Monday, January 16, 2006

Anchor Man Overboard   The dearth of male local TV news anchors is described in yesterday's Boston Globe. While this could be seen as the ascendancy of women in the profession, what's really going on here is that the job pays poorly and men are turning it down. Women are moving into the job vacuum (and into college broadcast journalism programs while young men go into more economically promising training programs). It's part of a kind of chicken and egg paradox where jobs that once held prestige stagnate in pay and even lose prestige as they become perceived as a woman's profession. Journalism, education, medicine (as opposed to medical research) may be going this way.... Here's the salient excerpt from the Globe story: Yet experts say young men are backing off from the low-pay scale that awaits them upon graduation. Typically, neophytes start in small towns like Bangor, Maine, or Wilmington, N.C. They work as reporters first and then, sometimes, become anchors before moving on to bigger markets where the process is repeated. According to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, a professional group that represents local and network news executives, the average annual salary for an anchor in a small market such as Bangor is about $20,000. And speaking of tv and anchor desks and prestige, when is the NFL going to elevate deserving women broadcasters from the windswept sidelines of the game into the broadcast booth where the hair stays put, the room is warm and the pay is great? I love my Superbowl playoffs, but I grind my teeth every time I see a big-haired, pink-outfitted woman down on the field trying to shout a few lines of commentary over the fray. -RH 9:08:13 AM    comment []

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