KERA: BACK IN THE NEWS

While flipping TV channels this fall, Dallasites may be in for a pleasant surprise. Despite some lean years for local programming, KERA (Channel 13) will again offer local productions this year. Starting in October, Bob Ray Sanders, vice president and manager for the television station, will host a Friday evening half-hour news program.

The station began looking for staff members for the production in early July and, according to Sanders, should be hiring five or six full-time employees to work on the program.

So far, Sanders says, more than 60 titles have been suggested for the show, but that management “just hasn’t come up with one we like.”

Although Sanders will be the sole host, he says that reporters often will be involved in the show. Plans for the program’s format are still sketchy, but it apparently will feature three stories each week, either breaking news – stories that have happened that week -or updates on longstanding local issues.

The budget for the program is close to $400,000, which, Sanders says, is quite a commitment from the station. Sanders has worked for KERA for almost 11 years, but says he’s been “out of the journalism mold” since 1977, when he stopped working on KERA’s Newsroom. To get back into practice, he’s been working on the radio station’s Morning Edition. Initially, Sanders was asked only to host the television show, without doing any of his own reporting. But that changed because, he says, he doesn’t want to be just “a face”; he wants to be a reporter again.

Sanders says that he’s received several letters from people encouraged about the show. “People are expecting it to be good. And we have to make it good.

“I want this show to be respected as one that gives all sides of a story – not just two sides, but sometimes five or six,” he says. “I want to show various segments of the city, asking the tough, hard-hitting questions of all people, sometimes doing a better job than the newspapers in investigative reporting.”