Just announced:
GoLocalProv | Business | NEW: Kelly Bates Out at WJAR NBC 10
GoLocalProv | Business | NEW: Kelly Bates Out at WJAR NBC 10
Read that Kelly Bates is returning to WLNE Channel 6 on June 11 doing weekends
Fired because she was into her fifties, overweight and needing to wear strong g!asses?
If her weather reports were seldom accurate, it might be one thing.
Had her firing from WJAR-10 been just recently (August or September, 2022), her dismissal might have been called a case of being "LaFlammed", as in former CTV network anchor Lisa LaFlamme, who was let go (despite being Canada's most popular network news anchor) simply because LaFlamme was in her late fifties and let her hair turn gray.
At least she landed a new position.
It's always a balancing act between keeping older talent (with higher salaries) and hiring young cheap talent. I would imagine that you have to look at time periods. For example, if an older higher paid talent is working weekday evenings where many are watching, then management would tend to keep them. However, if they are working weekend mornings in front of fewer viewers, then older highly paid talent might not be "worth" it.WJAR --even under new ownership- has been amazingly loyal to vet talent several of them well into middle age. Most of these people -- with 20+y seniority-- are making a lot of money. To budget for that you would think that JAR also has to have a lot of cheap talent. IDK if Bates was caught up in that but I have my doubts that station suddenly found her too old.