After a year on the job, the new boss at Miami’s CBS television station says he’s happy with his operation’s progress and looks forward to much better days ahead.

Steve Mauldin, Vice President-General Manager of WFOR-TV, took the reins of the station last September, coming here after seven years as the General Manager of WTSP in Tampa.

"I had a very rewarding position in Tampa, but I had a great opportunity here to fix something that was very fixable in a market that I thought was one of the most exciting places in the world," Mauldin said in a recent interview. "I love the multi-ethnicity part of it (Miami) and I’m fascinated by the Cuban and South American cultures."

Mauldin, 50, his wife, Sheilah, and their four children have settled in an area of unincorporated Miami-Dade, near where Pinecrest meets South Miami. Mauldin grew up in Odessa, Texas and put himself through Baylor University working on drilling rigs in the state’s oil fields. He began his media career as a disc jockey and ad salesman for a California radio station, but quickly switched to television. He worked television ad sales in Las Vegas, Los Angles and New Orleans, before getting his first shot as a general manager in 1985 at WVUE in New Orleans, one of the five stations owned by Gaylord Broadcasting.

"I wound up running three of them over the next six years," he said with satisfaction.

In his first 12 months on the job at WFOR, Mauldin has been busy building his team. He first hired Shannon High away from Channel 7 as his News Director, then juggled his on- air personnel before settling on Angela Rae as his lead anchor. Next, he brought in Steve Wolford from California and paired him with Ms. Rae as his main evening news team. Already in place in the morning news slot were anchorwoman Liv Davlos, who had just departed Channel 10, James Hill and veteran weatherman Bob Soper.

"I hired a news director who has tremendous roots in Miami," Mauldin said. "She brings a real smart, aggressive attitude to the newsroom and I think she marries what I want to do with what I want to be, and that’s be an aggressive news station with substance.

"We’ve moved pretty quickly here," he continued. "We did a lot of listening early and a lot of research. I really felt that this television station was out of step, out of sync with the market. In our business, one of the things we need to do is really be in touch with the marketplace. We have tried to do that in our people, our look, our feel, our tempo and our pace. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I believe we’re getting close."

Mauldin said the May ratings book bolstered his outlook, indicating that WFOR was one of four of all the CBS owned-and-operated television stations that held on to, or improved the prime-time audience lead-in they were given at 11:00.

"Which means that people are tuning in to us, not turning us off," he said.

Mauldin believes a major piece in his plan to leapfrog Channel Four to the top of the local television ranks is the September debut on WFOR of the longtime talk show favorite and ratings-leader the Oprah Winfrey Show.

"I had been here just a few weeks when I had the opportunity to put together a deal to bring Oprah over here (from WPLG) and it was a huge, huge piece of business in the beginning of the Renaissance of this television station," he said. "The deal was originally for two years, beginning in the Fall of 2000, but we were actually able to make it three years beginning in the Fall of this year, in September.

Mauldin said he thinks it was a bad programming move for WPLG to replace Oprah in her final weeks at the station with the Jerry Springer Show. He said it is even more difficult to understand how the station could risk alienating its viewers by opting to air the Oprah show in an after-midnight time slot.

Another big piece of Mauldin’s strategy to capture the South Florida market is his so-called ‘road shows’ or taking his news team out of the studio and setting up shop in various communities for on-location news programming.

"It gives us a chance to get out and meet our viewers and let them get a chance to know our people," he explained. "It’s not unlike if you have a new hit record, you want to get out and go on tour. So, we’re doing road shows with our news, taking our news to the people and doing town meetings. It’s a lot of fun, something we’ve all gotten behind and it’s a great project.

"I think South Florida is a very special place and we’re putting together a team of people that feels the same way," he continued. "The key word at Channel Four is passion about Miami. I want people that are passionate about working here, about being here, about making a difference in the community. I think if you are a part of this marketplace for six months, six years or 60 years, you get a sense of the energy here. It’s a very high-energy place."