Jon Kelly dies at 84; former KCRA 3 owner also founded Sacramento-based River City Bank
Sacramento business icon Jon Kelly, the former owner of KCRA 3 and founder of Sacramento-based River City Bank, died July 25 from cancer, according to his family.
Kelly, a longtime Sacramento resident before relocating to Southern California, was 84 years old.
Kelly started at Channel 3, joining his older brother, Robert, in 1958. Two years later, Ewing “Gene” Kelly, their father, died of a heart attack and Jon Kelly, at the age of 24, became station manager. The brothers founded the Kelly Broadcasting Co. with their mother, Nina, a short time later.
After buying the stations outright from their partners — the Hansen family, who owned Crystal Cream and Butter Co. — the Kellys owned and operated the NBC-affiliated station for more than three decades, setting a bar higher than any of their competitors by producing public-affairs programming, daytime and evening news and lifestyle magazines years before others followed suit.
Channel 3’s longtime slogan — “Where the News Comes First” — was backed up by huge investments in its news operation. It fielded (and still does) more reporters and photographers, broadcast more hours of news and employed more news gathering equipment than any other station in the market.
Kevin Riggs, a longtime political reporter for KCRA, called Kelly “a legendary figure in broadcasting” who built the local TV station into a “NBC powerhouse” gaining massive viewership numbers on the level of some of the highest local affiliates.
A penchant for innovation, TV leadership
He said Kelly had an aura about him, almost intimidating with a reputation of striving for excellence. Yet, Kelly was still a “quiet and circumspect” man.
“He wasn’t a large man physically, but when he came into the newsroom he had a presence,” Riggs told The Sacramento Bee on Thursday. “He didn’t need to be loud to get people to listen to him.”
“Jon Kelly’s measure of success was to combine the other two guys’ ratings and then double it,” Assistant News Director Jim Stimson told The Bee in a 2005 story about the station’s ratings and dogged news coverage — which included rescuing a dog from a rooftop during the New Year’s Floods of 1997. “Even after the 1997 flood coverage, I remember him saying, ‘You guys aren’t that good. You did a good job, but what have you done lately?’ “
The Kellys also kept Channel 3 on the cutting edge, becoming the first in the market to use color film and Doppler radar; creating the first hour-long newscast and locally-produced morning show; creating “De Colores,” a public-affairs program focused on the Latino community; and sending LiveCopter 3 up into the skies above the capital beginning in 1987.
“Jon spouted ideas like a lawn sprinkler and spent the money to back it up,” said Stimson, who has worked at KCRA since 1974. “They expected a return on that investment, to be No. 1.”
Kelly Brothers, who worked as a news anchor at KCRA from 1989 to 2003, remembers Jon Kelly as a “tough boss, a little gruff.”
“But all of that was minor compared to his dedication to the news,” he said. “And dedication to (the idea) that KCRA was never beat” on a story, at least by another TV station.
“He would write any check to make sure KCRA was in the ... dominant position in the market,” said Brothers, who now works as a financial adviser in Sacramento.
Brothers recalled coming for a job interview at Channel 3 following graduate school and seeing some company stationary, topped with the name “Kelly Brothers Broadcasting,” in the waiting room.
Brothers didn’t know Jon Kelly but marched into the executive’s office anyway, stationary in hand.
“I told him, if I’m on the letterhead, you’ve got to hire me.”
Jon Kelly laughed, checked the applicant’s ID and hired him on the spot.
KCRA as a powerhouse
By the 1990s, well before the station’s sale to Hearst in 1998, Channel 3 was beating competitors so badly that it became embarrassing. KCRA made national news several times, such as when President Bill Clinton decided to hold a statewide town hall meeting and chose to do it at KCRA.
Riggs started working for KCRA as a general assignment reporter in 1994 before he moved to the state capitol beat. He said he wished he had more years under Kelly’s leadership.
It seems to Riggs that Kelly saw KCRA as a “prestige vehicle” that he could brag about to others, and he poured money into the station’s news departments to produce news content that would raise the standards for local news.
Riggs said Kelly would easily send reporters around the world to cover important news stories. He said Kelly once rented a Learjet to fly a reporter and Sacramento police investigators to Los Angeles. The investigators were heading there to arrest Dorothea Puente, the infamous serial killer who buried the bodies of her victims in the backyard of her downtown Sacramento boardinghouse. The reporter was there to get the exclusive news on the arrest.
“It was almost like network-level reporting, only it was at a local station,” Riggs said. “The industry has changed a lot since then, but it owes a lot to Jon Kelly.”
Stan Atkinson, the legendary news anchor who worked for the Kellys for nearly 40 years, said he squabbled with Jon Kelly at times but now feels only “grateful ... to him for the opportunities he gave me” and for the “true friendship we shared often over pasta at Biba’s” restaurant in midtown.
In an email, he recalled meeting Kelly first while they were both working at a TV station in Redding. Their families would get together frequently for Kraft dinners because Jon, then an ad salesmen for the station, “didn’t have any money.”
Atkinson credits Kelly with telling his family members that “this kid is good,” leading to his hiring at KCRA.
Toward the end of Atkinson’s career at KCRA, Channel 3’s influence was such that, during the 1991 hostage standoff at a Sacramento Good Guys store, the gunmen insisted that KCRA air a videotape of their demands, which the station did.
Channel 3 has been a training ground for generations of TV reporters and anchors who went on to distinguished careers beyond Sacramento. Joan Lunden, the former veteran anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” hosted Channel 3’s noon news in the 1970s. Miguel Almaguer and Kathy Park, now with NBC, are also a KCRA alumni, as is Gary Gerould, the voice of the Kings. The list goes on and on.
Kelly Broadcasting also operated KQCA-TV, owned AM and FM radio stations in Sacramento and owned and operated KCPQ-TV, the Fox affiliate in Seattle, according to his family.
Other business ventures
Jon Kelly was the key player in the formation years ago of the Sacramento Area Trade and Commerce Organization, which was instrumental in attracting such industrial heavyweights as Intel, NEC and Hewlett-Packard to the region.
He also donated the land on which public television’s KVIE, Channel 6, now sits in South Natomas, and also found success as a real estate developer. One of his signature projects was the 12-story, LEED-certified Gateway Tower building at 2020 W. El Camino Ave.
Kelly founded River City Bank to serve the capital region, growing the business-focused institution to 10 area branches and a presence in the Bay Area and Southern California before retiring from the chairman’s post in 2009. The Kellys still own a majority interest in the bank, which began in 1973 with about $2 million in capital. Today, the bank has assets of nearly $3.2 billion, making it the largest locally-owned bank in the capital region.
Jon Kelly was born July 23, 1936, in Berkeley, before the family moved to Sacramento where Gene Kelly became an ad salesman for The Bee before starting his own advertising agency in 1938. In 1945, they started their radio station. Jon Kelly attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and the University of California, Berkeley, his family said.
Kelly, who also was an active producer in the television syndication business, remained in broadcasting through his investment in the SummitMedia group, owning 50 radio stations throughout the country, according to his family.
After the sale of KCRA, Kelly and his wife, Sarah, moved to their farm in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County. There, they continued their interest in thoroughbred horse racing and breeding, which led them to field horses in the Kentucky Derby and other prestigious races.
In addition to wife Sarah, Jon Kelly is survived by his sister, Suzanne, along with his children Gregory, Shawn, Marilyn, Mary Margaret and Melanie; and 13 grandchildren.
No memorial services are planned because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The family said donations and remembrances may be directed to either the Kelly Foundation, 2020 W. El Camino Ave., Suite 120, Sacramento, CA 95833 or the Eisenhower Medical Center, 3900 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270.
This story was originally published July 31, 2020, 2:51 PM.
