Dieterle departing WTEN for Ohio job

PHOTOGRAPHER: Jeff Wilkin

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Dana Dieterle, news director at Albany television station WTEN (Channel 10), is leaving for Ohio.

Dieterle said Thursday he will begin duties as assistant news director at CBS affiliate WOIO in Cleveland on June 30. The station also broadcasts news on WUAB, the location for the city’s “My 4” programming.

Dieterle has been news director at the Capital Region’s ABC affiliate since January 2006.

“It’s the right next opportunity for me, probably at about the right time,” Dieterle said. “I’ve been lucky throughout my whole career that the right next opportunity has come for me at the right time. It just feels right to me.”

A bigger audience is one reason for the move.

“I’m getting to a larger market and a larger market gets me back to the level of resources I was accustomed to at my previous jobs in Boston and Miami,” Dieterle said.

He added that recent layoffs at WTEN — the station laid off four on-air personalities and six other station employees earlier this year — did not influence his decision.

“I think it’s become evident since our company did what it did back in January that TV stations across the country are all facing economic troubles and they’re all closely looking at their budgets,” Dieterle said, “A number of major groups have done similar cutbacks that our company did back in January.”

Dieterle thinks times are changing for television news.

“The economy isn’t helping any, first of all,” he said. “And second of all, we face so much competition out there, whether it’s from the cable channels, from the Internet, there are so many more options and ways for people to get their information.”

Stations programming local news, he added, are suffering as a result.

“The challenge we face is figuring out what we can provide to the available viewers that they can’t anywhere else, and really focus on doing that,” Dieterle said.

He expects an interim news director will be named at WTEN before the end of the month. The station is currently low on news management personnel: Gary LaPlante, formerly Channel 10’s assistant news director, recently left the station for the news director job at WXXA, Fox 23.