larole Ashkinaz* IIP *983 The sagaof Christine Craft

Poor Christine Craft: sacked at 36 from a anchor job jso far as Channel 11 viewers were concerned; nobody was shocked after being rated "unattractive" and, she says, "too old," in viewer when the irreverent sportscaster's brief stint as Atlanta's least-favor­ surveys. ite TV personality came to an end. Tsk, tsk. By her own admission, Miss Craft came to her TV career not so The courtroom saga, in which she filed a much through journalistic acumen as chance and, yes, glamour. The 31.2 million sex-discrimination lawsuit against University of Santa Barbara graduate broke into TV as a "weather- the owners of a Kansas City TV station, didn't girl" in Salinas at age 30 and seemed, briefly, to reap the whirlwind: stir me at first, for reasons already enumer­ whisked off to a glamorous network job as host of "Women in ated by Constitution TV critic Michele Greppi. Sports," a weekly feature of "CBS Sports Spectacular" for which she The plaintiff's sex didn't seem to have any­ willingly dyed her hair platinum and wore makeup so thick she could­ thing to do with it. n't move her face. When the segment was dropped, she moved first to Research and ratings are what deter­ Santa Barbara's KEYT-TV as an anchorwoman, then to Kansas City's mine success in Televisionland. "Anyone in KMBC-TV. Not bad for a woman who, according to the TV Cable the business who doesn't know that is," as Ms. Week interview, spent "most of her 20s riding the surf." Greppi pointed out, "a candidate for a brain On the surface, her lawsuit seemed the least likely to break new transplant." ground in the area of women's rights. But, Miss Craft pouted in the July issue But, wait. Brenda Williams, the highly qualified black woman of TV Cable Week, "People in anchor positions deserve to be journal­ hired to replace Miss Craft in 1981, took the stand Tuesday. The sta­ ists, not beauty queens" — a view with which I'm not unsympathetic. tion bosses gave her the impression that they would never pay a In an ideal world, there would be no bubbleheads doing the six o'­ woman newscaster as much as a man, Miss Williams testified - clock news, or no heartless TV news directors. Come to think of it, bravely, as she is still employed at the station. Told to ask for a sal­ there would be no unattractive people, either. ary "in the same ballpark" as Miss Craft, who had started at $37,500 But ours isn't an ideal world. And appearance does count in eight months earlier, Miss Williams later learned that co-anchor those nightly color close-ups — not youth or beauty, but an elusive Scott Feldman earned much more, she said. aspect of a newscaster's appearance that, for lack of a precise term, Feldman testified last week that his starting salary was $57,500 may be summed up as "appeal" or "charisma." Anchors Walter I when he went to work for the station in 1977; he is now said to be Cronkite, David Brinkley, Bill Jorgensen and Barbara Walters — f earning $75,000 a year. none of them flawless creatures or, at the peak of their careers, re­ Christine Craft may be off-base in asking a court to award her motely youthful in appearance — had it in sufficient quantity to go $1.2 million for the indignity of being judged by her appearance, a all the way to the top. Whether they "deserve" their good fortune is typical fate in the star-spangled world of TV. beside the point. But'if she can establish, to the court's satisfaction, that the sta­ Sally Quinn, ballyhooed by CBS as the "blonde bombshell" co- tion had a policy of paying men more than women to perform identi­ anchor of its morning news show in the mid-1970s, didn't have that cal duties, a violation of the law, she might just have the last laugh. elusive quality, and is long gone. Steve Somers didn't have it either, Stay tuned. j