WDIV-TV's Rod Meloni eyes retirement, reflects on decades of business news in Detroit

After nearly three decades of steering auto industry and business coverage at WDIV-TV in Detroit, Rod Meloni is turning in the keys.

Meloni, who arrived at Channel 4 in October 1995, admits he's had one incredible ride in a town that never seems to be lacking big business potholes, including memorable bankruptcies, and has plenty of great characters and plot twists.

Sure, Meloni acknowledged in a phone interview with me that he's done his share of goofy stuff, too, like his chuckle-filled "Rod the Builder" segments, which had Meloni taking on the professional competition to string holiday lights, build a lobster roll, or, shudder, go live to put together something at IKEA.

"I didn't really like doing 'Rod the Builder,' " Meloni admitted. "But people loved it, they just loved it. That's why they didn't kill it until just this year."

Working with him is like 'riding lightning'

The WDIV Local 4 business editor is known for his hearty humor, versatility and high energy. "One of the photographers here calls working with me riding the lightning," Meloni said. He says he has built up just under 5,400 phone numbers of sources he can call to check out a range of news tips, including those involving local crimes.

His legacy is his skillful coverage of a long list of incredibly serious news in Detroit — the Kmart bankruptcy in 2002; the bankruptcies of two of the Detroit Three, Chrysler and General Motors, both in 2009; and the city of Detroit bankruptcy filing in July 2013.

Meloni has covered, or in his words — endured, more Detroit auto shows and Charity Previews than he cares to count, likely every such event that was held since the first one he covered in 1996. Meloni is a board member, and a past president, of the Automotive Press Association.

Best career advice came from his mom

He's put in the time to be as knowledgeable and well-versed as possible on complex matters, successfully earning his Certified Financial Planner professional status in 2011 after studying for the certification at Oakland University, and passed the test, which was, at the time, considered one of the most difficult ones out there.

"My mom always stressed 'Don't be talkin' unless you know what you're talkin' about,' " said Meloni, who grew up in Attleboro, Massachussetts, a town on the border of Rhode Island.

His one financial tip to everyday households: "You can't spend it all."

Many financial gurus will tell you, he said, that you cannot live paycheck to paycheck. You've got to aim to save money along the way for longer term expenses, such as college tuition and retirement. Try to learn to live on 80% of what you make and save the rest, said Meloni, who admits he wasn't always able to save that aggressively.

Meloni ran a weekly “Money Monday” segment on WDIV, and even for a brief time wrote weekly financial tips for the Free Press during an agreement the paper had with Channel 4 in 2006.

His is graduate of Emerson College in Boston with a bachelor's degree in mass communication. He credits his professor at Emerson, the late, legendary Marsha Della Giustina, with drilling home the need to be able to go anywhere as a broadcast journalist, ask enough questions, get the story and get it right.

"You can get a minute-30 (story) out of anything," he said. "That was always sort of my calling card. You could throw me in anything, and I'll come back with a story."

Meloni started in radio but his first TV job out of college was at WABI-TV in Bangor, Maine, which Meloni jokes "wasn't the end of the earth but you could see it from there."

He saw Detroit, and Michigan Central Station, at low points

After 15 years in the business — including stints in Portland, Maine; Miami; the NBC affiliate in Tampa, Florida; and an anchor job in Saginaw — Meloni joined Detroit’s NBC affiliate. And, yes, he's seen quite a few wild stories and transformations.

He well remembers the hulking, skeleton feel of the abandoned Michigan Central Station when it lacked love and windows. "You could look through the building and see Canada," Meloni said.

As part of his coverage of the historic reopening of Michigan Central Station on Thursday, Meloni told me that he planned to use old video from 2006 when actor Shia LaBeouf filmed a big battle scene for the movie "Transformers" at Detroit's desolate train depot against new video of the massively renovated building with its marbled-floor main hall today.

More: Michigan Central Station’s renovation: Before-and-after photos show dramatic change

One day Meloni never expected to see was June 1, 2009, when the iconic General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. Covering the auto industry turmoil, Meloni recalls that he was sitting in the Les Stanford car dealership in Dearborn 15 years ago when the GM bankruptcy news broke, and he was ready to go live once that GM press release hit.

While the auto industry faced startling upheaval during the financial crisis, it was hard for many to fathom that once powerful GM could have fallen so far.

He jumped at stories that others wouldn't

Meloni said his trademark as a journalist was his ability to break news, juggle stories and file on time. "You're the lead at 6 — you're not the lead at 6:05," Meloni said.

"My best utility was the grind," he said.

And he jumped at some stories that others might have avoided.

During his early years on the auto beat, Meloni one day found himself standing in Detroit in front of a moving SUV as Chrysler tried to prove a point on sudden, unexpected acceleration.

The profitable Grand Cherokee was haunted by consumer complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the mid-1990s of unintended or sudden acceleration. Drivers charged that they felt the vehicle seemingly race out of control for no apparent reason, and, according to some complaints, the acceleration took place even when a driver was actively trying to apply the brakes. The auto industry maintained that much of the problem was driver error, as somehow drivers were hitting the gas pedal when they thought they were putting their foot on the brake.

Meloni — a critical eye covering the sudden acceleration crisis at Chrysler Corp. for NBC affiliate WDIV — agreed to stand in front of a Grand Cherokee on live TV, wrote Chrysler PR executive Jason Vines in his 2014 book "What Did Jesus Drive? Crisis PR in Cars, Computers and Christianity."

The Chrysler engineering executive Craig Winn would start the SUV, firmly apply the brake, then push the accelerator pedal fully to the floor, Vines wrote, and shift into drive.

Stand in front of a moving SUV? When things could be touch and go — and go? What if the brakes didn't work?

Fortunately for Meloni, and Chrysler, the brakes worked fine when Winn, who was general manager of Jeep Platform Engineering from 1994 to 1998, drove the SUV.

Good thing. Otherwise, Meloni could have been dead on live TV, and the Chrysler guys surely would have been fired, the often-unrestrained Vines wrote in his book.

Meloni recalled Thursday that Vines later called after Channel 4 did about a dozen stories on sudden acceleration and Vines screamed “What do you want?” into the phone. "I told him 'fix the damn problem,' " Meloni said.

Meloni said he doesn't take personal credit for the fix but a shift interlock was later added to future models.

Later, in April 1997, Chrysler agreed to modify nearly 2.5 million Jeep sport utility vehicles so drivers couldn't lose control by shifting into gear with their foot on the gas, not the brake. It was known as a brake-shift interlock. The automaker announced a free retrofit, not a recall, for all 1984-95 Jeep Cherokees and 1993-95 Grand Cherokees, according to a report then in the Detroit Free Press.

A Chrysler executive was quoted in 1997 saying: "We have carefully examined unintended acceleration reports. All evidence points to pedal misapplication."

More: WDIV-TV confirms MacDonald, Smilovitz, Meloni, Tutman to take buyouts, leave in July

More: From Eminem video to Batman movie: Michigan Central Station has had many pop culture roles

Busting bad guys on the air

In another major Detroit TV moment, Meloni ran a hidden camera in 2001 to expose how some car dealers were too willing to bend the rules to give bogus employee discounts for those with no connections to the auto industry. Meloni recalls working with the assistance of someone who happened to be related to one of the TV station's interns. The secret shopper went out to the dealerships with a hidden camera.

"The dealership was giving the papers to any customer who walked in the door," Meloni recalled.

A competing car dealership had tipped Meloni off to the shenanigans with a phone call and the dogged reporting ended up winning Meloni his first Emmy.

The story was an "economically courageous story for TV news — auto dealers remain one of local TV's larger advertisers," wrote then Detroit Free Press staff writer John Smyntek in his review of May sweeps coverage.

WDIV buyout offered a good opportunity for him

Meloni, 65, is one of four well-known, on-air TV warriors taking buyouts at WDIV — along with reporters Mara MacDonald and Paula Tutman and sports anchor Bernie Smilovitz. They are leaving in July along with a number of off-air employees who took buyouts at the station.

Meloni says he has nothing but great feelings about Detroit, including its welcoming nature, and WDIV. "I leave Channel 4 happy," Meloni said. His contract would have been up later this year, he said, and he believes he could have signed another one. Now, though, seemed like a good time to retire and take a generous buyout.

Meloni recalled how he was brought in to take over the business beat from the late Jennifer Moore — who was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2014, the same year she died from cancer. Moore was the first television business reporter hired by a major Detroit TV station, according to her bio. Moore started at WDIV in 1979 as a business editor.

Moore remained at WDIV when Meloni arrived and he said she was incredibly gracious and helpful to him, more so than many would be in a competitive industry.

Once, Meloni said, he made the mistake of saying he was replacing Moore. Long-time auto writer Paul Eisenstein, he recalls, promptly put Meloni in his place saying no one could replace Moore.

Remembering CEOs and the time Sergio Marchionne had his back

Meloni has appreciated being able to interview the titans of the auto industry, including Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford Motor Co.; Bob Lutz, who had a passion for car design and retired as General Motors’ vice chairman in 2010 after a 47-year career; and the late Sergio Marchionne, former CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

Meloni admired Ford's eagerness to hold conversations and engage journalists about their opinions in some cases, such as the design of Ford Field, which incorporated the existing infrastructure for the old Hudson's warehouse and opened in 2002.

"Bill is just a regular guy, and I mean that sincerely," Meloni said. "Is he worth billions? Of course."

And Meloni remembers the day Marchionne helped him out of a jam.

Several years ago, Meloni ended up having a heated exchange with a New York-based journalist during a press event for Chrysler at a Detroit auto show. The way Meloni tells it, Marchionne called on Meloni to take his question. But the other journalist jumped in and shouted over Meloni, so loudly that Marchionne answered the New York journalist's question, not Meloni's.

"I looked at the guy and said, 'What is your major malfunction?' " Meloni recalled asking the competing journalist, his voice as heated as it likely was decades ago. Meloni said the other journalist didn't follow protocol. "We got into it verbally."

Yet, he said, Marchionne heard that exchange in real time and immediately came back to answer Meloni's question, providing a much-needed sound bite for TV news.

"He listened, No. 1, and No. 2 he realized that he had answered the wrong question, and he actually did something about it," Meloni said.

"Normally, they just walk off the stage and you were left with nothing."

When Meloni walks away from WDIV on July 1, he's not sure what's next. Maybe, he'll do something part-time in financial planning. He expects to do some more volunteer work.

He says he most certainly is looking forward to spending more time with his wife Karen, who gave up an impressive job early on to raise their three daughters and, he says, put up with a great deal as he built his TV career. They're celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in October and looking forward to an entire bathroom remodel on their home Up North.

Maybe, "Rod the Builder" will pay off, after all.

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X (Twitter) @tompor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: WDIV-TV's Rod Meloni reflects on decades of business news in Detroit