking of a newspaper I grew up with and loved was not something I cared to watch from the inside any longer,” Crawford writes on WRDB’s website:

WDRB is Louisville’s lone remaining locally run major, 7-day-a-week news organization. It is owned by an out-of-town company, yes, but it alone, more than any daily newspaper, television or radio station, has the ability to plot its own course.

As other news organizations have grown leaner, WDRB has maintained its personnel strength and even expanded. While others have cut back on resources to local sports, WDRB has added staff and increased its travel. Read more

Louisville Fox-affiliate WDRB, along with its MyNetworkTV sister station, WMYO, is back on Insight Cable, which is owned by Time Warner Cable.

WDRB’s owner, Block Communications, reached a new carriage agreement with Time Warner this week, ending a blackout that began last Friday.

“I couldn’t be happier to have this process completed,” WDRB president and general manager Bill Lamb said in a statement.  “I know the last several days have been trying for our viewers who are Insight subscribers, and we’ve shared their pain. It’s good to know that–despite our differences– both sides were ultimately able to finally reach a fair resolution.” Read more

WDRB, the Fox-affiliate in Louisville, has hired sports reporters Rick Bozich and Eric Crawford.

The pair join the station from the Courier-Journal in Louisville. In a statement, WDRB said Bozich and Crawford “can be read and seen exclusively on WRDB.com and WDRB news.”

“It’s going to be a cutting edge opportunity for us because there’s so many components to it,” Bozich said. “There will be the the television part of it and there’s the Internet part of it. And we’ll still be able to continue to write columns, and comment on things, and blog, and do video. There’s just limitless opportunities.”

Two stations in Louisville have gone dark on Time Warner Cable, after the stations owner, Block Communications, was unable to reach a new retrans deal with the cable operator.

Fox-affiliate WDRB and MyNetworkTV-affiliate WMYO were pulled from Time Warner after Block’s previous carriage agreement expired on May 31st.

“WDRB has tried very hard to reach an agreement with Time Warner but the deadline has passed,” the station announced in a post on its website today. “After much negotiating, Time Warner has decided to reject our repeated offers leaving many of our viewers without a local TV station you like.” Read more

Lawrence Smith has joined Louisville Fox-affiliate WDRB as a general assignment reporter, the station announced today.

Smith is a local news veteran with experience at two of WDRB’s rival stations — WHAS and WAVE — as well as at WTVQ in Lexington, KRIV and KHOU in Houston, and WATE in Evansville.

Most recently, Smith was Dean of Students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His first day on the air at WDRB was last week.

WDRB has devoted a significant amount of airtime this week to refuting allegations that anchor Lindsay Allen used a racial slur in referring to Tiger Woods during a newscast.

On Monday morning, while talking about Woods’s recent run-in with a hot dog, Allen stumbled a bit, making it sound as though she used the the N-word. 19-year-old viewer Anthony Graves complained to the station about the incident and followed up his complaint by contacting the NAACP and several media outlets.

Allen’s slip-up quickly went viral, leading her to issue a series of on-air clarifications and apologize if “any viewers were offended” (video inside). Read more

“Someone decided about 20 years ago that a quirky feature reporter could put on a suit and necktie, and anchor morning news,” longtime WHAS and WDRB anchor Barry Bernson said in bidding farewell to Louisville viewers. “I still feel out of position, like a left-fielder who’s been moved to first base, but you have forgiven me and watched the newscasts I’ve been on, so I’m grateful” (video above).

Bernson, who has co-anchored WDRB’s morning show for the past eight years, announced last month that he would retire. Even though he’s stepping away from the morning anchor desk, Bernson says that he plans to do special reports for the Fox-affiliate in the near future.

Louisville’s WDRB announced the hiring of  Sterling Riggs as the new morning show anchor today. Riggs replaces Barry Bernson, who announced his retirement earlier this month after more than 40 years in local news.

Riggs, who will leave his position as an anchor and senior producer at KTEN in Denison, TX, will be paired with current morning co-anchor Candyce Clifft. “The demands of the morning co-anchor position are many and unqiue, and it takes a special kind of person to handle them,” WDRB vice president Barry Fulmer said. “He’s knowledgeable, he’s personable and he’s really excited about the chance to explore an entirely new part of the country.”

Although Bernson is slated to retire in October, Riggs’s first day at the Fox affiliate will be August 19. Riggs, who has also worked at KXAN in Austin and KLST in San Angelo, took a four-year break from the news business in 2005 to be chief operating officer of a local development community in Destin, FL. He returned to television at KTEN, an NBC affiliate, in 2009.

After four decades in the television business, WDRB‘s Barry Bernson announced today that he will retire in October. Bernson has been the morning anchor at the Louisville Fox affiliate since 2003.

According to WDRB, the morning show is the top-rated in the Louisville market and has enjoyed great success since Bernson was paired with co-anchor Candyce Clifft eight years ago.

“My time here at WDRB has been the finest eight years of my career,” Bernson said. “I can honestly say this has been the best job I’ve ever had, but now I plan to make the most of this new opportunity to finally sleep in.”

Berson, a six-time Ohio Valley Region Emmy Award winner, began his broadcasting career in 1971 at Louisville’s WAVE. He left for a brief stint at Chicago’s WMAQ in 1976 before returning to Kentucky — and mornings — in 1985 as the anchor of WHAS‘s “Good Morning Kentuckiana.”

“It’s hard to overstate the role Barry has played in the success of ‘WDRB in the Morning,’” news director Barry Fulmer said. “Ever since he joined the team, he’s played a major role in shaping the personality of the show.”

WDRB sports anchor John Lewis was pulled over early Monday morning while driving a vehicle emblazoned with the Fox-affiliate’s logo and arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

According to Louisville CBS-affiliate WLKY, police pulled Lewis over shortly after he left a local bar around 3:53 a.m. He was driving a Ford Escape with “FOX 41 HD” markings on the side.

After failing several field sobriety tests, Lewis was arrested and charged with a DUI. His blood-alcohol level was later tested at 0.133 percent. The legal limit in Kentucky is 0.08.

Lewis has been with WDRB since 2001 and most recently served as the station’s weekend sports anchor. WDRB has not yet commented on Lewis’s arrest but his bio has been removed from the station’s website.