2016 Inductee
Forty two years. From film to video tape; analog to digital; broadcast to online; desktop to mobile. During his extraordinary 42 year (and counting) career, Tim Dietz has been at the center of every revolution in our industry, quietly influencing how generations of Coloradoans receive and enjoy news, entertainment and sports programming.
Tim’s contributions began as a news photographer, working with 16 millimeter film and evolved to Tim’s current position as KUSA’s vice president of interactive services, a key station leadership position overseeing a variety of TEGNA and KUSA projects including ever more important digital platforms like 9NEWS.com and 9NEWS mobile.
Tim joined the 9NEWS family in July 1974, when Channel 9 was still KBTV. At the time he was a junior at Regis University and came to 9NEWS as an intern. The internship was supposed to last a year, but somehow, Tim talked his way into two, and then another 40.
Tim has done it all. He has met five U.S. Presidents and countless star athletes and celebrities. He met Pope John Paul II during World Youth Day in Colorado in 1993. KUSA’s coverage of that historic event garnered national attention. He has been to four Super Bowls and is the Denver Broncos programming guru. Beginning with the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, Tim has covered nine Olympic Games by organizing for 9NEWS and Gannet (now TEGNA) coverage in Sydney (2000) Salt Lake City (2002) Athens (2004) Torino (2006) Beijing (2008) Vancouver (2010) London (2012) and Sochi (2014). He is currently planning coverage for Rio de Janeiro 2016. Tim’s commitment to this project is largely responsible for the extraordinary level of coverage viewers in Colorado have come to expect.
In the mid-90s Tim was responsible for launching 9NEWS.com, the state’s local news and information website. Today that platform and a few new ones that Tim oversees deliver over 50 million impressions monthly. At the time this was seen as a distraction, but Tim championed the online importance and as we all know it has become the preferred way that many of us get our information, when , where and how we want it. The technological change and workflow that have overwhelmed many an organization were simply just another obstacle that Tim so adroitly navigated. He helped to launch and pioneer HD Television putting the first HD Helicopter in the air in the early 2000s.