The incident in question happened over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, when local news viewership is traditionally lower compared to other days of the year. In 2008, Somerville was promoted to the lead anchor on KTVU’s flagship news program “The Ten O’Clock News,” which has held the position as the most-watched local news broadcast in the San Francisco market for decades. He started his career as an intern at KTVU in the early 1980s before the station ultimately hired him to lead their afternoon news broadcasts in 1991. Somerville is one of the most-recognizable television news anchors in the San Francisco Bay Area, the sixth-largest television market in the country. Somerville presented several news stories until he was removed from the news desk about 15 minutes into the broadcast, according to a copy of Sunday’s broadcast reviewed by The Desk. Viewers noticed the veteran news anchor slurring his speech and struggling to read a prepared news script as it came across the teleprompter.

The news anchor has been off the air since he appeared to be suffering from an unknown medical episode during an evening news broadcast aired on Oakland FOX station KTVU (Channel 2).įrom the start of the broadcast, Somerville appeared to be struggling to comport himself. She'd now be 8 years old, and her case got little national attention at the time and she remains unaccounted for.Television news anchor Frank Somerville is taking an extended leave of absence to focus on his health, his employer confirmed in a statement this week. In related news, CNN is reckoning with its Petito coverage and just took up a local missing-persons case involving Arianna Fitts, a Bay Area girl who is black, and who went missing in 2016 at the age of 2. Neither Fox nor KTVU has made any official statement on the matter. But I have no reason to think otherwise.' 'My guess is that I’m not coming back to Channel 2,” Somerville tells the Chronicle. He adds, 'It makes me really sad, because I’ve given 31 years to the station. If not, I’ll go to other stations outside of the market.' “I would love to work at one of the other stations in the market. 'I still want to continue working,” Somerville tells the Mercury News. Now, though, Somerville appears to be putting it out there that he's looking for a job. These rallies were followed by the City of San Leandro issuing an official proclamation honoring Somerville 'for speaking out about missing women of color and setting an example of strength and equity to our community and those worldwide.' But a shortened version of the tag made it into the script for that evening's broadcast, which allegedly prompted Somerville's suspension for insubordination.įollowing the suspension and subsequent social media attention, two rallies were held in support of Somerville outside KTVU headquarters in Oakland. Reportedly, Somerville butted heads with KTVU News Director Amber Eikel over the addition of this 'tag' that Somerville wanted to say on air, with Eikel saying that the topic deserved separate coverage at a later date. Somerville, who has a mixed-race daughter, wanted to make a statement at the end of a segment regarding 'missing white woman syndrome,' a term coined by the late Gwen Ifill about American media's obsession with the disappearance of young, pretty Caucasian women, when very little national attention is given to the thousands of people of color who go missing every year. Somerville later excused that saying he had mistakenly taken an Ambien before going on the air.īut he wouldn't be back on the air until August, and then within weeks, this controversy erupted behind the scenes about the Petito case. Earlier this year, Somerville disappeared from the air without explanation after a fairly strange Memorial Day Weekend broadcast in which he was slurring words and seemed unable to read the teleprompter.

What Somerville did that was so wrong is less clear. He noted that his contract is up in January, so it seems like the management is just waiting that out. So, I'm assuming I've done my last newscast,' Somerville said. 'No one at the station - Fox/KTVU - has contacted me. Somerville spoke this morning to local media hound Rich Lieberman - who said Somerville was speaking to him exclusively but very quickly Somerville gave quotes to the Mercury News and the Chronicle - saying that he's all but certain he won't ever be at the anchor desk again at KTVU. Longtime KTVU anchor Frank Somerville, who's been off the air since being suspended by management in September over a disagreement about the coverage of the Gabby Petito case, is speaking out and telling the press that he doesn't expect he'll be back at the station - and also, no one from the station or Fox has even bothered contacting him.

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