Silver King taps Duran as WYHS VP

By VARIETY STAFF

NEW YORK --- Barry Diller's Silver King Broadcasting has hired a VP and managing director for its flagship station WYHS Miami, which Diller plans to make the model for major commitments to local programming by all 12 of the company's wholly owned UHF TV stations.

The new VP of WYHS, Alfredo Duran, 36, has resigned his post as president and publisher of Exito magazine, a weekly "bilingual entertainment-and-lifestyle publication serving South Florida."

Duran will run the business side of WYHS, which will serve as both a TV station --- broadcasting in English ---and a tape studio for the production of at least eight hours of local programming each day.

Unconventional news

Adam Ware, executive VP of Silver King, says the station will spend about $10 million a year to tape unconventional news and information --- everything from art and culture to sports and local politics. "Our goal is to reflect the energy, flavor and culture" of Miami and South Palm Beach, Ware says.

WYHS is now an all-home-shopping station, as are the other Silver King TV stations. Ware says WYHS will end all of its home-shopping programs by April 1998, when the new local-production strategy will take effect.

Ware says he's still looking for a programming/production executive, whose title will be editor-in-chief and who'll be co-equal with Duran.