the deal was then terminated by Tribune. News operation From the station's first day on air, KATU produced local newscasts. As an independent, its late-night local news aired at 10 p.m. This changed after the station switched to ABC in 1964, but KATU remained mired in third place in local news coverage behind KOIN-TV and KGW-TV, which were said to have a "stranglehold" on Portland viewers. One Oregon news event covered by KATU cameras in the station's first decade on air acquired lasting notoriety. In November 1970, reporter Paul Linnman, who worked at KATU from 1967 to 1972 before returning to the station in 1984 and retiring from TV news in 2004, traveled to Florence, Oregon, where a sperm whale washed ashore; its carcass was exploded unsuccessfully. The station continued to receive requests for footage years after the event and has since commemorated anniversaries of the exploding whale, including a news special in 1995 and a remaster of the original newsfilm in 2020. In 1975, Richard Ross left KGW-TV after 19 years to become the news director at channel 2. That same year, former Oregon governor Tom McCall joined KATU as commentator; prior to becoming governor, he had also worked at KGW. Under Ross, the station produced such efforts as Kidwitness News, a monthly newscast for kids anchored by puppets; the station's documentary unit won a Peabody Award in 1981. McCall's commentaries continued appearing despite his battle with cancer leading up to his January 1983 death. News hires at KATU in the 1980s included Jeff Gianola, who initially joined as a weekend weather presenter in 1983 and became evening anchor before defecting to KOIN in 1998, and Bill O'Reilly, the future Fox News Channel anchor whose tenure in Portland lasted less than a year due to family reasons. O'Reilly's time with the station was marked by remarks about Portland being a "vacation" compared to his previous job in Boston, which displeased management, and an incident in which he left his paycheck in a copy machine, unwittingly divulging a six-figure salary that irked underpaid colleagues. By 1985, what had once been a five-person staff in the early days had become a 60-person news department. KATU had worked its way up to having the top-rated newscasts in Portland by 1997, but ratings were starting to decline before Gianola's departure for KOIN, which was responsible for leading a resurgence at that station. In