Two longtime, beloved KOAA News5 broadcast journalists are relinquishing their press passes.
Lead forecaster Mike Daniels and anchor and reporter Rob Quirk will both retire within the next two months. After 40 years at the station, Daniels’ last day is Thursday. Quirk’s last day is Jan. 25, 35 years to the day he was hired in 1989.
“It certainly wasn’t an easy decision because I still love what I do,” Daniels said. “There’s no fatigue there. When the camera points toward me and the light goes on — that’s my forte. I was born to do that job and I still love it. And I’ll miss it immensely.”
But right now, it’s business as usual in the electric atmosphere of the newsroom, where reporters and producers are buzzing about the capture of the man suspected of killing three Custer County residents. Daniels, removed from the action, is cozy in his weather cave away from the main news desk, where he’s tracking the expected Black Friday winter storm.
KOAA’s Mike Daniels has been broadcasting locally for almost 40 years. Get to know him away from the camera.
Quirk is hot on the breaking news though, as he sits at his computer, directing questions to others and gobbling up what information he can find, before hopping on set to give viewers the lowdown.
“I’ve lived up to the expectations of what people want out of broadcast journalism,” Quirk said. “We don’t always get it right or do it right, but the majority of what I’ve done and we’ve done has been the right thing. I’ve never been afraid to admit my mistakes, try to correct them and move on. If you show people you are truly dedicated to your craft and are trying to genuinely do things the right way, I’m satisfied I’ve done that.”
Losing three quarters of a century of institutional knowledge between the two men is no small thing. KOAA News5 news director Ryan Hazelwood notes the award-winning Daniels’ never-ending popularity in places like the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, where Daniels was born and raised.
“We joke that when he retires he should run for mayor because he’s so popular down there,” Hazelwood said. “If you’ve ever been at the State Fair with him, you cannot take more than three steps without someone stopping to talk with him. They love him down there.”
Daniels first did the weather at 16, when he worked at a tiny religious radio station during high school in Pueblo and read the prepared forecast. It was the best part of the day for the teen who fell in love with the eccentricities of the weather as a kid: “I was fascinated why one day it would be sunny and the next day it would be snowing.”
From there he moved to KDZA, a popular Top 40 station in Pueblo, where a lot of employees eventually transferred to KOAA in Pueblo. The KOAA news director called him one day and asked him to cut an audition tape because he thought “you’ve got the stuff to be on TV,” Daniels remembered. He was hired to do fill-in sports, at which he was terrible, he says, due to his inability to pronounce players’ names. Eventually, a weekend weather opening came up in 1984 and he grabbed it. Three years later he moved into the main position.
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Daniels, who doesn’t have a meteorology degree, learned on the job to predict the weather. He absorbed the knowledge of his predecessor, J. Ralph Carter, took a multitude of courses and workshops at the National Weather Service, and earned the National Weather Association seal in the ‘80s — “a big deal,” he says.
To this day the mercurial weather of the Pikes Peak region captivates him.
“You walk outside and it’s sunny and 60,” he said, “then you walk outside tonight and it’s windy and a cold front is blowing through and could be a blizzard. There are so many microclimates around here you have to be a masochist to want to forecast weather in this area. That 14,000-foot wall of mountains off to our west creates an immense challenge.”
While Daniels knew the field he was meant for early on, Quirk fell into broadcast journalism. He went to Arizona State University to play baseball and left a broadcaster. So he tried to meld the two worlds and become a sports guy, but news was in his heart.
“I’m a news junkie,” he said. “You need a news story done? I’m your guy. The closest thing to competitive sports is this job. You’re only as good as your next show. It’s competitive. You have to be driven. You have to have a work ethic. You have to play on a team and make the team work.”
You’ve seen him on TV for 30 years. Now get to know the man away from the camera.
After a couple of other news jobs in Arizona and Texas, Quirk landed at KOAA as a weekend anchor and weekday reporter before moving into the main anchor slot in 1991 and pairing up with Lisa Lyden, another well-known name in Southern Colorado TV news. The two worked together for 25 years before she retired: “We think that may be a Colorado broadcast record for longest-serving co-anchor team,” Quirk said.
KOAA News5 anchor and reporter Dianne Derby, Quirk’s current primetime leading lady, who’s shared the desk with him for over two years, is honored to be his last partner.
“Rob is completely dedicated to his work — he gets here before his workday starts,” she said. “He is constantly involved in the product and determined to help reporters and make sure their scripts are clear and clean. He does a lot of mentoring people don’t realize. They see this newsman they’ve watched for decades and think he’s up there reading the news and everything is told to him, but he’s part of it. He’s helping to create it every day.”
Over his decades-long stint, Quirk has worked on some of the biggest news stories, including the Columbine and Aurora shootings; the Waldo Canyon, Black Forest and Royal Gorge fires; and the federal trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He was also able to interview President Barack Obama during his bid for reelection. It’s all earned him multiple awards from the Colorado Broadcasters Association and The Associated Press.
Dianne Derby, a veteran of more than eight years of Colorado Springs news coverage, is coming back to local television after a brief departure.
“I’ve always been good at compartmentalizing stuff,” Quirk said. “You go into a scenario and go, ‘I’ve got to get the story. I need to report on what I’m seeing, doing and what has happened.’ You empathize with the people who are involved in these stories, but at the end of the day you have a job to do. You have to get the story and then you deal with it afterward.”
Neither broadcaster knows quite what the next season of life will look like. For Daniels it’ll include a lot of exercise, fishing and maintaining his four-car fleet of older cars, which includes a 1968 Sedan Deville Cadillac, as well as staying close to his mom and brothers, who all live in Pueblo.
“I’m a bit apprehensive,” he said. “This is all I’ve done my adult life. I know no other way, and when you’ve done something consistently for 40 years, what’s next? It’s going to be a very sharp transition.”
Quirk does know one thing he’ll do come the end of January.
“I’m going to try and decouple myself from the day to day intensity of focusing on everything, everywhere all the time,” he said. “As I joke, folks in news know 30 seconds of everything. Pushing that aside a bit will be interesting. It’s going to be a transition.”
And as for the future of the legions of Daniels and Quirk fans? Only time will tell.
“They’re leaders in the newsroom and community who truly care about the people of southern Colorado,” Hazelwood said. “Our mission statement is focused around the people of southern Colorado and improving the lives of people who live here. They come in every day and believe that is their mission to accomplish.”
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