Is it only here in the Baltimore area that this seems to be the standard combination for the two-person teams that anchor the local news broadcasts?
I have no problem with the arrangement, of course; it just struck me when i moved here how ubiquitous the white woman/black man combination is. Just about every channel seems to follow this “rule.”
So, is this the case in other parts of the country as well?
Atlanta is black woman, white man in a lot of instances. Even in the ones that don’t fit that description, it tends to be man and woman of completely different races.
Apparently the viewer is unable to understand regurgitated news unless highly paid, racially diverse people who are essentially pretty heads that can read a teleprompter no better than the average joe on the street are doing the job for us.
The only TV news I see regularly in Jacksonville is in the early morning on the NBC affiliate. White woman and white man reading news, black man doing weather. There’s also a black woman who gets the early morning remotes: “I’m standing here 500 yards from a flaming crash on the interstate onramp in the pouring rain so I can point out blurry lights in the distance” and she occasionally sits at the desk when the white woman takes the day off. So far, they’ve always replaced a man with a man and a woman with a woman. And the woman always sits on the left of the screen.
I don’t watch any of the evening news programs, so I don’t know what happens on the other local stations.
I watch the NBC affiliate in Chicago in the morning, and the past few combinations that I can remember have been black woman/white man (current), Hispanic woman/white man, and Hispanic woman/Asian woman. The evening news has a black man as half of the anchor team, I think, but I don’t recall the other half - I rarely watch it.
I watch channel 11 (WBAL) news in the morning. The normal hosts are a black woman (Sade Baderinwa - she’s gorgeous) and a white woman (I forget her name, she just had a baby, though).
As someone who spent ten years in the TV business, I can address this question with some degree of credibility. Anchors are chosen for their appeal to the viewer. Demographics also play a role. When I was working in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the anchor teams were Hispanic/Anglo as well as male/female. The idea is to appeal to the maximum amount of viewers possible. In larger cities, some 4:30 or five pm newscasts with heavier female viewship will have two women. In areas where the black population is high, you will have black talent. I may be wrong, but my guess is that black talent is pretty scarce in places like Boise and Minneapolis.
Um, no Evil One.
Channel 4 used to have a black male/white female morning team. Now they have veered more towards Asian, SE Asian, and latino.
Channel 5 morning show is white male/black female. One of their main anchors in the evening is a black woman. Another of their well known floating anchors is Indian (I believe). Also their “investigative reporter” is a black male.
Channel 9 is pretty pale. It’s a FOX station, does that mean anything?
Channel 11 is also fairly pale. They do have black reporters (Aisha Tyler used to be on this station), but no anchors other than caucasian.
(Oh, I’m in Minneapolis BTW–)
I’m afraid i’m hardly ever up in time to watch the morning news. My experience is almost exclusively with the evening and late-night broadcasts.
Although i did happen to see the Fox-45 news this morning, and they had the black man/white woman combination.
MissTake, I hedged my bet by saying I could be wrong. Do the twin cities have a significant black population? And it seemed from your post that the majority of the talent is white, indicating the demographics of the market. One other thing to consider…the news business is like baseball. Minneapolis is the major leagues. The talent there is hoping to be seen by the networks or to move into a top ten TV market. The talent pool for male anchors is especially thin, so if a black male in Austin or Kansas City got a chance at a job in Minneapolis, he would take it. If you want to see who a station considers to be thier main talent…see who they put on the late news, after prime time.
That’s funny. It’s just the opposite for me. I never watch anything but the morning news. I’m rarely home in time to catch the evening news.
The chick on Fox 45 news sounds like she has a five-pack-a-day habit.
Here’s the deal in Philadelphia - weekday evening broadcasts only. Of the four anchor teams I could identify, two were Black Male/White Female, two were White Male/Black Female. For solo anchors, the score was two White Males, one Black Female, one White Female.
ABC
5:00 - Lisa Thomas-Laury (BF) with ?? Couldn’t identify co-anchor, if any.
6:00 and 11:00 Jim Gardner (WM), no co-anchor.
CBS
5:00 - Ukee Washington (BM) with Pat Ciarrocchi (WF)
6:00 - Denise Saunders (BF)
11:00 - Marc Howard (WM), no co-anchor
NBC
5:00 - Tracy Davidson (WF), no co-anchor
6:00 and 11:00 - Tim Lake (WM) with Renee Chenault-Fattah (BF)
Fox
10:00 - Dawn Stensland (WF) with Dave Huddleston (BM)
WB
10:00 - Toni Yates (BF) with Mike Dardis (WM)
Maybe somebody could help me out with ABC’s 5PM broadcast - Lisa Thomas Laury’s bio listed her as co-anchor but I couldn’t figure out who that might be. Also, I thought she was on extended leave due to a medical problem, so I’m not sure she’s even on the air now. I don’t get to watch the 5:00 news.
On Lisa Thomas-Laury – I’d been watching that show for about ten years when I found out she considers herself black. She is absolutely the whitest looking black woman I’ve ever seen.
<sing>leeeeet’s get togetheeeeeeer and feeeeel alllright</sing>
I’m familiar with two stations here in northwestern Florida.
For one: white man and woman for anchors, but the weatherman is black. Sports guy is white.
For the other: black woman and white man for anchors, everybody else white.
Does anybody see a station with more than one black? A news team is basically four people, they have room for more than one black.
I read an article some time ago where some anchors and reporters have ‘adjusted’ their ethnicity a bit to fit into this multiethnic theme of some local newscasts.
For instance, we once had a local anchorman (in El Paso, Texas) with a British surname. He was actually half Japanese, and so now works in California under a Japanese name from the Asian side of his family. before, I had always assumed he was a “white guy” with dark hair and eyes.
While this isn’t really wrong, it was implied that some people out and out changed their ethnicity or name to get work.
I also knew a lady who’s real name is German, but she uses her Mexican-American mother’s Spanish surname. Though in her case, given that her father’s name sounds a bit odd, I don’t think its all that wrong. But there are cases where people change their name to “Garcia” or “Littlefeather” just to get that “ethnic” cachet.
Yowza. Those two are still working there? Jeez I haven’t seen the news down there in years and totally forgot about them.
And as for LTL, I agree with twickster - she’s whiter than Clair Huckstable.
Okaaay. “Clair Huckstable” is clearly black. I don’t get this.
Here in Cleveland the breakdown of news time is as follows:
White male anchor and black female anchor - 37.5%
White male anchor and white female anchor - 30.8%
Black male anchor and black female anchor - 14.6%
White female anchor only - 6.4%
White male anchor and Asian or Hispanic female anchor - 3.9%
White male anchor only - 3%
White female anchor and black female anchor - 2.1%
Black male anchor only - 1.7 % (all on Sunday morning).
The data comes from anchor pairings reported as of 5/15/2003 in the Akron Beacon Journal. The computations are my own.
Marilyn Getas is the other woman. The other channels seem to have a BM and WW combo, too. I watch Channel 11 in the morning, too, Juanita. 
Who’s the black guy on Channel 13 with Denise Koch and Sally Thorner (both white women), who took over a couple of years ago when Al Sanders died? I refuse to watch Channel 13 because of Marty Bass. He makes my skin crawl.
Channel 2 used to have Stan Stovall (black) and Mary Beth Marsden (white), but Stan Stovall was fired a while back and he’s been on Channel 11 lately.