Overall would only say he’s leaving for “personal reasons” with “no hard feelings on either side.” His plan is to return to Southern California where his family lives but beyond that he says he doesn’t have another job lined up.
His last day at KVOA will be Dec. 26.
 John Overall |
News Director Kathleen Choal said the decision was Overall’s. “He is a great guy and we’re going to miss him,” she said.
Choal said a decision hasn’t been made on how Overall will be replaced. Other staffers confided they don’t expect he will be replaced immediately and that Martha Vazquez could go it alone anchoring the 4 p.m. newscast.
Overall arrived at KVOA in July 2006 as a weekend news anchor and a reporter. He also did fill-in work anchoring the station’s early morning news before being named to anchor the 4 p.m. newscast. Prior to Tucson, he worked for two years anchoring the early morning and noon newscasts on the CBS affiliate in Phoenix. In his 23 years in the business, Overall has also anchored newscasts on the NBC and Fox affiliates in Las Vegas, the CBS station in Los Angeles and the ABC affiliate in Little Rock, Ark. He has also worked in New Mexico and Alaska.
He and his wife, Jennifer, have two sons.
While it’s not uncommon for TV anchors and reporters to leave the Tucson market, Overall’s departure would be the second one this year tied at least in part to the current economic downturn that has hit media outlets especially hard.
In May, Heather Moore, who anchored the 9 p.m. newscast on KMSB 11, was let go as part of budget cutbacks at KTVK in Phoenix, which at the time produced the Tucson newscast. The newscast is now produced in Tucson at KMSB.
By the way, Moore fans might be interested to know two months ago she started anchoring the weekday 6 p.m. news on KUSI, an independent TV station in San Diego.
Geraldo visits Wednesday
Fox News Channel’s Geraldo Rivera returns to the University of Arizona campus Wednesday (Nov. 19), his alma mater, for a book-signing session and later that night will participate in a public discussion at the Fox Tucson Theatre downtown.
At 1 p.m. he will be in the UA BookStore in the Student Union Memorial Center, 1209 E. University Blvd., autographing copies of his book, “His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.”
Rivera will talk about his book and the issue of immigration at a public discussion at 7 p.m. at the Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. It’s free and open to the public.
ABC wins election night
The results are in from election night. Not the ones about Barack Obama winning for president but where viewers tuned their TV sets to get that information. The winner, according to Nielsen Media Research’s national data was ABC, which averaged 13.1 million viewers for its prime time coverage. That was up 9 percent from what the network had in 2004. It also means ABC knocked off NBC as the most popular choice for viewers, no doubt due at least in part to the fact the late Tim Russert wasn’t a part of NBC’s coverage this year. NBC’s viewership was down 18 percent.
The others that averaged more than 1 million viewers, in order, were:
2. CNN, 12.3 million viewers
3. NBC, 12 million
4. Fox News Channel (cable), 9 million
5. CBS, 7.8 million
6. MSNBC, 5.9 million
7. Fox (broadcast), 5.1 million
8. Univision, 4.1 million
All totaled, an average 71.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the coverage, up from 59.2 million who watched in 2004.
Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Tucson Media appears weekly.
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