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End of an era: Adele Arakawa talks about leaving 9News after twenty four years
Adele Arakawa, outgoing 9News anchor who ruled the Denver market’s TV ratings for twenty four years, is weaning herself off TV news. She’s even permitting herself to see “CBS This Morning” instead of her station’s affiliated “Today” on NBC.
Heading toward her June thirty departure from the KUSA-Channel nine anchor desk, she claims she won’t miss the grind. She says she’s ready for a life centered around golf at the home in Tucson which she and spouse Barry Tiller upsized to four years ago. They play golf two or three times a week. (Her handicap is now Eighteen. “I hope to get it down to single digits,” she said.)
Her timing is flawless: With local TV news in decline and media generally at a crossroads, Arakawa is getting out on top – while the industry is still recognizable. The era of gigantic anchor salaries is past. The corporate pressure to concentrate more on the bottom line and less on idealistic journalism is a given.
The game has switched.
In the old days “we had a forty five share” (or percentage of the viewing audience). “Now we feast a four or five share,” she said.
The timing is right for her personally, too. Arakawa will be sixty in August; Barry will be seventy in September; and their 40th anniversary is in July.
“We’re at a symbolic point in our lives.”
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She will have one contractual obligation in Denver, not connected to media. It’s “a company I’ve had a relationship with, a joy project” for one year with an option to extend. “That’s all I’ll say.” But she’s done with TV.
(Last week, KUSA-Channel nine announced that Kim Christiansen will join Kyle Clark and Kathy Sabine on the NBC affiliate’s ten p.m. news team, following Arakawa’s departure.)
On a latest Sunday at her home in Lone Tree, dressed in white cut-offs and top and with a tee time in the offing, Arakawa sent her spouse out for golf nutsack and lodged into the corner of a vast sofa to speak of her good fortune.
They’ll only take four of their cars to Arizona, she said. They’re providing two to the kids (her son and his wifey). A close circle of friends awaits in Tucson, where the duo has kept a 2nd home for years.
She has stopped racing her nine hundred eleven Porsche race car competitively. “My car got old, then I got old.” But she still drives a road course, a track she described as a cross inbetween Formula one and the Grand Prix.
The house is sold, she’s getting rid of belongings, she’s letting go as much as an admitted Type-A personality can. She even wished to unload the several Emmy Awards lining a shelf next to the giant safe in the den. “My hubby said I should wait.”
She has obsessively planned tornado travel in coming months to Europe, Sonoma, North Carolina, with stops in Denver for black-tie charity events and to pick up an award (she’ll be inducted into the Denver Press Club’s Hall of Fame in September), then a journey to Japan.
She seems less interested in discussing the industry she is leaving than the future she is launching.
Despite the erosion of the TV news audience, she predicts “local TV news will proceed to exist,” even as more people are driven to the online platform. She anticipates “a shakeout of stations. There will be a few survivors of local news. You’re watching a transition in this market. I did live in the Golden Age of TV news … . In the future, there will be fewer local news operations.” She anticipates more takeovers, more mergers.
She also expects more innovative efforts along the lines of Kyle Clark’s “Next,” which she called “a toe in the water” encouraged by TEGNA.
The content has switched. The blatant cross-promotional aspects are accepted now. “I’ve been there, done that, fought those battles,” she said.
Even as the industry tilts toward MMJs (multi-media journalists, who act as reporter-photographer-editor in one), it will be up to the youthful recruits “to retain some semblance of journalistic integrity.”
She’d like to be remembered as “somebody who gave a damn, who cared passionately about what went on air every day. I indeed cared,” she said, tearing up. “It sounds so cliche,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“I won’t get overly melancholy about it,” she said, “but I will miss the people I worked with.”
She claims she won’t miss the showbiz acclaim that came with her very public persona. (She recalls someone yelling her name in the reverential quiet of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. “There’s no escape.”) But she knows she will miss the cracking news days. “You live for that adrenaline rush.”
Arakawa is philosophical even as she speeds through her day, organizing, planning, exercising, connecting and rivaling. “Life is a series of passages, this is a entire fresh chapter. It’s like driving a race car: Always look ahead. That’s my mantra in life.”
Her hubby, back with the golf nutsack, confirmed her type-A traits. He marveled at her energy for details, her unceasing planning. When it was suggested that some type-As have a raunchy time with retirement, Barry paused and answered thoughtfully: “It’s a possibility.”
