of the 10:00 p.m. newscast). In 1969, Bob Palmer, who served as anchor of the 10:00 p.m. newscast, left channel 4 for KLZ-TV (now KMGH-TV), to replace John Rayburn, who left for an anchor job at a station in Kansas City. In the 1970s, the station ran its late evening newscasts on weekends at 11:00 p.m. (one hour later than the typical late news timeslot in the Mountain Time Zone). In 1981, KBTV news director Roger Ogden was hired by KOA-TV as its general manager; during his tenure, Ogden hired Marv Rockford and John Haralson, who had both worked alongside Ogden at channel 9, to join the station's news staff. Ogden named George Caldwell, Sam Allred and Ron Zappolo as its main anchor team. Janet Zappala and Alan Berg joined the station as well that year. In 1983, Marv Rockford was promoted to the news director position; while Peter Rogot was named the station's weekend anchor and Marty Aarons joined Bob Palmer and Janet Zappala as anchors; other staffers that joined channel 4 during 1983 included Wendy Bergen, Karen Layton, Marcia Neville, Tom Raponi and Mike Silva. In 1982, KMGH-TV anchor Bill Stuart left to join KOA-TV, joining several other new hires such as Linda Farrell, Sylvia Cordy, Jeff Hullinger, Steve Anderson, Stephanie White, Merrie Lynn, Tom Martino and Tom Baer. That June, KOA-TV debuted a half-hour 4:30 p.m. newscast titled First News, which was co-anchored by Larry Green and Linda Farrell, with Suzanne McCarroll as the featured reporter on the new show; the program would eventually expand to an hour-long broadcast beginning at 4:00 p.m., and remained on the station until it was cancelled on May 26, 2006, in order to air The Oprah Winfrey Show in the timeslot. Also that year, the station's news helicopter ("Copter 4") crashed into a snowy stand of pine trees near Larkspur, while en route to the crash site of a commuter airplane, killing KOA-TV pilot/reporter Karen Key (who was the first female pilot of a news helicopter in the country) and mechanic Larry Zane; autopsy results later reported that Key had a blood alcohol content at the time of the crash at 0.09 (just below the legal limit of 0.10). On the evening of June 18, 1984, Alan Berg—an attorney who hosted programs on both KOA radio and KOA-TV and was known for taking a largely liberal stand on issues, using an