Skip to main content
This excerpt comes from an issue of Willamette Week published on April 23, 1987. The story is titled "The News at 8: Behind the Scenes at KGW" by Brent Walth.
On air, [Peter] Schulberg and [Tracy] Barry are at once trying to be believable, attractive and non-distracting—a difficult combination. One anchor who failed at this was former KATU anchor Bill O'Reilly.
O'Reilly, an import from Boston, lasted only eight months at KATU after winning few friends at the station and a negligible following among viewers. "O'Reilly had an edge to him," says a former KATU coworker. He was unhappy here, and his discontent showed." Then again, O'Reilly's flame-out may say more about Portland's taste for user friendly anchors (such as KOIN's boy-next-door Mike Donahue) than about his serrated style.
Despite his short tenure in Portland. O'Reilly (now a six figure reporter for ABC) may have forever changed the TV business for local anchors. While still employed at KATU, O'Reilly went to photocopy one of his payroll check stubs and absent-mindedly left it on the copier Before he could retrieve it, another kATU employee made scores of photocopies of the stub and distributed them around the station.
The purloined check stub revealed to everyone at KATU what station management had hoped to keep quiet: that O'Reilly's salary approached $125,000 a year. The revelation to Channel 2 anchors — as well as those at other stations — gave them leverage to renegotiate their own incomes, most of which were reportedly between $70,000 and $100,000.
"Without knowing it he did a lot to help all the other anchors in town," says Barry.
While Barry, 32, will not discuss her own salary, sources at the station put it a $120,000 — three to four times that of a reporter…
Full story: