“He was a great programming executive with a real gut for what would sell,” says Rohrs.Īs head of Post-Newsweek, Frank guides the 14th-largest station group in the U.S., according to B&C’s 2005 survey of the Top 25 Station Groups.
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Examples of this include selling sponsorships of Detroit Tigers coverage with a series of vignettes on local businesses. The two worked together at WDIV in the mid 1980s, and Frank, Rohrs recalls, often engineered ways to marry programming and ad sales. “He has a real talent for content and promotions, and superb instincts on the sales side,” says TVB President Chris Rohrs. As an active board member for the National Association of Broadcasters, he similarly advocates affiliates’ interests, including limits on the number of stations a company can own. As chairman of the Network Affiliated Stations Alliance, he has collided with the Big Four networks, pressing for more local input in network programming and more opportunity to preempt network shows for local coverage. Local executives are empowered to pull off the production, with Frank advising-much like an executive producer.įrank is a champion for local broadcasters and, at times, a bit of a maverick. He demands first-rate news, encourages local programming and wants stations to be active in public affairs. When Frank took over Post-Newsweek in early 2000, he exported that vision to the company’s other five stations. The script for WDIV was heavy local involvement, on-air and off.
“You focus on what you want on the air and then cast it, in front of and behind the camera,” he says. Then, Frank says, he found a compromise: He would run a station with a producer’s mentality. “I never wanted to worry about the air conditioning.” “I spent my life creating programs and seeing them on the air, having an impact on my community,” he says. He hesitated because he thought he’d hate the hassles of being the big boss who had to manage all the mundane parts of a station’s operations. But the group needed a general manager for its largest station, WDIV Detroit, where Frank had once worked, and the brass wanted him.
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