Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ has added three new reporters: Ronnie Dahl (left), Andy Choi (center) and Nima Shaffe (right).

“We are incredibly proud of our award-winning staff at 7 Action News, and excited to add the journalistic talents of Ronnie, Andy and Nima to our team,” WXYZ VP-GM Ed Fernandez said in a statement.

Dahl comes from rival WJBK, Detroit’s Fox O&O. She previously worked at WXYZ as a special projects producer, as well as at WUPW in Toledo and WSYM in Lansing, Mich.

Choi, who will be a multimedia journalist at WXYZ, comes to Detroit from Madison, Wisc., where he was a reporter and anchor at WISC.

Shaffe joins the station from KCTV in Kansas City, where he has been a general assignment reporter for two years. He has also worked at KMTV in Omaha, KKTV in Colorado Springs and KQTV in St. Joseph, Mo.

Dahl has already begun in her new role at WXYZ. Choi and Shaffe begin in early April.

In Madison, the start of a new year has brought changes to the 9 p.m. newscast on Fox-affiliate WMSN: the  program, previously produced by ABC-affiliate WKOW, is now produced by CBS-affiliate WISC.

The changes took effect on January 1. WKOW has been producing WMSN’s 35-minute 9 p.m. newscast since 1999.

WMSN general manager Kerry Johnson told the Wisconsin State Journal that the swap was “a business decision.”

WMSN is using the opportunity for a staff expansion, the State Journal reports. Three people have already been hired: anchor Michelle Carolla, who was formerly an anchor at WBTW, a news producer, and a yet-to-be identified sports anchor.

Tom Bier, who has been at Madison CBS-affiliate WISC for 37 years, has been named vice president and general manager at the station.

Bier, a Wisconsin native, has been the vice president and station manager since 1998. Prior to that, he spent 23 years as news director.

“Having watched Channel Three while growing up, it’s an honor to be asked to take on this challenge,” he said in a statement. “The station has always been a leader and I look forward in this new capacity to working with the staff, which has kept us in this position over the years.”

Bier has been the acting general manager since September, when David Sanks resigned.

WTHR staffers at the 2011 Murrow Awards

Twenty local television stations were presented with Edward R. Murrow Awards at an RTDNA dinner honoring the winners in New York City last night. TVSpy was there as WTHR in Indianapolis was presented the award for Overall Excellence in a large market. WGRZ in Buffalo was honored for Overall Excellence in a small market.

Although the winners represented every platform of the news industry — national news, radio, online — enthusiasm for the local stations was palpable, with staffers from winning stations cheering on their colleagues audibly as they took the stage to accept their awards.

In his opening speech, RTDNA chairman Kevin Benz implored the 95 Murrow award winners — more than the RTDNA has ever presented before — to “celebrate truth through journalism.”

“The practice of producing great journalism is as important today as it has ever been,” he told the packed ballroom at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. Read more

WISC, the CBS-affiliate in Madison, is making some changes to the evening talent lineup to allow veteran anchor Susan Siman (pictured) more time with her family.

Effective today, Siman, who currently anchors the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts with Mark Koehn, will hand over the 6 p.m. reigns to Sarah Carlson and Eric Franke. Siman will contribute to the newscast as a reporter, and she and Koehn will continue to anchor the 5 p.m. newscast.

“Sometimes, you have to make minor adjustments in your life to make everything else work,” Siman, who has a son in middle school, said in a statement. “That’s what I’m doing.”

Carlson and Franke will continue to anchor the 10 p.m. broadcast. “I’m thrilled we could find a solution that works for Susan, Sarah and our viewers,” news director Colin Benedict said.

KSTP morning anchor Rebekah Wood, who has been with the Minneapolis-St. Paul ABC affiliate since 2008, announced she is leaving the station — and the city — in November to follow her husband to Tampa.

“It will be a hard move for me to make,” Wood told the Pioneer Press. “It’s the first big, big move I’ve ever made. I’m definitely a Minnesota girl at heart.”

Wood noted that she and her husband are renting their Minnesota home instead of selling it in case they want to come back. Her last day at the station — which has not yet announced a replacement for her alongside co-anchor Brad Sattin — is November 25.

Wood is a Minneapolis native who has also worked at several stations in Wisconsin, including WISC in Madison and WDJT in Milwaukee.

As viewers increasingly watch web-based video on their TVs, WISC has struck a forward-thinking partnership with Roku, the maker of digital video boxes that bring web content to your living room TV.

WISC, a CBS-affiliate in Madison, WI, is becoming the first station in the country to debut a local news channel on the Roku platform, giving viewers the opportunity to watch the station’s news coverage on their TVs at any time of the day.

“For years TV stations have been posting their video on the web and now their web video is easily available on TV sets,” said Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO.

“I understand the passion and intensity,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker told WISC anchor Sarah Carlson in an exclusive interview on Wednesday (video above).

Walker has been facing large-scale demonstrations in Madison this week, including a “sick-out” by teachers, as public workers protest his administration’s attempt to limit the collective bargaining rights of government unions.

“When you’re threatening the political existence of a handful of leaders out there, they’re the ones most threatened by this,” Walker told Carlson, “they’re going to push this but in the end we think what we’re asking for is still pretty modest.”

“This is a long way away from where I came from,” Fox Sports NFL host Curt Menefee told WISC’s Mark Koehn last week, reflecting on his time as a weekend sports anchor for the Madison CBS-affiliate.

Menefee worked for WISC in the late 80s before moving on to New York Fox-affiliate WNYW and eventually becoming the host of “Fox NFL Sunday.” WISC caught up with Menefee as he prepared to anchor Fox’s Super Bowl coverage on Sunday.

WISC anchor Sarah Carlson, who recently underwent brain surgery to combat the recurrence of epileptic seizures, suffered what a appeared to be a mild seizure on-air yesterday evening.

At the beginning of WISC‘s 6 p.m. newscast on Tuesday, Carlson was delivering the news that Wisconsin would join other states in a lawsuit against President Obama’s health care overhaul.  Towards the end of the report, the veteran anchor begins to slur her words and for a moment her speech becomes unintelligible.

Miraculously, though, Carlson is able to finish.  When the camera cuts to Carlson’s co-anchor Susan Siman, a moment of surprise registers on her face before she plows ahead with the newscast’s next segment. Carlson left the newscast following the incident and Siman finished it solo.

“She’s okay,” Colin Benedict, WISC’s news director, assured the Wisconsin State Journal following the on-air episode.  Benedict says that he expects Carlson to continue anchoring the CBS-affiliate’s evening newscasts.

Carlson momentarily stepped away from TV in 2009 following a serious seizure that she suffered on-air while working for Madison NBC-affiliate WMTV.  She joined WISC in December after having surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor from her brain.  At the time, Carlson reported that her life was nearly seizure free. Read more