With WBTV shoring up its anchor job holes, one hire looks particularly promising: the addition of Jamie Boll as 5pm and 5:30pm anchor. This is the slot that has been bad voodoo since Jon Robinson left, Michael Scott was a bust, and Dave Stanley imploded.
Boll, 37, has been the main anchor for over a dozen years at the CBS affiliate in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has won reporting awards and seems to be a popular guy up there. Boll wanted to get off the night shift and try a bigger market as well.
The new morning co-anchor at Channel 3 starts next week. Twenty-seven-year-old Lenise Ligon comes to WBTV from the CBS affiliate in Saginaw, Michigan. A health reporter and weekend morning anchor there, Ligon was named by a local radio station as “hottest female TV newsperson.”
If you like your musicians colored Carolinian, WSGE 91.7 FM will be right down your alley next week with its “Grassroots Music Tribute.” From rock to beach, and blues to Americana, DJs will play only North and South Carolina artists from January 24-28.
NPR stalwart Carl Kasell was the VIP guest scheduled to meet, greet, and do radio at WFAE-FM Thursday. One of the best voices in the biz, hands down.
From the “quit asking me that question file,” yes, Jeff Roper has left Charlotte and is the new morning guy at WWNU-FM in Columbia, SC. His legal issues with former co-host Carrie Ann Boggess are not over; they’re scheduled to go to trial within a couple of months.
With tsunami relief drives abounding these days from TV networks, radio stations, and newspapers to churches and workplaces, would it be too crazy to suggest that Charlotte media outlets do a little togetherness dance for a joint fundraiser? One date, a whole lot more money raised for the cause?
A new home improvement TV show shooting in Charlotte was the focus of a mini-media blitz last Thursday, as the folks from Turner South promoted Homemakers for local print and TV types. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of the producers on the project.) The show will chronicle the re-design and rebuild of a 1905 house in NoDa, complete with demolition, Porta-Jons, and all the fun that implies. The hook is that the design and construction work’s being done by Charlotte-area women with experience in home design, contracting, construction, and carpentry. And what they don’t know — like how tough it is to rip out 100-year-old horsehair plaster walls — they’ll be learning on the job. This is no new-coat-of-paint home show, it’s hard work. Homemakers will begin airing in the spring on Turner South.
Stay tuned.
E-mail at Shannon.Reichley@cln.com
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2005.
