Meet Decker Anstrom, Landmark's Weather man

NORFOLK

Decker Anstrom grew up without the benefit of a TV set at home.

His mother and stepfather, high school teachers, didn't consider it a healthy influence. "They really believed in literature and books and conversation," Anstrom said Monday.

Yet, after spending a decade and a half enmeshed in the political and consulting world of Washington, Anstrom built a flourishing career in broadcasting as president of the National Cable Television Association and, later, The Weather Channel. In 2006, he was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame in Denver.

Since 2002, he's been president and chief operating officer of Landmark Communications Inc., which owns The Weather Channel and The Virginian-Pilot, among other properties.

With the announcement Sunday that Landmark had agreed to sell its weather properties to NBC Universal and two equity firms for a reported $3.5 billion, Anstrom's own career took one step toward closure.

His job this year "has been to help Frank manage the entire sales process." Frank Batten Jr., Landmark's chairman and chief executive officer, announced in January that the company was looking to sell all of its businesses, which generated more than $2 billion in revenue in 2007.

Anstrom said he's spent most of his time until now on the sale of The Weather Channel Cos.

He worked the phones more than he flew on jets. "Negotiating by phone is much more effective than putting 30 lawyers in a room," he said. Yet there was a week in April of daylong presentations to prospective buyers in New York.

"We pretty much memorized each other's lines," Anstrom said of the Landmark team.

The responses, he said, "really reaffirmed our view that these are great businesses. In each case, the thing that came through was their enthusiasm for our leadership team."

NBC, he said, is a "world-class company" that will treat the 1,300 weather employees well. Likewise, Anstrom said, Landmark will scrutinize "the quality of buyers" for other properties, to try to ensure they "do the right thing for the employees and for the community."

But "in the end, they're going to run the businesses."

Anstrom, 57, is a compact, soft-spoken man. His last name reflects his stepfather's Swedish roots, his first his father's Dutch background.

He grew up in a handful of states in the Midwest and West, smitten with politics and baseball. He attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., where he majored in American studies and was elected student body president.

Anstrom followed the college's president, Arthur Flemming, a former Cabinet secretary to President Eisenhower, when Flemming returned to a federal post in Washington.

Anstrom's star rose in President Carter's administration in the 1970s. He was a senior staff member in the Office of Management and Budget, helping Carter follow though on his promise to reorganize government. Anstrom's project was to help win congressional approval to create the U.S. Department of Education - "a tough political fight."

Anstrom later worked as "a headhunter for the president" in the personnel office. His last act for the Carter administration was to prepare a briefing book recommending appointments for Carter's second term. That never happened.

"It was an excellent briefing book," Anstrom said. "I still have it in a box in the closet."

Some criticism pointed toward Carter has been fair, he said, but Carter was "really ahead of history" on issues such as energy and human rights. Plus, "whether he was effective or not, he did restore integrity to government" after the Watergate scandal.

After Carter left office, Anstrom became co-founder and president of Public Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington. He and his colleagues, many of them former Carter appointees, worked unsuccessfully for the 1984 presidential campaign of Walter Mondale, with whom Anstrom remains in touch.

In 1987, eager for a change of pace, he became executive vice president of the National Cable Television Association. His background in the field was minimal. "I subscribed to cable," he said.

Anstrom stayed with the association for the next 12 years, rising to president and CEO in 1994 and lobbying for the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which deregulated the industry.

Anstrom now serves as chairman of the board of the cable group, since renamed the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

"He's a great listener, he's smart as a whip and he gets things done," said Kyle

McSlarrow, the association's current president and CEO. "He is able to step back and look at any challenge or problem, and almost always figures out a way to navigate through it that makes sense."

When he was the association's chief executive, Anstrom became close with Landmark executive John O. "Dubby" Wynne, who told him of the opening at The Weather Channel. He'd grown tired of Washington and its increasingly partisan ways.

So in 1999 he joined The Weather Channel in Atlanta as president and CEO. There, Anstrom said, he concentrated on "building a culture that was open to different ideas," "strengthening relationships with cable operators" and supporting the Weather.com site. The Web site did not break even until 2003.

"We always had the conviction that the Internet was a natural platform for weather information," Anstrom said. "That looks like a pretty good judgment today."

So good that Derek Baine, senior analyst with SNL Kagan in Monterey, Calif., estimated that Weather.com accounts for 50 percent of the total value of The Weather Channel Cos. The $3.5 billion sale price, Baine said, showed that "even in this lousy market, Internet properties are still holding their value, if not increasing."

In 2002, Anstrom moved to Norfolk to become Landmark's president and chief operating officer. He takes pride, he said, in improvements in management training and diversity and in assembling a strong "leadership team."

Anstrom lives with his wife, Sherry Hiemstra, in the Ghent section of Norfolk. He serves on the boards of WHRO and the Chrysler Museum of Art. He will leave his position as chairman of the cable association when the sale takes effect.

Anstrom, who declined to disclose his salary, is a significant company shareholder who stands to gain when privately held Landmark completes its selling process. The son of teachers knows he is in an "incredibly privileged position." But money, he said, never drove his choices.

Anstrom said he hasn't thought about life after Landmark. "Whatever comes next, I'll think about later." Maybe involvement in the nonprofit sector.

And what would his stepfather, who died decades ago, make of his career?

"He would have loved cable TV," Anstrom said, imagining him engrossed in the political proceedings on C-SPAN.

"I think he would have liked The Weather Channel, too. You can't grow up in the plains of North Dakota and not be interested in weather - although we haven't gotten very good at locust coverage yet."

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com