December 28, 1994 – Chuck Taylor/Seattle Times
David Kerley has replaced Gary Justice as the weekday-noon co-anchor on KIRO-TV (Channel 7), the station said yesterday.
Justice retired from TV news this month. Kerley, who has been Channel 7’s weekend co-anchor and a KIRO reporter since 1992, joins Joyce Taylor at noon and will anchor one other daily newscast after the station loses its CBS affiliation in March.
Before joining KIRO, Kerley was weekend co-anchor at NBC affiliate KING-TV (Channel 5) – with Taylor. “I’m real excited about working with her again,” Kerley said. “We became very good friends at KING.”
KIRO officials say their plans to program the evening hours without “The CBS Evening News” at 6 p.m. aren’t firm yet, but presumably Kerley and Taylor will anchor a newscast sometime during the 6 o’clock hour. Taylor now co-anchors a half-hour of news at 6:30 p.m. with Steve Raible.
Margaret Larson and Raible will continue to anchor an hour of news at 5 p.m. and will anchor an hour of news at 10 p.m. after the loss of CBS programming.
Former KING anchor Mike James will replace Kerley on weekends starting Jan. 7. News director Bill Lord said an on-air partner has not been chosen. Nerissa Williams left that post in September to host “Nerissa at Nine,” a morning talk show.
Meanwhile, KIRO yesterday said it now has firm plans to pre-empt CBS programming between 8 and 10 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 16, to accommodate the debut of the United Paramount Network with a special two-hour episode of the new “Star Trek: Voyager” series.
After that, the station likely will show UPN programming during non-prime-time hours until CBS moves to KSTW-TV (Channel 11) in March.
The newsroom shuffle. Kerley, Justice, Taylor, Raible, Larson…
