WIVB-TV (Channel 4) and WNLO-TV (CW 23) General Manager Brien Kennedy on Tuesday became the second leader of a Buffalo TV station to announce he is retiring within the last month and the fourth to announce he is retiring within eight months.
Kennedy, who took over the station in the summer of 2020, joins WGRZ-TV (Channel 2) General Manager Jim Toellner in announcing his retirement this month.
He made the announcement in an email to his staff.
“Although it has been just over two years that we have all worked together I am very proud of what we have accomplished,” wrote Kennedy. “Our news team and news leadership has served our viewers extremely well while producing quality journalism that has kept our community safe and informed during a very important time with the lead story being focused on all the issues surrounding Covid.”
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Toellner announced on Feb. 2 that he will be leaving the station he led for almost 19 years on April 1.
Kennedy, who has been at the Nexstar station for a little more than two years, will officially leave on May 27.
The delay in the departures of Toellner and Kennedy is likely to give their ownership groups time to find replacements.
They join former WNED-TV (Channel 17) head Donald K. Boswell and former WUTV general manager Nick Magnini in retirement. Boswell retired in July after 23 years running the public broadcasting station. Magnini retired in October after running the Fox affiliate for 16½ years.
Kennedy’s decision to retire was not unexpected, considering that he likely is due to receive a financial settlement in the millions from CBS after he filed a discrimination and retaliation complaint against CBS and Peter Dunn, then the president of CBS television stations, with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. In the complaint, Kennedy claimed he was fired in July of 2019 because of his cooperation with a company lawyer and not for poor performance as Dunn claimed. CBS disputed the claim, saying he was fired for performance. Dunn has since been fired.
Kennedy, 61, joined the Buffalo station in the nation’s No. 53 market after developing a reputation for being an agent of change in his previous stops at stations in larger markets in Minneapolis (No. 14) and Philadelphia (No. 4).
But little needed to be changed at Channel 4, which remains in a competitive local news race for supremacy with Channel 2.
As a CBS affiliate, Channel 4 also carries most of Western New York's popular prime-time entertainment programs and the majority of the games involving the area’s biggest TV attraction – Buffalo Bills games.
Kennedy was the second general manager hired here by Nexstar after taking over ownership of the station. He took over for Dominic Mancuso, who left to become GM for a Nexstar station in Indianapolis.
He said he was convinced to come to Buffalo after meeting with Nexstar officials, including Timothy C. Busch, then the president of Nexstar. Busch was at WGRZ-TV for seven years, including as general sales manager. Busch also had sales positions at WGR-AM and FM before moving to television.
Kennedy’s reason for coming to a smaller market became clearer a year ago when he was featured prominently in a Los Angeles Times investigation that led to Dunn and another powerful CBS executive, David Friend, being placed on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation of the racist and sexist allegations portrayed in the newspaper story. They were fired two months later.
Kennedy, who was once nicknamed the “Golden Boy” of CBS-owned-and-operated stations by a Minnesota TV critic, was portrayed in the Times story by reporter Meg James and a subsequent Philadelphia Inquirer story by reporter Ellen Gray as a principled general manager calling out the alleged misconduct of Dunn, president of CBS Television Stations, and Friend, senior vice president, news for the TV station.
The Times story portrayed Kennedy as a hero who stood up for what is right at the risk of losing his job.
The story reported that Kennedy was Dunn’s “loyal lieutenant” for nearly a decade before things between them went sour.
According to the Times, Kennedy said after first refusing to assist in the internal review of Dunn’s alleged misconduct because of fears of retaliation he later agreed to cooperate after “being reassured” that retaliation wouldn’t happen.
The James story that led to Dunn and Friend being placed on administrative leave included allegations by a former vice president at the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia “and others that the executives cultivated a hostile work environment that included bullying female managers and blocking efforts to hire and retain Black journalists” at CBS-owned stations, including the Philadelphia station where Kennedy was general manager for four years ending in 2019.
