When I was News Director in Sacramento, our building maintenance person came to my office with a cart loaded with poinsettias and told me he was going to put them on the news set.

I told him I didn’t want any followers on the set and to take them away.

It wasn’t long after that that a salesperson came to my office and told me that the poinsettias were part of a sales agreement with a local nursery, and we had to put the flowers on the set.

I said that as the News Director, I did not sign off on the flowers and I would not be allowing them on the set. I told the sales dweeb to just put the flowers around the station where the staff could enjoy them, but not on the set.

The salesperson said the nursery provided the flowers free and paid us $1000 to have them on the set and a credit at the end of the newscasts.

I again said, “No flowers,” and that they could take the $1000 out of my pay, but I did not want any flowers on the set.

In the end, I never got my pay docked, and the flowers never made it on the set.

It was a small win, but the fact that the anchors were not reporting on deadly shootings and car crashes while surrounded by flowers made me feel just a bit better about the on-air product.

WGN’s Morgan Kolkmeyer shows us another reason to ditch the poinsettias.