Frank Somerville had a rough 2021. And he is finally ready to speak about it in front of the camera. The seasoned Bay Area broadcaster, whose worst year ended in a drunken crash smashing his Porsche into another car on Dec. 30, sat down with KRON4 in San Francisco for a live chat. Nearly 30 minutes, about the months leading up to the crash.
“It all came to a point where I got a DUI,” he said.
Somerville is a well-known Bay Area figure who began broadcasting on his aging station KTVU in 1992 and became co-anchor in 2008. However, as of June 2021, he went on air where he visibly faltered. obviously leading to viral clips National headlines and goodbyes
In a Facebook post reflecting the situation a year later, Somerville claimed for the first time: “I’m very busy because I don’t drink in the air,” he said, having accidentally taken two powerful sleeping pills. “The way I got home that night was beyond me,” he wrote.
It’s a claim he reiterated Wednesday in his KRON4 interview. “I’m taking a drug that I think is my prescription drug, but two Ambien,” he said.
The news anchor acknowledges the long-standing problem with substance abuse. He said he used drugs and alcohol. “Almost every night” to the point of addiction. “I was very sad and lonely from the divorce, missing my children and the pandemic, which certainly didn’t help. Because right now I’m alone,” he said. “I’m busy.”
After more than two months a spokesman for his parent network called “Medical leave”, which is the period Somerville said he spent in the sanatorium. He returned to broadcasting again. but in September He was suspended indefinitely after disagreeing with the station supervisor on how to cover up the murder of Gabbie Petito, then a missing persons case.
Somerville, who has a black daughter, wants to add a 46-second “tag” to an update to Petito’s story admitting racially disproportionate media coverage of black and white crime victims. The tag was removed due to a Somerville protest by the producers after the news agency’s editors expressed concern about it, sources tell us. San Francisco Chronicle At the time, Somerville was suspended the next day.
“I think Gabby Petito’s national news is crazy,” he told KRON4. “For no reason other than she’s a cute white kid. but for some reason I was suspended for that. To this day I’m still not sure why.”
It seemed that his fate had paused for a moment. But in November, Somerville told the Bay Area News Group that he “would no longer be anchoring” at KTVU. His contract with the station expired in 2022.
Then a month later something went wrong. After hitting the back of another car and plowing through a crowded intersection, pushing another car into a pole Baffled news anchor charged with DUI Court documents show his blood alcohol concentration was 0.24 percent (the legal limit in California is 0.08 percent).
Somerville “definitely doesn’t remember the accident,” he told KRON4. “I was almost as unconscious as you could be,” he said.
The news anchor said he spent most of the evening drinking until he was drunk. “It was Christmas time,” he said. “I was away from my family. I didn’t see them during the holidays. It was a really sad time. So I was dumped. There is no other way to say I was dumped in my apartment.”
Then, hungry for Taco Bell, he climbed into his Porsche. “I have no business driving at all,” he told KRON4, adding later that he would like to apologize to the other driver, who was slightly injured in the crash.
Somerville told chronicle On Wednesday, he said he was now focused on recuperating and sobering up from the drugs. Although he told KRON4 that he still occasionally drinks alcohol. “It’s a work in progress,” he added.
As for his future, Somerville said he might try teaching or return to television news. Although he admits that the return may not be entirely up to him.
“It all depends on the station that hires me. which station has to take advantage of me,” he told The. chronicle. “I come with a background. I made a big mistake.”
“Meanwhile,” he added after a pause. “I’m a really good news anchor.”
