Indiana Broadcast History Archive

Tom Cochrun worked in radio — WFMS-FM, WERK-FM, WIBC-FM and WNAP-FM — from 1963 to 1979, then joined WISH-TV from 1979 to 1981 in Indianapolis as a co-host of PM Magazine. He moved to WTHR-TV in 1981 as a documentary producer and investigative reporter, winning a national Emmy for the documentary “Klan.” He was the main news anchor at WTHR-TV from 1986 to 1995, then CEO of a television and content production company where documentaries were produced for The Discovery Channel, TLC, Carlton in the UK, NHK in Japan and PBS. Cochrun returned to WISH-TV as news director in 2003 until retiring in 2007. During this time, his department won numerous awards including a Peabody.

Tom Cochrun was inducted into the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2010. After his retirement, he and his wife, Lana, moved to Cambria, California, where they currently reside.

Indiana Broadcast Pioneers

Early Life

Tom Cochrun was born at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 23^rd, 1946. Cochrun’s father, a World War II combat veteran, continued to work for a federal agency of the government after leaving the military. Before the age of 2, Cochrun moved to Muncie, Indiana, after his father took a job at Blue Cross Blue Shield. Following his father’s work would be a recurring theme in his childhood. His family packed up and moved to multiple Indiana cities including Fort Wayne, and back to Muncie, before finally landing on the east side of Indianapolis, all before graduating high school.  

Cochrun first became interested in the world of broadcasting thanks to a radio set in his kitchen. In his early years, he would spend evenings listening to national news broadcasts with his mother while she made dinner. Although he did not understand much of what the anchors were saying, hearing the voices of his favorite broadcasters left him awestruck, and it inspired him to pursue this industry for a career.

Education

In his youth, Cochrun was heavily involved in the media. During his high school years, he worked as a stringer for The Indianapolis Times, a board operator for WFMS radio in downtown Indianapolis, and as the sports editor for his high school paper, The Warren Owl. After graduating from Warren Central High School in 1964, Cochrun returned to his hometown of Muncie and pursued a journalism degree at Ball State University.  

In the spring of 1965, he began working as the weekend news anchor for WERK radio in Muncie after impressing the manager with his level of experience. It was during this time at WERK where Cochrun also began to take an interest in investigative journalism thanks to a former Delaware County Deputy Sheriff and newspaper reporter named Jack Gardner. As a student, he reported on a variety of in-depth investigations throughout the Muncie area. Among his more notable stories included an investigation into Vietnam War Protests at Ball State. 

Although he is best known for his broadcast television career, Cochrun had no prior experience in television journalism, not even in his college years. Before enrolling at Ball State, his original plans were to pursue a career in print journalism with the hope of one day becoming a reporter for The New York Times. But that mindset almost completely changed by the time he graduated from Ball State in the spring of 1968.  

Early Career/Radio Work

In the first few months after graduation, Cochrun and his newlywed wife, Lana, decided to take an extended honeymoon and travel across Europe while he conducted freelance print reporting on international politics. While he was away with his wife, someone needed to fill in his position at the WERK station. And who did he get to fill the position? None other than future late-night talk show icon, David Letterman, who was a student at Ball State at that time.  

During his time abroad, the News Director for WIBC radio in Indianapolis, Fred Heckman, contacted Letterman asking about Cochrun and his interest in working with the station. After returning to the United States in September of 1969, Cochrun interviewed with Heckman and began working as a beat reporter for WIBC radio in Indianapolis. In the beginning of his tenure with the station, he originally was working the 3:00pm to midnight shift covering the police beat and city government. After about a year-and-a-half, at Fred’s insistence, he moved on from beat reporting to conducting in-depth investigative reports. At the same time, he also began working as the head newscaster for WIBC’s sister station WNAP, an FM station with a more freestyle form of reporting the news. 

In his ten years with WIBC, Cochrun broadcast dozens of investigative pieces for the station across many topics. One of the more notable stories from his time aired under the title, The Drop-In. This story followed Cochrun as he went undercover as a high school student investigating alleged narcotics operations out of Arlington High School on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

Other investigative reports he conducted included stories covering police corruption and investigating gang activities around the Indianapolis area. It was during his tenure with WIBC that Cochrun was approached by a producer from ABC-affiliate station WFBM Indianapolis (known today as WRTV) to work as a freelance documentary producer with the station, which he agreed to. While working at the radio station, he would also contribute investigative work and would occasionally appear on-camera for work with WFBM. 

WISH-TV Channel 8

By the time he celebrated 10 years with WIBC in 1979, Cochrun realized that the journalism industry had begun to evolve. It was clear that times were changing, and that television broadcasting had overtaken the industry. Although his career up to this point revolved around radio, Cochrun was not afraid of a new challenge. So, when the opportunity came to transfer to the new format, he took it.  

A producer at WISH-TV in Indianapolis approached Cochrun to see if he would be interested in joining the team. The station offered him the opportunity to work as the co-host of their newest program, PM Magazine. Despite his limited experience doing on-camera work, Cochrun jumped at the opportunity and signed on with Channel 8 in 1979.  

PM Magazine was a general interest news program that focused on lifestyle and had more of an entertainment news-type of format. In his first few months as host of the program, he realized he had some adjustments to make in order to succeed. Because he was so used to delivering hard news stories on the air, Cochrun struggled to have a more light-hearted presence when he was on camera. However, his producers had just the solution to help him lighten the mood. 

WTHR Channel 13 & Klan Documentary

Although Cochrun really enjoyed his time at WISH and with PM Magazine, he could not help but feel like there were more important stories that he wanted to focus his attention on. At the time, he felt there would be a better value in investing his energy into reporting on social issues in Indianapolis. After two years of work with WISH, the general manager of WTHR Channel 13, Chris Duffy, offered him the opportunity to join the news team as a documentary producer and investigative reporter. When negotiations were through, he accepted the job and went to work for WISH’s rival station in 1981.  

Right away, Cochrun got to work on his first story with the station. Chris Duffy approached him shortly after starting and asked, “What do you want to do?” With this question, Cochrun immediately thought back to his time as a copy boy for The Indianapolis Times. The station had won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1920s for their investigation and coverage of the Ku Klux Klan in Indianapolis, and it was a story that inspired his first investigative piece with WTHR. At the time, the country was going through an economic recession and major right-wing groups like the Klan and other paramilitary organizations were becoming more and more active. It was during this economic hardship that Cochrun decided to pursue an investigation into the modern Ku Klux Klan in Indianapolis, and he was given the green light.  

He immediately began investigating by building an “incident database” that outlined recent attacks from the Klan in the state of Indiana. His research took him across the state and into multiple cities, from Evansville to Kokomo. Parts of his investigations also led him to other states including Connecticut and Louisiana. Due to a clause in his previous contract with WISH-TV, Cochrun was not allowed to be on the air for 9 months due to him transferring to another station. However, this gave him more time to investigate and get a better understanding of how he wanted to tell the story. After months of investigating, Cochrun and his photographer partner, Steve Starnes, were ready to begin filming and gathering information.  

Because of the clause in his contract, Cochrun could not appear on-screen for the documentary. As a result, he recruited the station’s two news anchors, Cameron Harper and Barry Judge, to be the on-camera storytellers for the piece. The team’s investigation eventually revealed that there were multiple factions of the Ku Klux Klan operating out of Indiana, each with their own unique trademark. After months of investigative work, Cochrun and his team compiled their information into an hour-long documentary titled Klan which released in December of 1981. The documentary received major critical acclaim, with one critic, famed newscaster David Brinkley, writing that it was “one of the finest hours of television.” The Klan documentary went on to receive national acclaim when it won a national Emmy award in 1982.  

Cochrun would go on to produce multiple award-winning documentaries during his time with the station. There were many benefits in his time with WTHR since his producers essentially gave him free reign to investigate any stories that he felt were important to the community. Some other topics that Cochrun investigated included public housing conditions, drug smuggling operations, mental hospital business operations, as well as how law enforcement and the court system were handling cases of child sexual abuse.

During his tenure with the station, Cochrun found his way back in front of the camera, eventually working his way up to becoming the station's co-anchor.

Cochrun's time at WTHR allowed him the opportunity to work alongside many other esteemed reporters, including his co-anchor and fellow broadcasting legend Anne Ryder. 

Nineteenth Star

His 14-year-long tenure with the station ended in 1995 after Cochrun decided to leave his position as an anchor and pursue a dream that had been building for years. He wanted to use his passion for storytelling to provide other journalists the opportunity to tell different stories. With the help of a business partner, Cochrun established his own documentary production company titled Nineteenth Star.   

In the early years, he ran into logistical issues when it came to the business side of production. While it was a struggle at first, Nineteenth Star gradually began to achieve success with many of their documentaries running on the Discovery Channel. Cochrun’s partnership with the company provided his documentaries distribution both in national and international markets. In 2004, he decided to sell Nineteenth Star due to creative differences among distribution companies when the market for nonfiction storytelling began to shrink. At this point in his career, Cochrun had spent 35 years in the journalism industry and was ready for retirement...until one more opportunity came that he could not pass up.  

Return to WISH-TV

In 2004, Cochrun got a call from Scott Blumenthal, who was the general manager of his former employer, WISH-TV Indianapolis. The station’s long-time News Director, Lee Giles, was retiring after 35 years and Blumenthal was wondering if Cochrun would be interested in filling the position. His initial reaction was that he was not interested, as he and Lana had just bought a house in California that they were ready to retire to. Shortly after declining the offer, Cochrun's close friend, WISH anchor Mike Ahern, called to ask about his interest in the position. The two had always wanted to work together, but never had the opportunity. After negotiating over the phone, Ahern promised Cochrun he would stay at the station through the next election cycle before his own retirement if he accepted the job. Cochrun considered his offer and later accepted the position on the condition that he would work for two years, then officially retire from broadcasting.  

When he returned to WISH in 2004, Cochrun had one goal in mind: to redesign the newsroom and establish a new sense of mission within their reporting. Cochrun wanted to leave WISH-TV having formed their newsroom into a true competitor to their rival station, WTHR. He quickly got to work rebuilding the station to form his vision.  

All of his hard work revitalizing WISH-TV was paying off when ratings began increasing and the newsroom began winning multiple awards, including a Peabody Award. In the end, Cochrun stayed an extra year at the station to ensure that all his goals were reached. In 2007, Cochrun officially retired from his position and from the journalism industry.  

Retirement & Other Projects

After his retirement, Cochrun and his wife, Lana, moved to Cambria, California, where they currently reside. In total, his professional career spanned 38 years in the radio and broadcast journalism industries. For his contributions to local journalism in Indiana, Cochrun was inducted into the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2009.  

Throughout 2023, Cochrun worked on a project that paid tribute to the late Indiana Senator, Richard Lugar. In this project, he was in charge of writing six memorial plaques that were to be placed around the statue of Lugar in downtown Indianapolis. The project was completed in December of 2023. 

In the years since his retirement, Cochrun has enjoyed a variety of new activities outside the journalism industry in his new home on the west coast. Since retiring, he has published multiple mystery novels, and can be found hiking and traveling the country with his wife, Lana, to different national parks across America. 

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By Jack Lindner

Edited by Jack Lindner

Tom Cochrun donated his professional archive to the Indiana Historical Society.  

Additional information found from the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, and IU Media Collections Online.  

For more information on the life and career of Tom Cochrun, watch his full oral history interview.

Last Edit: March 1st, 2024