After seven and a half fruitful years at WVTV, Jayne got a
call from WKYC-TV, the NBC Owned and Operated station in Cleveland.
They needed to fulfill a corporate edict requirement for more women in
management and Jayne was offered a job as Program Manager at twice her
Milwaukee salary.
The new position in Cleveland turned out to be a mixed
blessing for Jayne, who was used to being empowered by her corporate bosses at
Gaylord. "We all had to answer
to New York and there was very little creative local buying and
scheduling," she laments. "Our
News Director was Dick Lobo, a former WTVT promotion manager who reported to a
news director in New York. However,
the programming department did have a team that I loved of producers, directors,
and cinematographers who traveled world-wide, producing award-winning
documentaries for telecast. In
spite of the good things that I enjoyed, I disliked working in the heart of
Cleveland (a ghost town after 7 o'clock) and preferred working at a station
where more of the decisions were made at the station level rather than at a home
office as bureaucratic as working for a network can be.
I was only there for a year and a half."
Jayne's friend (and future President of Paramount, the UPN
Network and later The WB Network) Lucie Salhaney, worked for another Cleveland
station while they were both in that city.
Knowing Jayne was not happy in Cleveland, Lucie recommended her for a job
with the independent Kaiser station in Philadelphia, WKBS.
"Where the 'WK' came before the 'BS,' " adds Jayne.
"What I didn't know is that the station was supposed to lose money
and become a tax write-off. But we
tripled the ratings in a year, buying and scheduling "Mary Hartman, Mary
Hartman" and good movies and we went from a less than one rating in prime
time to a three, which is phenomenal when you have five independents in a
market. I enjoyed Philadelphia,
made friends, and owned horses, but in 1978 I got a call from Gulf
Broadcasting's WLCY, Channel 10, to come back to Florida and help them out.
Gulf had recently purchased the station from Rahall, and it had not been
doing well and was in jeopardy of losing its ABC affiliation.
"The new owner was Allen Henry and new General Manager, Larry
Clamadge…both very smart guys," explains Jayne.
"The prospect of living in Florida again where portions of my family
still resided finally convinced me to leave Philadelphia. After acquiring new
call letters (WTSP), hiring a batch of top notch people and renovating the
building, we bought a helicopter before any other station did.
I felt a little guilty because we chased and caught Channel 13. I credit
a lot of the growth to really excellent promotion."
WTSP turned around and the ratings went up.
While serving as Program Manager, Jayne also did investigative work for
Henry, looking into other stations to acquire.
They eventually bought stations in Phoenix, Houston, and Dallas.
Jayne did evaluations and made suggestions about what to do with their
programming, and was made Vice President of Independent Programming for the
Dallas and Houston stations (KTXA and KTXH), and moved to the Dallas area to manage programming for the two stations.
Upon her arrival at KTXA, Jayne served as interim General Manager
of the station for two months until the new General Manager arrived.
Jayne was in Texas for only a few months before the stations were both
sold to Taft. Since Taft already
had a VP of Programming, Jayne transferred back to Florida with a position as
Contract Administrator and Program Advisor for Taft's seven stations including
Dallas, Houston, Boston, Kansas City, and Tampa.
Over her television years, Jayne has been a guest lecturer at
the University of Wisconsin, Kent State, Temple, the University of Florida and
the University of South Florida.
Jayne took early retirement in 1989 and in 1995 joined a high
tech marketing organization, Winn Technology Group, specializing in contract
administration processes, writing, handling, and tracking proposals.
Between the television years and going to work at Winn
Technology. Jayne did some free-lancing for companies with broadcasts interests,
and spent a few weeks with A.C. Neilson studying cable sports for attorneys
representing the NFL, NCAA, NBA, and Baseball
Like other long-time WTVT employees, Jayne is appreciative of
the opportunities provided at the start of her career:
"It was a great place to learn the business, and we had really
wonderful people there. We got along, partied together, and were sympathetic with
each other. If it hadn't been for
Bob Olson and John Haberlan, I wouldn't have been able to help pave the way for
women executives in Television."