
Somerville’s Bay Area roots helped make him popular with viewers. The photo shows him with a beard and the caption: “I think I look pretty cool for 63 if I do say so myself” In response to a follower who said Somerville didn’t look well, he said, “I feel great. Somerville said his health was “great,” a point he also made in a photo he shared on Instagram with his 5,100 followers this week. when he simply introduced himself: “I’m Mike Mibach.” This past week, “Mornings On 2” anchor Mike Mibach has been in Somerville’s chair, including on Thursday night’s newscasts at 5 and 6 p.m. He was off air for much of the summer, following his now-infamous May 30 newscast, when he repeatedly slurred and stumbled over his words and appeared to have trouble reading off the teleprompter.Īs of Thursday afternoon, officials at KTVU and at Fox had not responded to repeated emails asking about Somerville’s departure or about whether they had offically signed a replacement. This was Somerville’s second suspension in a tumultuous year. In November, Somerville told this news organization that management had not contacted him since September, when he was suspended from his anchoring duties for an off-air dispute about coverage of the Gabby Petito case. The crash “had nothing to do with it,” Somerville said, saying managers had decided to cut him loose months earlier. Somerville’s arrest came after he crashed his Porsche into another car in a downtown intersection in an accident caught on video. 30 arrest in Oakland on suspicion of driving under the influence was a factor in the station’s decision. Somerville does not believe that his Dec. For whatever reason, they decided not to re-sign me.” “I’ve given my heart and soul to Channel 2. So I am done at Channel 2,” Somerville said in a brief phone interview this week with the Bay Area News Group.
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Somerville also expressed guilt over the “drama” that happened over his urge to include a tagline regarding the media’s tendency to focus on missing white women over missing people of color, a phenomenon coined by broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill as “missing white woman syndrome.Frank Somerville’s 31-year career at KTVU, where his nightly anchoring duties made him one of the Bay Area’s most beloved TV news personalities, officially came to an end Friday, as his contract expired and the station opted to not bring him back. “All indications are that I’m never going to anchor at Channel 2 again,” he told the newspaper group. The months-long tale involving Somerville could be coming to a close. Somerville, on the other hand, believes he will not return to the station. His punishment came just six weeks after he took a medical leave of absence for health reasons on, after he failed to read his teleprompter and slurred his words during a broadcast. Reliable sources told the outlet that Somerville was informed by station management the following day that he was being suspended. The request was rejected by KTVU news director Amber Eikel, who said the tagline was unsuitable, according to the source. After the tagline was rejected, Somerville, who has an adopted black daughter, reportedly pushed back. Somerville wanted to include a tagline in a segment about the case to highlight the disparity in coverage of white women’s missing person cases versus women of color.



On September 26, 2021, Sommerville was suspended following alleged internal turmoil over coverage on Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman who was killed while on a long-distance van trip with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. During his tenure of about four decades at KTVU, Somerville has won three Emmy awards for his work, including one for best on-camera news anchor.

He began co-anchoring the evening shows in 2008, succeeding longtime local newscaster Dennis Richmond. He later joined full-time in 1991, becoming a co-anchor of the station’s morning news program in 1992. Somerville has been associated with KTVU since 1981 when he first joined the station as an intern while attending San Francisco State University. He has accumulated his fortunes through his primary source of income as a broadcast journalist at KTVU and also in businesses he has invested in. Somerville‘s net worth is estimated to be $2 Million as of 2021. This is according to “reliable 415 Media source” the information that was provided by Rich Lieberman in 2019 stating the highest-paid journalists in the Bay Area. Somerville earns an average annual salary of $615,000.
