[2] Kershaw grew up in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and later moved to Arizona where he attended Glendale Community College.

He introduced the Action News format, hired new talent, such as Mike Hambrick And Ron Smith[3] and moved the station from last to first in less than a year.

In 1979, Kershaw moved on to WNBC-TV in New York, where he collaborated with Peter Sang in bringing the "control room" set into TV news, taking the station from last in the ratings to a market leader in two years.

[2] While in Houston, Kershaw had been dating Jessica Savitch, a news reporter with a rival television station in Texas.

Kershaw helped Savitch develop her reporting skills during their stormy ten-year relationship.