It's a swap. With C.R. Douglas leaving The Seattle Channel (channel 21, the city's civic channel) for KCPQ, Q-13, the city channel has signed up Brian Callanan, who has been a morning host and reporter at KCPQ for the past 11 years. KCPQ, owned by the bankruptcy-battling Chicago Tribune Co., is the Fox outlet in Seattle for entertainment programming, though certainly not for the Fox conservative slant on the news.
For a sampling of Callanan's style, as guest host on a recent Seattle Channel show with the City Council, take a look. For a story on the changes at the Channel and C.R. Douglas's new post as news analyst at Q-13, here's Feliks Banel's recent story in Crosscut. The local TV market has now got four news analysts/hosts: Douglas at KCPQ, Robert Mak at KING-TV, Enrique Cerna at KCTS-TV, and now Callanan.
Callanan has been in television news since graduating from Berkeley, where he majored in English and mass communications. His first jobs were in Roseberg, Oregon (KPIC), where he was "a one-man band," and then four years at Spokane's KREM. He's been mostly a general assignment reporter at KCPQ, working the early news program, including coverage of City Hall, his new exclusive beat. He's 39, married with two children in elementary school, and lives in West Seattle. He says he's "brimming with ideas" for his new assignment and wants to make the much-honored station "more engaging" and with a new emphasis on segments originating outside the studio.
This report was updated on 9/1 with new material about Callanan's background.
