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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 Clamadgeboth 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." |