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WTIC lays off Dana Whalen

Per the comments in the above thread, she originally started with WTIC in the mid-70's, having left for a few other ventures including helping to launch WTIC-TV before returning to the radio station.
 
Surprised there's not a lot of coverage on this. The only other item I could find is this, and it uses the same photo as the one in the Courant, lol... Is she even on Facebook?
http://thelaurelct.com/2015/04/30/dana-whalen/

Laurel reminds us that Angela Dias remains with WTIC... for now, anyways...
 
Legendary receptionist Joanne is out too... She's been there forever.

How exactly do you not have a news director at a news/talk station?
 
Not that we want to excuse WTIC for making the staff pay for mistakes the management made, but often the PD and ND can be the same person. Obviously someone has to assign reporters to cover stories but that's about it. If the other staff know their jobs, I'm not really sure what a ND does. And I was a ND many years ago. But that was at a suburban station where turnover was frequent and people didn't always know their jobs. I'm guessing at WTIC, the only turnover is people leaving, not being hired.

What's more alarming is WTIC, the 50,000 watt CBS News/Talk station in CT, is going Sports Talk in afternoon drive. After being burned by the scandal of the previous PM host and former governor's legal problems, I guess the station is giving up doing news/talk in PM drive. Being a Red Sox affiliate, I guess management figures that's the easy route to more revenue and less danger, letting a sports talk show lead up to a baseball game most nights outside of winter time.
 
The path to younger demos and hopefully more money on a spoken-word station is through sports. 'TIC already has a play-by-play stable that some all-sports stations would dream about... Red Sox, Patriots, Giants, UConn mens and women's basketball. If the Joe D and Gresh experiment goes well... I would bet you could see more sports programming.
 
Gregg. said:
Not that we want to excuse WTIC for making the staff pay for mistakes the management made, but often the PD and ND can be the same person. Obviously someone has to assign reporters to cover stories but that's about it. If the other staff know their jobs, I'm not really sure what a ND does. And I was a ND many years ago. But that was at a suburban station where turnover was frequent and people didn't always know their jobs. I'm guessing at WTIC, the only turnover is people leaving, not being hired.

What's more alarming is WTIC, the 50,000 watt CBS News/Talk station in CT, is going Sports Talk in afternoon drive. After being burned by the scandal of the previous PM host and former governor's legal problems, I guess the station is giving up doing news/talk in PM drive. Being a Red Sox affiliate, I guess management figures that's the easy route to more revenue and less danger, letting a sports talk show lead up to a baseball game most nights outside of winter time.
Click to expand...

Gregg,

I will venture to guess that when you were a news director, you weren't managing a 24/7 operation and the internet didn't exist. A news director is a newsroom leader who has to make difficult editorial decisions (more difficult than ever before with emergence of social media); write, edit, produce and voice stories; ensure that the station's website is updated; fulfill ascertainment requirements for the FCC; respond to the whims of management; schedule staff; and cover an air shift if no one else can (which Dana frequently did on weekends, holidays, overnights, etc.). I happen to know that the current PD has zero newsroom experience. I can only imagine that this was a boneheaded move made by the suits in New York. The news director was probably the easiest person to lay off because it's the only position in the newsroom not covered by the union contract.
 
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