He and Haener continue to preside over the top-rated nightly newscast in the Bay Area, so he obviously carries some clout. Raised in the Bay Area, Somerville joined KTVU in 1991 and inherited the anchor position from KTVU icon Dennis Richmond in 2008.
Somerville’s suspension comes just six weeks after his return to the anchor desk and will undoubtedly trigger speculation about his future with the station. In reporting about Somerville’s suspension, The Chronicle cited sources who said he recently had been disciplined by KTVU for what the station deemed to be inappropriate political opinions about the new Texas abortion law and the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But his openness can also be a source of friction.
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That fan base is obviously a major plus for Somerville - and KTVU. (Julie Haener, his Channel 2 co-anchor, has 33,000.)
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The veteran anchor has a history of expressing his personal opinions - often passionately - on social media, and it has paid off in a massive fandom.įor example, no Bay Area TV news personality can match his reach on Facebook, where he has nearly 600,000 followers. It’s a stance that stands in stark contrast with Somerville’s typically open approach to interacting with the public. When Somerville abruptly left a June 3 newscast in which he slurred his words, four days passed before Victoria Gurrieri, a New York-based spokesperson for Fox - the network that owns and operates KTVU - finally announced that he was taking some time off “to focus on his health.”Īnd when Somerville returned to the anchor desk nine weeks later, neither he nor the station addressed his lengthy absence. Both Somerville and Eikel have declined to speak on the record, and repeated calls to a company spokesperson have gone unanswered as of this writing. He first joined the San Francisco Bay Area station in 1991 and in 2008 became an anchor of the six o’clock and ten o’clock news broadcasts. Over the years he has become one of the station’s most recognisable having presented on screen for more than two decades. While not necessarily dismissing the validity of Somerville’s proposal, Eikel and newsroom producers concluded that it wasn’t the proper time or place to run the “tagline,” which would have taken less than a minute of airtime.Ĭomplicating the situation is KTVU’s long-standing practice of refusing to publicly address such matters. Frank Somerville is a journalist and news anchor for KTVU. Somerville had wanted to point out the glaring disparities in media coverage of White crime victims versus people of color.
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The disagreement, said sources at KTVU who declined to give their names because they were not authorized to go on the record, occurred when news director Amber Eikel rejected Somerville’s proposal to tack a brief commentary about racial inequity onto a straight news update of the Petito story. It’s not clear when he might return - if ever. He was not on the air Sunday night and wasn’t expected to be back Monday. Somerville, 63, was “suspended indefinitely” last week by Channel 2 management after a disagreement with KTVU’s news director over coverage of the Gabby Petito homicide case. As KTVU’s suspension of popular anchor Frank Somerville continues to provoke a social media uproar, the incident has raised more questions than answers.
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