The ebbs and flows of freshman homesickness were finally starting to calm. He went from a 15-member graduating class in the remote northwest Minnesota town of East Grand Forks to a business major at the University of St. Thomas, a private college in the heart of St. Paul that’s a five-hour drive to his hometown. Then came the 500-Year Flood in the spring of 1997. The Red River flooded his native farm country, horizonless fields where you normally could watch your dog run away from home for three days.
He knew his mom, Patty, and sister, Laura, were already in nearby Minneapolis for a high school speech tournament—his sister chasing his legacy of two state titles and five state medals. But his dad, Tom, where was he? The levees broke; his town of East Grand Forks was evacuated. Did he get out?
Cell phones were still mostly a richer man’s toy, and cell service in small towns was largely a crapshoot. It took 14 hours for Ben Senger to find out that his dad was rescued from their flooded neighborhood on a National Guard helicopter and had fled to drier land at a family cabin in Minnesota’s lake country.
“I found this out thanks to the local TV news,” said the 6 and 11 p.m. co-anchor at WSAV. “That’s when it really hit me—the power and importance of reporting, the difference you can make to so many. I switched from business to print journalism the next week.”
A gruff local reporter, now-retired Minnesota legend Dave Nimmer, taught his lone broadcast class and told him he had an aptitude for putting together TV pieces. “It’s the first time I’d been told I was good enough to make a career out of this,” he said. “I loved writing for shorter pieces, but more than that, the immediacy of getting that news out was really appealing.”
Since first collecting a TV news paycheck in August 2000, it has taken him seven moves, 15 homes and multiple acts of fate and crisscrossing the country to find his soulmate, start a family and plant roots in Savannah and the Lowcountry.
His task was tall coming to WSAV: replace a fan favorite and co-anchor with a legend. Six years later, he counts picking our region as one of the best decisions of his life.
“I’ve made so many moves that satisfied the new and next life challenge, but this time, I’m finding new challenges without having to move,” Senger said. “You can fall out of a pool into the ocean here. We love Hilton Head and Bluffton. We have a vibrant life here, and there are so many stories to tell. It’s truly been a godsend.”
Senger began his journey at KMSP in Minneapolis as an intern his senior year. As many of his friends aimed for gigs at locally-based Target, he took a couple of months off, slinging pizza in a northern resort town before taking a writing job for the station’s Good Day Minnesota show.
“I crashed on the sofa of a high school friend and worked midnight to 8 a.m., but at least I was in the biz,” he said of his start. Five months later, he took his first on-air reporting job in Duluth.
Meanwhile, Patty and Laura decided to temporarily trek to Nashville as Laura was determined to be the next LeAnn Rimes. Ben was aiming to get back to Minneapolis as a reporter, but Mom had a different plan.
“She called a news director in Nashville out of the blue, planned to tell them she was my agent on a voicemail, but he picked up and she panicked,” Senger said. “She just said, ‘My son is incredible, and you need to hire him’ and hung up.”
A move from the 120th-ranked market to the 30th market does not happen, but that crazy interaction sparked a conversation that led to Senger becoming a reporter for WSMV’s morning show. “That jump, my mom … that was just a facepalm moment, but it happened,” he said.
He quickly got burned out covering overnight house fires and news off the police scanner. “There was a weekend anchor opening I really wanted; they told me I had potential, but I look way too young,” he said. “You get older in the business, everybody’s trying to look young and stave off aging, but me looking like a kid in my 20s didn’t play.”
Instead, he decided to head to Knoxville to anchor a morning show, where he met his wife, Alisha, who was a salesperson at the station but later reconnected with when she got into pharmaceutical sales.
“I was so job driven, I wasn’t looking for anyone. She said she had a bunch of female co-workers she wanted to introduce me to,” Senger said. “I went out that night, talked to the friends for a bit but Alisha and I ended up talking for most of the night.”
The couple married in September 2007. Months later, with Alisha being able to do her work from anywhere, Ben got the itch for a move again. After a brief flirtation with Boston, the duo ended up in Winston-Salem, N.C. After two years there, and the birth of their oldest son, Evan, who is now a fifth-grader, he and Alisha decided to make a cross-country jump when Ben got courted by KPTV in Portland, Oregon.
“We loved it there, it was such a fun and quirky place. We knew we were locals but coming from where we both came from to this culture, it felt like studying abroad,” he said. (Their youngest son, Colin, a second-grader, was born there.) By 2015, they realized it was time to be closer to the kids’ grandparents. They needed to move East.
Alisha’s Knoxville friends had a house on Tybee Island where the Sengers vacationed from 2006 to 2010. Ben had an offer to anchor a morning show in Minneapolis, an offer from his old station in Knoxville and the evening anchor spot in Savannah. Rather than opting for familial haunts, the couple chose WSAV.
“The morning show in Minny was horrible hours. I just said to myself, ‘Who am I doing this for? We chose lifestyle over ladder climbing, and it’s been the best decision personally and professionally,” Senger said.
The 6-foot-4 former high school shooting guard had classical anchor looks, but he was stepping into a tricky situation. Beloved co-anchor Russ Riesenger’s contract wasn’t renewed after 10 years. Senger was brought in to pair with veteran anchor Tina Tyus-Shaw.
“I just focus on reporting and explaining the news. I’m just the vehicle that gets the news to your TV or device. I’m fortunate to have shed that need for everyone to like me long ago. You can’t neglect that in our business. If you’re turning off audience, you won’t have a job,” Senger said. “But there’s a genuine way to earn that trust without puffing out your chest.”
Senger loves the variety of stories and the people he gets to meet here. And he has been faced with telling the once-in-a-lifetime story like the 500-Year Flood that drew him into the business.
“This pandemic, it brings you back to the immediacy and the service we’re providing. The hours have been tough, but we keep it in perspective to what’s going on outside the building,” he said. “This pace isn’t sustainable for any of us; we know that. We’ve been operating at a higher frequency here for a year. I know we all want normalcy, need the vibrations around us to slow down.”
His workday has adjusted, as he does much of his afternoon meetings from his Wilmington Island home while overseeing the boys’ virtual schooling. “I feel for all the families who don’t have employers or jobs as flexible as mine. So much of what we do was remote for so long. Now, I’m back in studio and it’s slowly getting to be less of a ghost town.”
Senger has anchored the news socially distanced from Tyus-Shaw, standing in front of a monitor away from the anchor desk for months. That arrangement hasn’t partnered well with his junk food addiction.
“I’ve always had a fast metabolism. I fluctuate 20 pounds here or there throughout the year, and it’s not super noticeable. Truffle fries, pizza, all the chips, I love them, but doctors recently told me to get off the gluten,” he said. “There’s been plenty of times through the years sitting at the desk where I’ve done the newscast with my pants unbuttoned as I gain weight. Doesn’t work so well when you’re standing up.”
He knows many of his college friends are senior management at Target or still climbing the TV ladder, always looking for the higher-ranked market and the golden network gig. That’s just not his jam.
“I’m awful at telling people my favorite this or that; I can’t even remember my favorite color,” he said. “But I know what makes my soul happy, what makes my family happy. I don’t have the elongated O’s, but I’m Minnesota nice. Maybe I don’t assert myself enough; maybe if I did, I’d be running a network by now.”
He pauses before laughing and changing course.
“No, I wouldn’t be. I’m not that Dateline confrontational guy. I love being a champion of community storytelling. The people here, the opportunity to make the product better here, that’s my thing.”
Senger is negotiating a contract extension at the station. Seven job moves, 7,215 miles covered since he left East Grand Forks, and he’s finally found a place to plant roots. “I’m here as long as the viewers and the station executives will have me,” he said. And he hopes to spend more time across the Talmadge with his family. “We took mini-vacations to Bluffton and Hilton Head all the time pre-COVID, and we will again for sure. Being closer to the ocean, we all want that. The kids love it, we love the vibe here.”
He hopes to take on more responsibilities at the station and looks forward to championing more projects like the recently-launched “Uniquely …” series. “‘Uniquely’ focuses on getting locals to appreciate all the things that our visitors come here to experience. I’m putting out an open call to everyone to share their stories with me,” he said.
Senger has ridden out many a rollercoaster in the business, has found social media useful in spurts—especially during the pandemic—but looks forward to reconnecting with people in his sweatpants at the grocery store. He hopes he and his colleagues are a calming presence in a time of upheaval.
“There’s a lot going on. I get it. My industry is changing, the world is changing daily it seems. There’s so much polarizing us, but it’s important to find what unifies us even more,” he said. “That’s what’s fulfilling to me. I hope to be telling positive, unifying stories in your homes for many years to come.”
Watch Ben weeknights from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. on WSAV; follow him on Twitter @WSAVBenS, and contact him at bsenger@wsav.com.
