MMMM #254 -- Women on TV

     As I watched The CBS Evening News several days ago, it struck me that the reporting staff on that night's broadcast was almost all female. Anchor Scott Pelley introduced Nancy Cordes, Elizabeth Palmer, Holly Williams, Margaret Brennan--then Dean Reynolds--and back to Holly Williams for a second story from Egypt.
     (And I'm the kind of viewer, by the way, who would have noticed if the on-air staff had been virtually all male, or all black or white, too. And yes, I realize the staff at CBS 8 reflects the same trend. Almost all of our daily reporting staff is female.
    It's not a new trend. The Washington Post wrote about it in 2006 with the headline "Men, signing off". The article providing some reasons:

So where have all the guys gone?
Many observers suggest that their departure reflects the transformation of TV news from a "glamour" business to a low-wage, no-growth field with limited career potential.

     ...which sounds insulting. Like women can have the jobs now that they don't pay and have no future?
     It quotes News Directors in the D.C. Market as saying the vast majority of resumes they receive are from women, and that the trend was increasing. It calculates that there are only 25,000 TV jobs in the entire country!
      The most recent annual report on  hiring at U.S. Radio and TV stations shows the hiring of women down 0.1% over the previous year, but still up in the long term...yet still not representative of the overall population. It reports:

 Women are 38.9% of the workforce in the top 100
 markets and 41.9% of the workforce in markets 100+.

 And that same report notes this:

Fox affiliates, at 28.2%, had a higher* percentage of minorities than the others (as they have in the past),
and NBC affiliates, at 17.4% continue to trail ABC and CBS stations -- as they did last year.

(*my emphasis)

[PLUS: Is it time for the Media to ignore the inane protests by the Westboro Baptist Church? Now they are latching onto the Connecticut slaughter.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com]