The big boys visited KMBC last week.

Charlie Gibson and the World News team came to town, produced their show out of the brand new Channel 9 newsroom, and broadcasted live from the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City on Thursday and Friday nights. It really was a pleasure to meet Charlie and interact a little bit with the other network journalists.

Charles (as he is now called on the World News title) attended our official grand opening party on Thursday night, saying a few words and taking questions from the audience. As you may have read in the newspaper, Gibson is a long-time friend of our general manager, Wayne Godsey.

Gibson also took some time to talk to the KMBC 9 news team on Friday morning. He answered some of our questions, covering everything from the Iraq war to getting younger viewers to watch the news. Gibson was very complimentary about local news and KMBC in particular, acknowledging that more people get their news from local TV operations like Channel 9 than newspapers, the internet and even network television shows like his own.

I think Charlie Gibson has surged to the top of the evening news ratings because of the way he comes across on the air: down-to-earth and trustworthy. He did nothing to change my opinion of him when he visited here. He seems to be the same way off the air as he is on the anchor desk in New York. And that's a good thing.