David Rainey of the Los Angeles Times writes Wednesday about TV consumer reporters who have lost their jobs and must find alternative ways to tell their stories after being in their hey-day in the 1980s and 1990s.
Rainey writes, “Alan Mendelson, the onetime business and personal finance reporter for KCAL, spent years telling viewers he could help them find ‘best buys.’ But he lost his job in 2006 and has since made his living producing infomercials (many for lawyers) and a weekend ‘Best Buys’ show that airs on KCOP Channel 13. The website for the program promises an expert with a ‘black belt in shopping’ but the bottom line is that Mendelson features only companies that paid to be on the air.
“Mendelson, 58, told me he took a certain pride in being a survivor and striking out as an independent operator, after years on local TV. But he acknowledged he wouldn’t have plotted his career this way.
“‘I didn’t want to do this. I was very happy in the news business,’ he said. ‘I loved my job. I had a following. It broke my heart to leave. But I had to eat and I was too young to retire. I had to do something.’
“Mendelson sees himself as a pawn in a much larger chess match. Back in the early 1980s, so many TV professionals were doing business reporting that they formed the Economic News Broadcasters Assn.
“Mendelson served as president in 1981, when the group had 237 members. But the organization died before the end of the decade, as stations laid off business and consumer reporters and other beat journalists in droves. ‘The concept of specialist reporters just died,’ he said.”
Read more here.
