Guys Not Wanted?

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune recently ran a story called The Disappearing Male TV Anchor. Reading it for me was another one of those "We're not in Kansas anymore" moments that become more and more frequent with...ahem...maturity. When I was in college in the 70s, taking my first tentative steps into TV with internships, on-air males were the rule, not the exception. The CBS affiliate where I interned had co-anchors at 6 and 11...but they were both male. There were women in the newsroom, but they were, for the most part, reporters. There was a female anchor at noon, but 6 and 11 were the sacred casts that weren't quite ready for the groundbreaking move of including an anchor who represents more than 50% of the population. Now, we learn (with the Twin Cities as an example) that the number of male anchors is at an all-time low -- percentage-wise they now represent only 43% of news anchors, and it's been dropping for ten years now.

And why is this happening? Well, it turns out that money's behind it. The article quotes the Bureau of Labor Statistics as saying the median anchor salary in 2004 was $31,320...not exactly a perk in the business world of the 21st century. Get this -- 10% of anchors earn less than $18,470! Now switch over to your average college crowd, where the ambitious males who are deciding where they want to be in ten years look at those figures. Hmmmm, exactly how much do I really want to be an anchor, anyway??

This trend gives every indication of continuing, at least for the foreseeable future. In most businesses, such a supply-demand inequity would make it a buyer's market, and send anchor salaries higher. But, as usual, broadcasting is a different animal. Don't hold your breath for salaries to soar.

Then again, with the changes going on in the business and viewership dropping, we might not NEED anchors that much longer anyway.