By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Monday, November 9, 2015
CBS46 has hired Karyn Greer and Sally Sears full time as part of their new investigative unit. Art Harris, Harry Samler and anchors Sharon Reed and Ben Swann are also part of the team.
They are led by veteran media man CB Hackworth, who joined CBS46 as executive producer of special projects in June and has won 22 Emmys.
"We're all about hard news, enterprise reporting, investigative and broad impact relevant content," texted Larry Perret, news director, on Monday night. "That's our future moving forward."
When the station made a massive makeover in June, Perret said the emphasis would be on finding original news stories nobody else has. It has been reporting heavily on the subject of guns, which included a piece about 6,000 guns the Atlanta police are sitting on, a story that our own Jim Galloway followed up on a few days ago. Now all four broadcast stations in town have investigative teams.
“It’s a team with not only years of television reporting experience but a team with a number of years in the Atlanta market. They have contacts and sources that will help us do some incredible investigative work,” Perret said in a press release.
The station, he said, is placing emphasis on its morning show and its 11 p.m. newscast, both of which are making headway in building audience. Perret noted that CBS46 - which is usually in fourth place in most dayparts - beat 11Alive at 11 p.m. in October.
In recent years, 11 p.m has been CBS46's strongest rated program, fueled in part by a strong prime-time lineup. Greer, who left 11 Alive earlier this year after 15 years, joined CBS46 as a freelancer in June filling in mornings as an anchor and doing some spot reporting. She recently broke the story of the Georgia Tech student lying about getting robbed after jumping and falling off a moving train.
Sears worked for a combined 26 years as a reporter at WAGA-TV (1984-1995) and Channel 2 Action News (1995-2010) before retiring. CBS46 first lured her back on air a few months ago as part of their daily "Just a Minute" segment featuring commentaries by former journalists. She did a piece a few weeks back on prisoners who have their own Facebook pages and Web access behind bars.
Samler is one of the station's veteran reporters, having been there a decade and focused on consumer investigations under the phrase "Better Call Harry." Harris joined CBS46 in August as an investigative reporter. Reed and Swann joined the station five months ago as new anchors. Swann has done several pieces under his signature "Reality Check With Ben Swann," a type of journalism he did before he joined the station.
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