Kenny Plotnik, the news director of NBC10, is stepping down. The station staff got the word Monday morning from NBC Boston’s president, Mike St. Peter, who said the local NBC affiliate’s news operation had come to a “fork in the road” under Plotnik, but the parting is “amicable.” St. Peter also insisted the change has nothing to do with NBC10’s ratings, which have been mostly moribund since NBC dumped WHDH-TV to go its own way over a year ago.
A station spokesperson confirmed the change in an e-mail Monday afternoon: “Kenny helped us successfully launch our brand new NBC Boston station. We appreciate his hard work and dedication on the successful launch of our station. Kenny is leaving NBC10 Boston on Friday, April 13. We support him and his future endeavors.”
Meanwhile, veteran Boston broadcaster Rod Fritz, who was shown the door at WBZ NewsRadio 1030 a few weeks ago, is getting words of encouragement from some of the many friends and colleagues he made of 40 years in the business. One of them, Carl Stevens, Fritz’s co-worker at WBZ NewsRadio, wrote a lengthy testimonial on Facebook.
“I appreciated the way [Fritz] treated all of us in the news room with respect. And I liked the way he brought an immediate lightness to the place, laughter. In the business I’m in, we’re often reporting on some unpleasant things, telling stories that sometimes crack the tuning fork in your soul,” Stevens wrote. “Rod said the same words on the radio, told the same stories. But, in the news room, he had the ability to make us all smile. I’m going to miss that.
“I’ve seen a lot of people in my business lose their jobs; and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past thirty five years it’s that change is constant, moments fly away,” Stevens wrote. “But I did not want to let this moment fly away without saying that Rod Fritz was, and is, a good journalist. Rod Fritz was, and is, a good man.”
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IHeartMedia, which assumed ownership of WBZ NewsRadio last fall, recently filed for bankruptcy.