Within two weeks of his arrival at WFTV-Channel 9, Merritt Rose had removed the “reserved” signs for executives in the station’s parking lot and ensured that several news people who were working without a contract were given one.
Rose also saw to it that WFTV’s 175 employees were given hard hats and scheduled for a tour of the station’s new studio, which is under construction on South Street in downtown Orlando.
“It’s very different from what people here were used to,” said Chris Schmidt, news director of the ABC affiliate. Added Ken Davison, producer of Eyewitness News at 5:30, “I never really saw much of that office when Cliff Conley was there. But I feel like now I could just walk in.”
Rose’s strategy has paid off. In the month since Channel 9’s new general manager arrived, morale has increased significantly, employees said.
Cox Enterprises Inc., WFTV’s Atlanta-based parent company, said that former general manager Conley took early retirement. Industry observers, however, contend that Conley was encouraged to retire because his management style rubbed Cox officials wrong.
Whatever the case, Rose is in, Conley is out, and employees at WFTV say they’re happy.
Rose was an up-and-comer in the Cox company, groomed for a top slot at one of the company’s eight television stations, according to colleagues. As vice president and general manager, Rose will oversee all of the station’s operations, from advertising sales to news and programming.
A slim man with thinning hair, Rose still gushes when he talks about how he finds broadcasting exciting. He’s a man who appears truly to love what he does.
One of Rose’s priorities at the station will be to ensure a smooth move later this year into the new $12 million studios. So many additions had been made to WFTV’s existing offices on Central Avenue on the other side of downtown that the building became like a series of bunny trails rather than the studios of Central Florida’s most-watched station.
Rose, 48, also plans to review WFTV’s programming lineup and step up self-promotion efforts to attract more viewers and keep the advertiser base firm.
With two other affiliates and a strong independent station, the Orlando market is more competitive, Rose said, than is Charlotte, N.C., where he previously was sales director of WSOC-TV, also an ABC affiliate.
“What I want to do,” Rose said, “is take a good TV station and make it even better. We want to make sure we’re offering viewers what they want to see.”
Rose was an avid sportsman in high school, playing both football and basketball, and had planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and major in engineering in college.
“My father was an engineer. He graduated from Pennsylvania State and worked for the railroad,” Rose said. “I just assumed that engineering was what I should do.”
After two years of study in mechanical engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., however, Rose decided that the profession wasn’t for him. He had a friend who worked at WPXI-TV, a Cox station in Pittsburgh, and in 1960 decided to take a job as a messenger there until he figured out what he really wanted to do.
“I realized I wasn’t in the right curriculum,” Rose said. “I got to the TV station and I realized, ‘Hey, I really like this.’ “
He worked his way up to the mailroom and as a driver for the station. Rose recalled one afternoon in 1960, when he was on his way back to the station and heard on the radio that the Pittsburgh Pirates had beaten the New York Yankees in the World Series.
He was in downtown Pittsburgh, he said, and “suddenly, the bars erupted. I stopped my little messenger wagon at a stoplight and all of a sudden these people who were pouring into the streets started rocking it. It was bedlam!
“I thought, ‘Well, this is it. They’re going to turn it over! And I’m gonna get fired!’ “
Rose punched the gas and ran the red light, leaving the partygoers to their revelry. Those were wild times for a 19-year-old, he said.
In 1980, Rose was promoted from WPXI in Pittsburgh to Cox headquarters, where he helped develop advertising sales in the company’s cable division. From there, he was promoted to TeleRep, a Cox subsidiary in New York that secures advertising for Cox stations.
Colleagues described Rose as a hard-working and pleasant man who has a great attitude toward work and is attuned to his employees. Some of that may be evidenced at Channel 9, where immediately upon his arrival he secured contracts with three on-air personalities. He nor Schmidt would identify the employees.
At WSOC in Charlotte, general manager Greg Stone said that Rose was particularly compassionate when one of his advertising sales representatives was going through a divorce, which affected her job performance. Rose worked with the woman until she rebounded to her old form, Stone said.
“In situations that call for empathy or feeling, he always does the right thing,” Stone said. “He showed concern for that woman going through a divorce. As much as he cared for the success of the station, he cared about his people more.”
In 1966, Rose married the former Margaret “Bunny” Krance, who was writing promotions for WPXI. Margaret still is in Charlotte, preparing for the move to Orlando, while Rose is living out of an Orlando hotel room. The two are in the process of buying a home in the Orlando area.
Rose and his wife, who have no children, enjoy the theater, she said. When they lived in New York for 15 months, they regularly attended shows. In Charlotte, they went to the community theater and hope to do the same in Orlando.
The two also frequently embark on short weekend getaways, such as to the mountains. “Merritt works so many hours during the week, that we really have to pack everything into the weekend,” she said. “We try to do all our relaxing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
They also play tennis regularly, and Rose jogs. Despite occasional lapses, he said, he tries to run five to six miles several times a week, sometimes after dark when he gets home late.
On one run, Rose and a former associate, Jim Hatcher, got lost in the Arizona desert. The two had gone on a business trip, Hatcher recalled, and wanted to start their morning with a good run. “We’d gotten up to chase the jack rabbits in the desert in Phoenix,” said Hatcher, who is secretary and general counsel at Cox Enterprises in Atlanta.
“We were up before dawn, it was still dark, but Merritt said he knew the route. Then, after about eight miles, he admitted he didn’t know how to get back to the hotel.”
Even though WFTV leads the pack in Central Florida, Rose said, he doesn’t want to let his guard down.
“The leader in the market is always in the position of great vulnerability,” he said. “Everybody is taking a shot at you.”
