Friday morning update: Ed Bark has an email from Rebecca Miller, which more or less confirms what my friend noted yesterday: "When TV stations decide on changes, the public never knows the real reasons behind the change. Most times, neither do we."
Channel 5 announced yesterday that it wasn’t renewing the contract of weather woman (and wine aficionado) Rebecca Miller. I am especially unhappy about this because she was one of the few weather types in town who played it straight. Miller didn’t announce that every cold front was bringing with it THE STORM OF THE CENTURY!!!!
Since I long ago stopped trying to figure out why TV stations do what they do, I called a friend of mine who has been in the TV business for more than two decades, and has run a TV newsroom. Miller had been at Channel 5 since 1991 and was quite popular (Ed Bark’s post linked to above has 49 comments, most of them favorable); she hardly seems like the kind of person to be let go.
My friend’s take on what happened:
1) The station and Miller were in negotiations and the contract had already lapsed.
2) Or negotiations got nasty, and so they cut her loose immediately.
3) Or the contract had lapsed and she did something very bad to have them cut her immediately, or she threatened something.
4) Or, like many TV stations, they are so poorly run that they just made that decision on a whim and abruptly. I’m assuming they are professional and as an NBC owned and operated station, they will have to explain this up the chain. However, I have seen such whimsical firings in the past. So who knows? A clue would be if there has been an upper level management change recently. New cats like to show they have some power, and and a middle-aged weather woman is a pretty expendable person to use to show folks you are in control.
