Morning and midday anchor Art Barron is being kicked off KSTP-TV but not out of the building.
"He will do midday up until the May book starts and then he will transition fully into a Web position," KSTP-TV news director Lindsay Radford told me today. "He will be a Web producer for us. We are launching a whole bunch of community sites and have hired a whole bunch of people for that. God bless Art. He's got the best attitude in the world."
As a producer, Barron's face won't be seen anymore, which means that he'll probably experience a cut in pay, broadcast insiders tell me.
"It depends on a lot of variables," Barron begged to differ. "Obviously, it's not going to be anchor pay. But the Hubbards take good care of me. I enjoy working for them. You go into this knowing these things happen -- for whatever reason, changes are made. State of the biz."
With Barron out of a news anchor chair, the KSTP morning show anchor desk again will have the more traditional two anchors, Vineeta Sawkar and Rebekah Wood. Wood became the third when she was removed from the afternoon variety show.
Broadcast insiders suspect that something happened that has not been revealed yet. Barron said not so. My original tip was that Barron had been fired, so this is better news. A divorced father who's been raising his three children alone for the past 10 years, Barron recently became engaged and is haggling with his wife-to-be over wedding dates.
"This [new assignment] gives me an opportunity to do some other things and prove myself in this capacity," said Barron. "We have all these neighborhoods, and what I am doing is finding stories that concern people and I post them on the Web and we create a page for each one of these neighborhoods."
C.J. is at 612.332.TIPS or cj@startribune.com. E-mailers, please state a subject -- "Hello" doesn't count. Attachments are not opened, so don't even try. More of her attitude can be seen on FOX 9 Thursday mornings.
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