The E. W. Scripps Company has promoted a pair of news directors to serve as station leaders for its local television outlets in Detroit and Salt Lake City.
Tim Kochenderfer will serve as the Station Manager of WXYZ (Channel 7, ABC) and WMYD (Channel 20) in Detroit. He joined WXYZ in 2002 and has served in various roles since, most recently as the duopoly’s news director. He began his career in Detroit at cross-town rival WWJ (Channel 62, CBS). Kochenderfer will continue to oversee local news development at WXYZ while adding day-to-day oversight of the station’s operations into his responsibilities.
“Tim is a respected leader and has been an integral part of our success for more than two decades,” said Mike Murri, the General Manager of WXYZ-WMYD and Regional Vice President for Scripps. “I look forward to all he will accomplish for our station, partners and community in this new role.”
Additionally, Leona Wood has been named the new Station Manager and Senior News Director at KSTU (Channel 13, Fox) in Salt Lake City. She begins in the new role later this month, and joins from KSL-TV (Channel 5), the NBC affiliate serving the same market. Wood previously worked at TV stations in Phoenix (KPHO Channel 5, CBS), Seattle (KIRO-TV Channel 7, CBS) and Spokane (KXLY Channel 4, ABC) before moving to Salt Lake City.
As with Kochenderfer, Wood will oversee news programming for KSTU while also managing the station’s day-to-day operations.
“Leona is a strategic media executive with a proven track record in content strategy, cross-departmental leadership, financial stewardship and audience growth,” said Merri Hanson, the General Manager at KSTU and a Regional Vice President at Scripps. “She knows how to serve audiences, advertisers and community partners in the Salt Lake City market and is ideally positioned to lead KSTU’s day-to-day operations and newsroom to continued success.”
Scripps owns more than 60 local TV stations across 40 regional markets, as well as national networks like Court TV, Ion, Scripps News and Bounce.
