Randy Shaver: Third Time Lucky

KARE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Randy Shaver has been at KARE (Channel 11) for nearly three decades, the last few years as the Twin Cities' NBC affiliate's sports director.  On occasion he's been moonlighting as a substitute news anchor, and apparently he did such a good job that he found himself on the short list as a future candidate to sit next to co-anchor Julie Nelson.

Having been passed over twice, Shaver finally gets his chance as KARE's new evening and 10 p.m. news anchor, starting July 16.  He replaces Mike Pomeranz, who moved to California to work on San Diego Padres baseball telecasts.

It doesn't sound as if KARE or its parent company Gannett put much effort into finding a replacement for Pomeranz.  Instead, what they probably did was to give Shaver a test run before offering him the job.

Shaver isn't the first sports guy in this market to make the switch to news.  There's Jeff Passolt at KMSP (Channel 9), who used to do sports on KARE.  Joe Schmit of KSTP (Channel 5) briefly co-anchored "5 Eyewitness News" in between stints as the station's sports director.  And Eric Perkins doubles as weekend news and sports anchor on KARE.

With ESPN and the Internet, there's not much of a need for folks to tune in to see how the local sports teams did these days.  (In fact, there are some local stations that have dropped the sports segments on newscasts.)  Instead, if it's a major sports story such as the Minnesota Wild signing two big-name free agents or the latest Viking to run afoul of the law, you're more likely to find it at the top of the newscast alongside the Amy Senser trial coverage and the anchors promoting their latest projects.

Shaver isn't abandoning sports completely.  He's still going to recap high school football games on "Prep Sports Extra" during the fall, which doesn't leave much to do for whoever replaces Shaver as sports director.

With Shaver's promotion, KARE should become less of a girls' club than they already are, matching its suburban mom audience.  Besides Nelson, there's weekend anchor Rena Sargianopolous, Belinda Jensen on weather, and reporters Jana Shortal and Lindsay Seavert (who just moved over from WCCO).  How many male personalities on the station can you name besides Shaver, Perkins and Boyd Huppert?

Randy Shaver should do well in his new position.  But the fact that he is now a news anchor after so many years in sports raises an interesting point.  Anybody can read what someone else has written on a Teleprompter, and sound like he or she knows what they're talking about.  Anybody.  At least that's what they seem to teach in News Anchoring 101.

UPDATE;  Shaver's old position has been filled by none other than Eric Perkins, who takes over as KARE's sports director as soon as the Olympics are over.  Which means he's no longer going to double-dip in news and sports on weekends.  And maybe, just maybe, he'll get over himself and grow up.