Longtime Phoenix news anchor Kent Dana has died.
Dana, one of the most popular anchors in Phoenix news history, was 80. He died Tuesday, April 19. He developed an infection after breaking his hip in January, according to his son Joe, and his condition deteriorated after several weeks in the hospital.
“I just think his story is a fascinating Arizona story,” said Joe Dana, a reporter for 12 News. “I think he always felt like local TV news was a very unique way to connect the community, to bring people together. It was more meaningful for him because it was his home.”
TV runs in the Dana family. Kent Dana’s father Joe was a radio and TV personality from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Kent Dana started working at KSAZ, now Fox 10, for Bill Close, “the dean of broadcasters in those days,” Dana said in a 2019 profile in The Arizona Republic. Then Dana worked at KPNX (12 News) and later Channel 5 (part of the Arizona’s Family stations).
He retired in 2011.
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“There’s a reason he was the most beloved anchor of his time,” Lin Sue Flood, who worked with Dana at 12 News, said.
“That was because he was genuinely sweet and kind. That transcended his personal life and went into the way he did his job. As a co-anchor he was sharing and very supportive. None of this macho persona about him. He was just an equal partner.”
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Those who worked with him echoed the sentiment — that Dana was approachable and friendly.
“He never laughed at my dreams,” said Sean McLaughlin, who worked with Dana at 12 News and is now a meteorologist at Arizona’s Family, where he has also been a news anchor.
That dream was to work at a national network, a dream McLaughlin achieved when he became the weekday chief meteorologist for MSNBC and Sunday meteorologist on NBC’s “Weekend Today” in 2004. He came back to Phoenix in 2006.
He credits Dana with helping him find the confidence to pursue the network job.
“Now think about that — he had taken over Bill Close’s reign as the top news anchor in the Valley, and here’s this Iowa kid that came over from Palm Springs, a tiny market, and he believed in me from day one,” McLaughlin said.
“That was unheard of in the early ’90s, with how the business was structured. The anchors were unapproachable. Kent was anything but. When I confided in him that I wanted to reach the network, he was the first person to tell me I could. His belief in me meant the world and gave me the confidence to accomplish my goals. I never would’ve become who I am without Kent.”
Joe Dana said his father was bemused by the attention his job brought him. One time a fan wanted an autograph but had nothing for Dana to sign, so he wrote his name on the back of a piece of pizza.
“For my dad it was just amusing that people saw him in that light,” Joe Dana said. “He didn’t have an ego.”
In terms of advice, Joe Dana said his father kept it pretty simple.
“He told me several times never get in the way of a good story,” Joe Dana said. “In TV you have a tendency to be a distraction in the way you tell a story. His philosophy was the subject of the story, the people, should shine through.”
In the 2019 interview Dana was funny and self-deprecating. For instance, his son Joe said, “At Channel 5 they called him ‘The Pope.’ They just considered him the one you go to.”
“It was my divine nature,” Kent Dana said.
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‘He never took himself very seriously,’ Lin Sue Flood says
A sense of humor was typical with Dana, Flood said.
“He did take truth and honesty very seriously, but he never took himself very seriously,” she said. “He had a great sense of humor. He had an irresistible chuckle, which we loved.”
Dana had a “fabulously descriptive vocabulary,” Flood said, “some of which is probably too urbane for a newspaper story.”
She had good chemistry with Dana, which they came by naturally. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked, she said.
“Chemistry is magic,” Flood said. “It’s either there or it isn’t. You don’t work at it. That’s the beauty of real chemistry. We had an incredible fit. I love someone with a witty mind. So it was constant banter. But it was intellectual and hysterical and sarcastic without ever having a streak of superiority or meanness.”
McLaughlin said Dana’s advice is something he still thinks about.
“His influence of how to be a professional still resonates with me to this day,” he said. “And that influence also worked wonders with my personal life — you could go to Kent with any problem and he would give you that goofy chuckle, and then would launch into the reasons why it would all work out. He would do that for anyone.”
This at a time when local anchors had a lot of power. Dana was probably the most influential anchor in Phoenix since Close. Not that you’d know it from talking to him.
“There’s just something about Kent,” Flood said. “He was so humble. It was like he almost couldn’t believe he was anchoring the news.”
That enthusiasm came through on the air.
“There’s no question why he was so beloved,” she said. “He was lovable.”
Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
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