At 5 p.m. on Thursday, KMBC, Channel 9, will launch Kansas City’s first high-definition newscast from its new facility. The change will be obvious even to viewers not watching on HDTV sets.
The new home of KMBC and sister station KCWE-29, close to Swope Park, features a flexible news set where the cameras and anchor desk can be rotated to offer viewers different glimpses into the wide-open newsroom. An improved weather center will not only offer more eye candy but eliminate the long walk Bryan Busby had to take from the anchor desk to the green screen at Channel 9’s downtown studios.
But before we get to the newsroom, C. Wayne Godsey, the general manager of KMBC-KCWE, is walking me through the rest of his new headquarters, pointing out features like he’s trying to sell me the place.
“You’ll think I’m funny showing you this,” he says as we walk into a tastefully appointed employee restroom. He also points out the high-tech conference rooms, the airy break room and the parking lot, where a reporter can get out of her car, walk through two doors and be at her desk in seconds.
Clearly, Godsey is full of house pride. He supervised the entire project from the beginning. Even then, in the spring of 2004, when all he had were blueprints, he was eager to show how the exterior would be fashioned after the terra cotta-tiled buildings that adorn the Country Club Plaza. Today, he points out the framed photos in the hallway showing off Kansas City landmarks and the beauty of the Ozarks and Flint Hills.
But the heart of the new facility is the newsroom, which has been reorganized around a large, circular desk where the assignment and Internet editors will work side by side. It’s adjacent to the news set and will be visible in the background beneath a halo of flat-screen displays. The anchor desk is on wheels, and in the opening weeks expect to see it moved around to show a variety of backdrops during evening newscasts. (Morning news will move to the new studio on Friday.)
A glass wall — more eye candy — will separate the newsroom from editing rooms, including one equipped for booming 5.1 surround sound (which you’ll need both HDTV and home theater speakers to experience).
Showing the newsroom is something networks have done for years, ever since CNN’s visionary first president, Reese Schonfeld, ripped the lid off the sardine can in 1980.
KMBC had one anchor desk overlooking its newsroom downtown, but the new set will feel like it has been plopped down in the middle of everything. This “will create a sense of urgency,” Godsey says, “and some shots our audience has never seen before.” He has bought a wireless handheld camera that can rove the hallways, taking shots of the newsroom or anywhere else in the building.
Behind the scenes, the 170-plus employees of KMBC, KCWE and corporate owner Hearst-Argyle Television are experiencing an upgrade that might be called “Extreme Makeover: Work Edition.”
Their offices at the Lyric Opera building, where Channel 9 has been since the 1950s, were like a TV station turned on its side. Employees were spread out over six floors, and some offices spilled over to a building across Central Street.
In their new two-story workspace, departments are arranged efficiently, one might even say promiscuously, with few walls and an overhang that lets sales and promotion people look, or yell, down into the newsroom.
Secure parking, a helipad for Johnny Rowlands to park his bird and a diesel-powered backup generator are just three of the amenities here that KMBC couldn’t get at the Lyric.
“I can’t tell you what a dramatically different feel this is,” Godsey says.
Beginning Thursday, however, we’ll know how dramatically different it looks.
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Ever since I purchased my tv watching the news hasn't been the same. Finally there will be a newscast that not only will look good on TV but will actually take up the whole screen without having to stretch the picture. 
