I thought I'd put this here from the Classic Video thread...
Call me crazy, but I liked this set more than anything they'd have for the rest of the century.
Ratings had been declining for a few years, and with Frink and Coleman already gone (and Terry Murphy and John Drury also on to other jobs), there were targets on Flynn and Daly's backs. Prior to this era, they experimented with breaking up the two men, each getting a different co-anchor at 4:30 (expanded from 5), and 6. They then rejoined at 4:30 (and the 10 they never left) with new co-anchors at 6. That lasted little more than a year, before rising star Mary Ann Childers was shifted to weeknights with newcomer Paul Udell for the infamous '4:30' newsmagazine in 1981. The timing is a little murky, as I don't think Udell ever fronted the 10, and he lasted less than a year at the station. By 1982, it was Childers and a reassigned Tim Weigel at 4:30 and 10, with Joel and Fahey on the hour-long 6pm newscast (I'm unsure how long it had been 60 minutes, but would be cut down to 30 when Wheel of Fortune and Floyd Kalber came along for his solo run). Even worse were the replacements on weather and sports. Steve Deshler had left for the network job at CBS, and all bridges had been burned with John Coleman, so they installed (foot) Dr. Dave Eiser, kind of a folksy goofball that couldn't compete with Coleman and later Jerry Taft's delivery. Al Lerner was promoted to lead sportscaster, but wasn't the right fit, though he had a long run in sports radio in Chicago.
Fahey spent much of 1983 on medical leave, eventually dying that August. With the original anchor team fractured, and falls to last place on the other newscasts, things were dismantled late that year and rebuilt throughout 1984, with the additions of Drury, Kalber, Yu, Deshler, Taft...
, the installations of a new set, graphics, the theme signature that still exists today, and reassignments for Daly and Weigel. Dennis Swanson is largely responsible for the rebuild, though it was Joe Ahern's run in the 1990's that made their run at #1 legendary.
They were #1 again by '86, and haven't let go.