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| Lloyd Cooney |
Long before partisan cable news, KIRO-AM/TV President Lloyd Cooney sat arrow-straight before the camera to
deliver editorials about family values and limited government, making
him a polarizing figure in Seattle.
Most viewers never met the man behind
the scenes, a motorcyclist and skydiver who shoved local news toward
the future.
Mr. Cooney died Nov. 25. He was 90,
according to The Seattle Times.
In 1969 he adopted the “Eyewitness
News” format, where anchors and field reporters appeared live,
using microwave transmissions. KIRO was among the earliest to use
videotape instead of film, and deployed helicopters for television
and radio-traffic reporting, said Mr. Cooney’s longtime colleague,
Ken Hatch. Walter Cronkite criticized the bantering Eyewitness News
format, to which Mr. Cooney replied that ratings growth at stations
like KIRO “should say something to Cronkite.”
He served as a paratrooper with the
82nd Airborne during World War II, where he fought in the Battle of
the Bulge. He married Betty in 1946. He died 19-days after his wife.
After years as general manager at
KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Mr. Cooney came to KIRO in 1963. The
station was third in the market, so he started a campaign to create
buzz and win viewers, and his editorials were part of that, his
daughter said.
Cooney retired from television in 1980
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