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Saturday, June 10, 2000
By Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV Editor
When WPXI's Jennifer Rigby became a television news director in 1995, she was the only woman in that top news executive position at a TV station owned by Cox Communications.
"That didn't last very long," she said.
A few months later Cox stations in Charlotte, N.C., and Orlando hired women news directors. When Rigby left Cox's Dayton, Ohio, station in 1998, the position was filled by a woman. She joined WPXI as the station's first female news director, and today she says women make up half the news director jobs at Cox.
An annual survey by the Radio-Television News Directors Association shows the number of women news directors rose from 14 percent in 1995 to 24 percent this year. In total, women make up 40 percent of the TV news workforce, up from 37 percent in 1995.
"An even more critical point is less obvious," said Bob Papper, professor of telecommunications at Ball State University and director of the association's annual survey. "In 1995 most of the women TV news directors were in smaller markets and at smaller stations. While there is still an aspect of truth to that, it's not nearly as true today."
As women in the media make strides, they still lag in most power positions. Women make up only 16 percent of TV station general managers, according to a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. At cable systems, women account for only 4 percent of the general managers.
Federal Communications Commissioner Susan Ness recently convened a group of high-powered women in various communications fields to discuss the problems and how best to address them.
"Women are not appearing in numbers anywhere approaching what we'd thought they'd be at top levels of communications companies," Ness said. "This is evidenced when you go to major conventions and you see all the panels are men only."
Ness said women hold few top positions not only in the traditional media, but among emerging dot-com companies.
"There was a push back in the '70s when there was one woman selected to serve on the boards of some major companies, and those numbers haven't really expanded from that point in time to any large extent," Ness said.
The merging of media companies may be one of the blocks to the advancement of women.
"With consolidation we're seeing fewer and fewer women because a lot of those top positions are being cut back," Ness said. "Take the Time Warner merger with AOL. Of the Top 20 officers they identified post-merger, not one was a woman."
Loosening of Equal Employment Opportunity rules may also be having a negative impact on the number of women working at media companies. In 1998, a federal appeals court threw out FCC rules governing the hiring of minorities and, by extension, women. Under the old rules, minority hiring was taken into consideration when a station's license came up for renewal.
EEO rules adopted this year eliminate record-keeping regulations but require broadcasters, cable and satellite TV companies to report on minority recruitment efforts. However, the new rules are not tied to station license renewal.
Whatever the impact of changing FCC rules at the local level, women have recently advanced to top positions at the broadcast networks. Susanne Daniels heads up programming for The WB while Nancy Tellem holds a similar position at CBS and Pat Mitchell is president of PBS. Last month Gail Berman was named entertainment president at Fox. Patricia Fili-Krushel recently left her job as president of ABC to become president of WebMD Health.
In cable television, women have filled the top ranks even more frequently. Geraldine Laybourne made Nickelodeon into a hit and Kay Koplovitz built USA Network from the ground up. But in recent years many of these pioneering women have left the field.
"Our visibility has dwindled enormously," said Judy Girard, general manager and senior vice president at Food Network, who attended Ness' summit. "The dedication of this group is to change that. We realize the need for mentoring."
Girard, 54, worked as program director at WTAE-TV in the 1980s, and later became senior vice president of programming and production at Lifetime.
"One reason I jumped to cable was that it's so completely friendly," Girard said. "I could go very high in the ranks of cable fairly easily and didn't seem to have a lot of the same built-in -- I don't want to say discrimination -- it just had more jobs available frankly and the stakes aren't as high."
Girard said women working in top positions at cable networks have clout, more than women in other realms of broadcasting.
"One of the ways to tell is Women in Cable, an industry group that's very powerful," Girard said. "The women who make it up have powerful positions at their companies and can gather people in meetings. American Women in Radio and Television never has been able to do that because they're not in powerful enough ranks most of the time."
In Pittsburgh three women hold top management spots at local TV stations. Oleen Eagle is president of Christian station WPCB. Nancy Hahn owns and operates low-power station WNEU. And most recently Jayne Adair was named station manager of WCWB/WPGH, but her male predecessor carried the more prestigious "general manager" title.
"That is definitely a job the company knows I have aspirations for and I am willing to learn what I need to learn and work to get it," Adair said. "The reason I came to this company is that opportunity is available to me."
Adair said a typical ascent to station management is through sales. With a growing number of women in middle management positions, Adair said, there are more women poised to rise to general manager positions in the future.
"When I first became national sales manager at KDKA from 1994 to 1996, there were very few women in management," Adair said. "In sales there have traditionally been good opportunities for women as account executives, but when it came to breaking through to manager of local or national sales for TV stations, that was a more rare occurrence. Now I'm starting to see that."
Before moving to Pittsburgh's Fox and WB stations, Adair was general manager at Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh.
"Who would have thought a woman could successfully manage a regional sports network? Not only did I have my success, but I had my success working with a great group of mostly guys who shared the vision of what I thought Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh should be," Adair said.
If women aren't moving into general manager roles at local TV stations as quickly, it also may be as a result of lifestyle choice.
"I think fewer women are choosing to go into that field and run television stations," Girard said. "That is as significant as any kind of glass ceiling and lack of promotion you could cite. Women get close to the senior ranks and are choosing a new lifestyle, wanting to be with their kids and not wanting to work 24/7. I think people in general are doing that."
Rigby said one of her friends and colleagues is a woman news director who quit for family reasons.
"A lot of women are opting out because the problem with some of these high-powered jobs and bigger jobs is they're so demanding. If both spouses have demanding jobs, it's really tough," Rigby said.
While the power may be behind the scenes, women now have higher profiles than men on local TV. Sheila Hyland, anchor for WPGH's 10 p.m. newscast, said Pittsburgh is a female-driven market. Where once the most prominent stars at local stations were Bill Burns, Ray Tannehill (KDKA) and Don Cannon (WTAE), now most stations are identified by the women at the anchor desk.
Sally Wiggin is clearly the star at WTAE. Patrice King Brown is the only KDKA anchor on the air during the two most-watched news programs each day (the 6 and 11 p.m. news). WPXI's Peggy Finnegan is part of Pittsburgh's longest-running anchor team (with David Johnson) and Hyland herself is WPGH's best-known news anchor.
Women in the Media 
Jennifer Rigby is the only female TV news director in Pittsburgh. She says women fill half the news director jobs at Cox Comunications. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)