Rebecca Droke, Post-Gazette Jennifer Antkowiak, formerly of KDKA, is at the center of a new talk show, magazine and Web site. She is surrounded in her home office by her children, from left, Alexander, 7; Grace, 4; Nicholas, 6; Joseph, 2; and Michael, 9.

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On Thursday morning, this is what Jennifer Antkowiak did, as part of her new, less stressful, post-KDKA-anchor life:

Woke up at 5:30 a.m. Made a cup of tea -- amazingly, for someone who only needs five hours of sleep a night, she doesn't drink coffee -- and went into her home office, where she spent an hour or so working on her book project and catching up on reading about Web marketing, in preparation for her new Web site, www.jennifertvshow.com, which she'll launch next month as a prelude to a planned talk show.

Then, at 6:50 a.m., while her husband Joe slept (she's the morning person, he's not), Antkowiak woke up her five children, made breakfast and sent three of them off to the school bus, while the two youngest, Grace, 4, and Joe, 2, got settled in the family room, with toys and the Disney Channel to divert them.

Then -- and we're not done yet, not by a long shot -- Antkowiak wrapped up a contract for the first sponsor for her television talk show, which she'll launch in May and wrote four articles for exercise guru Leslie Sansone's www.walkathome.com "walk club." She then finalized details for a photo shoot for her new magazine, At Home With Jennifer, then, after lunch with her kids and her husband -- he's an actor and director who, these days, mostly holds down the fort at home to support his wife -- she went back to the office and called her lawyer to finalize paperwork for her new production company, Jennifer Productions LLC. "I wanted the name JCorp Productions but it was already taken," she laughed.

All this before her three older children got off the school bus at 3 p.m., and not only that, "It's fun," said Antkowiak, 39, with a serene smile. "It doesn't feel like work."

About 10 months ago, Jennifer Antkowiak walked away from her job as a top-rated anchor at KDKA to work with Sansone and spend more time with her children, but that doesn't mean she's giving up 17 years of building an image as one of the more approachable and trusted media figures in the Pittsburgh region. Instead, she's parlaying the "Jennifer" brand into a host of new ventures: Besides promoting and developing family-oriented programs with Sansone, she's now got her own shelter magazine -- At Home With Jennifer, launched two months ago by Jack and Christine Tumpson, publishers of Whirl. A talk show with a live audience, taped at Sansone's spanking new television studio in New Castle and aimed at the "busy mom" demographic, will debut in May or June, and there's the aforementioned jennifertvshow.com.

Oh, and then there's that book she's writing.

Antkowiak doesn't flinch at the notion that she's trying to become the Martha Stewart of Pittsburgh. While she loves decorating, cooking, sewing and all the other domestic endeavors pursued with such perfectionism by that famously temperamental diva, the famously even-tempered Antkowiak gently suggested her focus will be in an area where she has perhaps more credibility: family.

"I personally do like Martha Stewart, although I have a problem identifying with some of the things she expects us to do," she said. "But one of the things, I guess, that people see in me is accessibility. The question then becomes, is your magazine, your talk show or Web site inspiring people or frustrating people? I don't want to insult anyone. I want to help them make the most of the time they do have as a family."

While "supermom" may be the image that many Pittsburghers had of Antkowiak -- and, indeed, it's the label Sansone uses to describe her friend and colleague -- Webster's Dictionary defines it this way: a woman who performs the traditional duties of housekeeping and child-rearing while also having a full-time job.

That wasn't Antkowiak.

Instead, she spent nearly a decade as a working mother who often didn't get to celebrate holidays very often with her children -- "We'd have Thanksgiving at 10:30 in the morning and then I was out of there by 12:30" -- and, during the last two years of her tenure at KDKA, was working up to 10-hour days topped off by a long commute from her home in Churchill.

Like other high-powered, high-profile women with lots of children who must work long, occasionally unpredictable, hours, Antkowiak made it work because she had possessed that relatively rare thing, a husband who was willing to stay at home and shoulder much of the responsibility of running a household.

"When we started having kids, Jen's career started to take off," said her husband, who met Antkowiak when they were both working at WJET-TV, an Erie television station, he as director and she as reporter. While he still does occasional stints directing or as an actor -- he's worked with the late Don Brockett and Ken Gargaro -- "I figured I don't really need to do this right now, she's got all these opportunities so I should just stay home so we don't need to worry."

Indeed, "the fact that I had family at home, with my husband there, and with my father-in-law, that made it much easier, in terms of peace of mind," Antkowiak admitted.

A change in schedule

While her schedule was always changing during her years at the station, Antkowiak had always been able to spend some time during the day at home with her children. But in 2004, a change in KDKA's top management led to new policies, and she and other employees were expected to be at the station throughout the day.

That meant on many days Antkowiak left her house early in the morning and often was not home until quarter of 7 at night.

While the kids seemed fine, "I missed them," she said, then paused. "Although, you know what? They seem to be sleeping better, and I think they feel more secure with me home."

Still, she insisted, she loved her job. "Yes, it caused me stress to know I wasn't going to get home during the day, but the salary was great, the job was creative and wonderful, and I loved the people I was working with."

Enter Leslie Sansone, the exuberant exercise queen from New Castle who built her love of walking into a healthy lifestyle media company, which, over 20 years, has sold $200 million worth of videos and DVDs.

When Sansone, who frequently appeared on Antkowiak's morning program, "Pittsburgh Today Live," asked if she'd be available to film an infomercial for her, "that started a big conversation between the two of us, about her raising five children and not really seeing them," Sansone said.

"As much as we look at [Antkowiak] as this career woman, who was managing it all, she is the heart of that family and doesn't want to miss a thing."

After Antkowiak saw the large production studio Sansone was building, a light bulb went on. Maybe she could do something different -- walk away from an important anchoring job but still keep her hand in media-related ventures, while working from home. As luck would have it, a window in her contract gave Antkowiak an opportunity to leave, and she took it.

Her relations with KDKA colleagues remain cordial -- her former co-anchor, Ken Rice, and his wife and their new kitchen were featured in the debut issue of her magazine -- although last year there was some grumbling and speculation in various online forums when the first television interview she gave about her role in Sansone's company was to rival station WTAE during a sweeps period.

When asked today about it, Antkowiak said she was only doing her job, which was to promote Sansone's company to whatever media outlet was interested.

A DVD and a magazine

Since then, she's taped a "Family Walk" DVD, led by Sansone and featuring Antkowiak's husband and children, as well as Antkowiak's own interviews with health experts. She also takes up a bit of real estate on Ms. Sansone's Web site: At Home With Jen features time-saving tips for families.

Then there's At Home With Jennifer, the fruit of another casual conversation with Whirl publisher Jack Tumpson and his wife at a social event.

"I just mentioned, 'Hey, if you ever would like me to write a parenting column, I'd love to do it, and they told me, 'Jen, you shouldn't be writing for a magazine, you are a magazine,' " Antkowiak recalled.

As magazine categories go, Antkowiak "represents the essence of 'family shelter,' " said Tumpson. "People just come up to her and treat her like their long lost cousin," he said. "She communicates in a way that makes people totally comfortable."

While she doesn't exactly channel Martha Stewart's steely domesticity, Antkowiak seems genuinely adept at crafts, decorating, cooking and all the things that make for a comfortable, attractive home environment. She sewed all the curtains and pillows in her large, comfortable home, and painted and decorated all the rooms herself, although when asked to describe the decorating style, her husband quipped, "Early Childhood."

"All our kids wanted to be Wise Men for Christmas Eve Mass, and Jen made five Wise Men costumes in the car in seven minutes," said her husband.

All well and good, but how is Antkowiak going to make those costumes when she not only has a magazine and Leslie Sansone's products to promote, but a talk show, too -- a show that she said will be "practical and aspirational"?

Simple, she said: "We'll be taping every three months," a three-show-a-day marathon for three days straight. After all, she and a single producer put together "Pittsburgh Today Live" five mornings a week on a very small budget, she noted, and her Rolodex is full of names of experts on family issues who appeared on that program.

"I'm a good juggler," Antkowiak said calmly. "I can do all of these things. Only now," she added with only a faintly perceptible sigh, "it's so much more manageable."