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Concerns about appearance and manner may have a place in a medium that uses personalities to attract viewers to the news. But TV executives around the country said that in Craft's case, the show business considerations were insensitively handled and tinged with sexism. Said General Manager Monte Newman of Chicago's WMAQ: "The people in charge were incredibly dumb." When Craft negotiated with KMBC for the $35,000 job in 1980, she told the station's management that she had resented being "made over" as a bee-stung-lipped, bleached blond for a previous post as a CBS network sports reporter in 1977-78. KMBC'S management assured Craft that it would not seek to change her image, then turned her over to Media Associates of Dallas for training in makeup and hairstyling; the station also set up a "clothing calendar" to ensure that she would wear each outfit only once every three weeks. By contrast, few cosmetic demands were made of Craft's male coanchor, Scott Feldman, 34, who had been there longer and was paid $9,000 more. After Manager Replogle told Craft she would be demoted to reporter, she quit to return to anchoring (at $25,000 a year) at KEYT in Santa Barbara.
During Craft's eight-month tenure, KMBC'S news ratings rose from second place to first in the six-station market, which is the nation's 27th largest. Nonetheless, the station hired consultants to test her appeal further. Perhaps the most damaging evidence against Metromedia was an audio tape of a research discussion in which Steve Meacham, a Media Associates employee, said to a group of local viewers, "Let's spend 30 seconds destroying Christine Craft. Is she a mutt?"
The TV tradition of hiring mostly young, comely women for reporters or anchors started long before consultants— in the early 1950s era of untutored "weather girls"—and is shared by the networks. TV executives say they are only bowing to audience tastes. Admits ABC News Vice President David Burke: "Women in this business face pressures that men do not, but those pressures often stem from the public." They are surely most acute on women over 40. Says Anchor Wendy Tokuda, 33, of San Francisco's KPIX: "Male broadcast journalists grow more distinguished and credible, but the women just get older." There are notable survivors: Barbara Walters, 51, of ABC; Pauline Frederick, who retired in 1974 at age 65 from NBC; Reporter Taris Savell, 52, of Pensacola's WEAR; Commentator Dorothy Fuldheim of Cleveland's WEWS, who has signed another three-year contract at age 90. But as CBS White House Correspondent Lesley Stahl, 41, contends, "It is generally uncharted waters whether women can age on camera."