TV Talk: KDKA-TV’s Jon Delano retires

After 30 years as KDKA-TV’s political analyst and 23 years as the station’s full-time money and politics editor, Jon Delano will retire from the station Dec. 1, with his last day on-air next Monday.

“I have always said that you should retire when you’re at the top of your game, not when you’re in decline,” Delano, 75, said earlier this week. “This has been one of my best years. How many TV journalists at a local station have interviewed both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, to say nothing of all the other interviews? … For me this has been an incredibly opportune year.”

Delano credits both his dogged pursuit of interviews and where he’s situated for his success.

“The reason I get the interviews is because KDKA-TV has been the political station to watch and Western Pennsylvania is a key component to any national political strategy,” Delano said. “If it weren’t for our viewers and for the people of Western Pennsylvania who deliver defeat or victory to candidates statewide and nationwide, I would not be in the position to get the interviews my colleagues in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago can never get.”

In addition to reporting, Delano also produces “Sunday Business Page” segments for KDKA’s weekend newscasts. He was a host of the station’s former weekly public affairs program. More recently, he hosted “Inside PA Politics,” which streams at cbsnews.com/Pittsburgh and aired on WPKD-TV.

A former adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Delano has been the only full-time local TV reporter consistently covering the political beat for at least two decades.

“When I started there was Mossie Murphy on WTAE and Bill Green at WPXI and I was the new kid,” Delano said. “Now I’m the only kid.”

It seems unlikely that KDKA will hire someone to cover politics in the same way, given that TV news has moved away from specialty beats like politics and features and toward more generalists covering a wide variety of news stories. Delano is in conversation with KDKA and CBS to make appearances on-air in a limited, on-call capacity for political analysis, exclusive interviews and as a debate panelist. If that happens, it will be a return to how Delano began his broadcasting career.

Prior to contributing on-air political analysis on WTAE-AM in 1991, Delano worked in the U.S. Congress as chief of staff to Democratic U.S. Rep. Doug Walgren.

“I went to all three (TV) stations — I knew the news directors and general managers because I had done Doug’s press work — and they all turned me down,” Delano recalled. “Then Channel 2 called me back.”

Delano said in 1994, KDKA did not have a political analyst. A few years earlier Dennis Casey departed as the station’s political consultant to run the campaign of former station weatherman Ron Klink. KDKA bought a statewide poll away from WTAE-TV but Channel 2 had no one to interpret the results.

“So Sue McInerney, the great news director of the time, calls me up and says, ‘Can you read a political poll? Let’s have you come on the air with Stacy Smith talking about this poll,’ ” Delano said. “I credit Stacy Smith with helping me to get started in television. He really loves politics … and he convinced (station management) we could do a once-a-week political segment. When I look at my earlier video, I wonder what they saw in me. I was pretty much a novice.”

In 2001 when money and business editor Bill Flanagan left KDKA for a job with the Allegheny Conference, then-news director Al Blinke offered Delano a full-time position covering money, business, politics and government. A lawyer by training, Delano left the firm he was working at, ready to jump into TV with both feet.

Delano said he won’t miss the stress of deadlines and he’s looking forward to traveling more with his wife, but he will miss his KDKA colleagues, including the station’s producers, photographers and particularly assistant news director Cathy Noschese and managing editor Corey Martin.

“Cathy and Corey are part of the reason I lasted as long as I did,” Delano said.

KDKA’s Ken Rice interviewed Delano for farewell segments that are scheduled to air on the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts Monday.

“I’m not sure I won’t tear up Monday. It’s difficult after 30 years,” Delano said. “But if we are able to work out the part-time arrangement, it won’t be the end, just a new beginning or maybe back to the future with the 1994 role.”

Delano is the second veteran Pittsburgher to call it a career. Earlier this month lead WPXI anchor David Johnson announced his retirement.

Steelers on WPXI

With WPXI simulcasting Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” stream this week, regular NBC programming will shift to PCNC with NBC programs airing there in their regular time periods. PCNC is available over the air on Channel 11.4 and it’s carried on Verizon’s FiOS TV on Channel 9. Comcast dropped PCNC several years ago.

Renewed

A third season of animated series “Star Wars: Visions” will stream in 2025.

Disney+ and Hulu renewed “The Artful Dodger” for a second season.

Netflix renewed “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” for a second season.

Channel surfing

Although Western Pennsylvania’s Kendall Eugene exited NBC’s “The Voice” in the Nov. 12 episode, Fox Chapel’s Sloane Simon is still in the competition and will next appear on the Nov. 26 episode. … “Suits” star and 1994 Carnegie Mellon University grad Gabriel Macht will reprise his role as Harvey Specter in the upcoming NBC spinoff “Suits: L.A.” (9 p.m. Feb. 23). … National Geographic Channel revisits the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the deadliest in recorded history, in the four-part docuseries “Tsunami: Race Against Time” (9-11 p.m. Nov. 24 and 25). … Conan O’Brian will host the “97th Academy Awards” telecast (7 p.m. March 2, ABC). … Comcast, parent of NBCUniversal, will spinoff cable assets MSNBC, CNBC, USA, E!, Oxygen, Golf Channel and Syfy into a separate company while retaining NBC, NBC News, NBC Sports, Peacock, Bravo and its Universal Studios theme parks. … Long-gestating FX-produced series “Alien: Earth,” from “Fargo” writer Noah Hawley, will stream on Hulu next summer.