Taco Bell or TV News?

Nancy Sanders spent 45 years working in TV news in Buffalo.

She started as the newsroom secretary at WKBW and worked her way up to Assistant News Director at the station before leaving.

She finished her career at Nexstar’s WIVB and she recently spoke to some Journalism students and gave some eye opening information.

Sanders told the J-school kids that many Producers at Nexstar’s WIVB are paid $15 an hour to produce the newscasts.

That basically means that Producers at this Nexstar station are making about the same money as the person flipping your burger at McDonald’s or wrapping your burrito at Taco Bell.

Sanders also said the days when stations paid for any parking tickets are over. She said WIVB Reporters must pay their own tickets now, so they should be careful to follow parking regulations or else the cost of the ticket could be the equivalent of two or three hours of their pay.

Sanders said the reason there are so many more female Reporters than male reporters in Buffalo TV is because male reporters are harder to find and harder to keep. The good ones without ties to Buffalo leave small markets – Buffalo is now the No. 52 market, one spot ahead of Providence, in the country – for bigger markets.

And she adds a male Reporters also are more apt to leave the business because they are still viewed as the breadwinners despite all the advances women have had in the last several decades.

H/T Buffalo News

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