Will Channel 6 ever get it together? Management cites a new effort to build credibility, but a financial squeeze raises questions about the future of the third-place TV news operation BY IAN DONNIS

ON A RECENT weeknight, the top of WLNE-TV’s (Channel 6) 6 p.m. newscast featured a quintet of stories — about impending snow, two house fires, a hostage situation, and a plea by a murder suspect — typical of the fleeting mix that passes for news in local television markets across the nation. The next report, however, was dramatically different: an enterprising account from inside the Adult Correctional Institutions that showed how federal prosecutors are trying to reduce gun-related crime by warning felons about the heavy sentences they can face after release for possessing even a single bullet. Although not exactly groundbreaking journalism, this two-minute story by Kristen Welker was lengthy, thoughtful, and unlike the earlier stories, it drew a substantial link between cause and effect.

After a recent round of layoffs at ABC6, this report shows how a news operation whose ratings have traditionally limped behind WJAR-TV (Channel 10) and WPRI/WNAC-TV (Channels 12, 64) can still do something far better than the industry norm. In fact, news director Edwin Hart cites the presence of an upgraded special-reports unit — which produced this multi-part series on reducing gun violence — as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the credibility of Channel 6’s newscasts. Another key element was bringing Walter Cryan, a well-regarded 35-year fixture at WPRI, out of retirement last October to anchor WLNE’s 6 o’clock newscast.

But ABC6’s news operation faces a variety of questions, particularly after the Nielsen ratings for its 6 p.m. broadcast slipped slightly after Cryan’s much-publicized arrival in time for fall sweeps. A 10 percent across-the-board cut in the broadcast operations of WLNE’s corporate owner, California-based Freedom Communications, resulted in eight layoffs last month at Channel 6, including morning anchor Issa Arnita and reporter Kria Sakakeeny. The end result is that ABC6 — which already had less staffing than channels 10 and 12 — will have to do more with still less. Furthermore, advertising sales relations at Channel 6 got so troubled in recent years that the accounts of advertisers as prominent as Cardi’s Furniture were lost for a period of time.

Freedom Communications, a diversified media company whose flagship is the Orange County Register, has owned WLNE since 1983, and it is not known for pouring money into the local news operation. The financial picture has gotten significantly tighter, however, since two buyout firms, including locally based Providence Equity Partners, became partial owners of Freedom after it was offered for sale in 2003. The buyout firms’ interest in seeing a return on their investment is an acknowledged driving factor in the recent 10 percent cut in Freedom’s broadcast division, and unless WLNE becomes more successful in selling its commercial time (a situation closely related to its ratings), the local squeeze could grow worse. And although it would be an unusual move in a top-50 market like the one encompassed by Providence and New Bedford, Massachusetts, some industry observers wonder whether ABC6 might have to relinquish its news operation.

Hart and general manager Roland T. Adeszko, who arrived in March 2004 after running the CBS and Fox affiliates in Youngstown, Ohio, describe a far more bullish outlook. Asked if Channel 6 might have to drop its news operation, Adeszko says, "No, that was never suggested to me." Hart, who spent a chunk of the ’80s as news director at WPRI, adds, "I’ve heard those rumors for 15 years." Looking forward, Adeszko says, "I think once we get sales turned around, we’re going to be in a whole different bailiwick. We’ve been sales-challenged, not news-challenged. Once we get that straightened out, I think we’ll be in great shape."

Enthusing on the hiring of the 72-year-old Cryan, Hart is well aware of the habitual mindset in which Rhode Islanders think of bygone institutions and experiences — shopping at the Outlet, for example — as if they were still in the present. At the same time, he believes — in a view contrary to some in local television — that four ratings periods are necessary to properly assess the impact of Cryan’s arrival. The most important thing, he says, is raising the credibility of ABC6’s newscast and then steadily trying to attract more viewers. "I’m excited as heck," Hart says, "and I think I’m realistic about what we can accomplish."

It’s hard not to hope that Channel 6 can become more commercially competitive with its news counterparts at 10 and 12, if only because of its underdog status. For a gregarious figure like Hart, 67, whose career has coincided with the rise and later challenges of television news, trying to make WLNE more viable truly represents an instance of fighting the good fight. As it stands, however, a series of periodic cuts at the station — and the dark possibility of the news operation’s demise — fall within a sadly familiar narrative: the way in which media consolidation and the demise of family-owned media companies have steadily winnowed the local resources devoted to informing the public. The Providence Journal, which was more deeply staffed and broader in scope before being sold to the Dallas-based Belo Corporation, offers an instructive example. Similarly, although the reasons were different, Rhode Islanders are worse off after public radio station WRNI (1290 AM) was reduced to essentially a barebones operation (see "The undoing of WRNI," News, September 24, 2004).

Ironically, WLNE’s plight might be helped by a curious source — the kind of accelerated consolidation unsuccessfully sought in 2003 by Michael K. Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission — but more about this later.