Jane’s Coming--and Going Reflects the Working Woman

Like her or not, Jane Pauley has become something larger than just the co-host of a morning television show.

Co-hosts of morning television shows do not usually inspire the kind of cover headline Pauley did in the December issue of Life magazine: “Our Loss, Her Dream.”

Pauley’s departure Friday from “Today” after 13 years and the ascension of Deborah Norville as her replacement probably have been the most written about television story of the year.

Some television and social critics say Pauley’s story is a big one because it is really about a group of men (the executives at NBC) replacing a talented older woman with a younger one. And the younger woman appears to have nothing extra to recommend her except a more recent birth date and, in the eyes of some, better looks. Norville is 31. Pauley is 39.

But viewers’ concern for Pauley runs much deeper than that--certainly deeper than their connections with Kathleen Sullivan or Joan Lunden, the co-hosts of the morning shows on CBS and ABC. Pauley has come to represent professional women to some viewers.

It began as simply as being in the right place at the right time. Pauley assumed a prominent position on television when women sought and succeeded in moving into positions of power in the American work force.

Pauley fit the mold of the new professional woman from the day she arrived on national television in October, 1976. After ABC lured Barbara Walters away, NBC ran a five-month talent search for her replacement on “Today.” Pauley, 25 and very green, was chosen over Linda Ellerbee, Betty Furness and Cassie Mackin.

And Jane stayed on. When co-anchor Tom Brokaw went to the evening news anchor desk in 1982, NBC paired her with former sports anchor Bryant Gumbel, who some believe is as endearing as a shark. Pauley held her own in the ring with him.

Pauley stayed on in 1983 when she became pregnant with twins. At the time, there was much speculation about whether NBC would audition women for her job when she was on maternity leave. But, again, it was the right time and right place, as many professional women were starting to talk about biological clocks. The “Today” show ratings improved with Pauley’s pregnancy.

And now, when life style stories tell us how baby boomers are “leveling out” in their careers and many boomers for the first time in their professional lives are looking over their shoulders at the generation coming up behind them, Pauley gets pushed aside in the coast-to-coast fishbowl of network television by someone younger. Again, right time, right place.

How else do you explain the outrage about the change, the sense in some quarters of Pauley as victim? Norville’s credentials--thin as they are--are as good as or better than Pauley’s were when she started on “Today.”

It doesn’t make much sense to feel bad about Pauley’s passing from the “Today” scene Friday. She will still be making more than $1 million a year, plus a promised prime-time news show.

Friday is not a landmark day in American television. It will only feel like one to some of us because of what television has helped Pauley come to represent.