TV Talk: Eleanor Schano pioneered roles for women in Pittsburgh TV news

Pioneering Pittsburgh broadcaster Eleanor Schano accumulated many firsts – Pittsburgh’s first female commercial announcer and weathercaster at what is now KDKA-TV in 1952; the city’s first female general assignment news reporter at WTAE-TV in 1959 and first solo woman anchor at what is now WPXI-TV in 1970 – and she brought to each of those roles an indefatigable spirit in the face of hurdles, from sexism early in her career to ageism later on.

“She reveled in the challenge of it,” said Gina Catanzarite, who produced some of Schano’s programs and co-authored Schano’s memoir, “Riding the (Air) Waves.”

Schano, who was 88, died Monday night of covid-19.

“Any of us women who worked in television news in Pittsburgh owe her a great deal of gratitude,” said retired KDKA-TV reporter Mary Robb Jackson. “The people who go before you can make or break whether you’re going to be accepted. Eleanor was a lady from the very beginning to the very end.”

Jackson never worked directly with Schano but Schano spoke with Jackson and several other local women broadcasters for her book.

“[TV news anchors] Adam [Lynch] and Ray [Tannehill] used to talk about her and they just loved her,” Jackson said. “Whatever she did, she never did it in a way that compromised who she was. That’s very difficult to do when you’re such a pioneer.”

In her memoir, Schano describes wearing a negligee while offering weather reports at the request of the report’s sponsor, a mattress company.

“I had no choice,” she told me in 2006. “I had fought so hard to just be there, I had to do it. It was quite a proper [negligee], but I still sat on a silly mattress to do the weather.”

In her memoir, Schano quipped, “I aspired to work in an industry that very clearly separated the broadcasters from the broads, but she held no grudges or ill will, telling me, “It wasn’t the men’s fault. This is the way they had been raised. They were of a generation when mom stayed at home.”

Catanzarite grew up watching Schano on TV before meeting her (“it was like meeting Elvis”). Catanzarite realized besides being an iconic pioneer, Schano was also “this warm, funny, smart person.”

Catanzarite described helping Schano write her autobiography as an opportunity to learn what motivated Schano to be in the TV news business and how she overcame her own fears to open doors for more women to walk through.

“She encountered people who saw this beautiful woman who was a model who dared to sit down and talk to presidents and leaders in the community,” Catanzarite said. “She never stopped being what she was: A broadcaster to the core, a journalist who understood the core values she believed in.”

Robert Yuna produced the noon newscast on Channel 11 with Schano as the anchor.

“Eleanor was always prepared, well turned out and as perfect possible,” he recalled. “Also, very smart, usually much smarter than her male coworkers. Not a dumb blonde by any means. She also wrote very well and was fearless.”

A 1954 graduate of Duquesne University’s journalism program, Schano joined KDKA-AM in the mid-1970s as the newscaster on “The Jack Bogut Show.” Schano hosted “Good Day Pittsburgh” and “Pittsburgh Women ‘79” on WPGH-TV. She spent her entire career in Pittsburgh with the exception of an early 1980s detour to WPEC-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla., where she anchored the 6 p.m. news.

Upon her return to Pittsburgh, Schano worked at KQV-AM.

In 1982, Schano married John Feeney, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney and Common Pleas judge. He died in 2011.

Schano hosted “AgeWise” (later renamed “LifeQuest”) from 1991 to 2007 on WQEX-TV and later on WQED-TV.

“She was smart, she was sharp and she knew what she was doing in that role as an interviewer,” said Catanzarite, who produced “AgeWise” and later “LifeQuest.” “Being a producer with her was so exciting because you didn’t have to feed her a whole lot of stuff. She had a knowledge base that was endless and she knew how to interview other people about complex stories. She cared about telling accurate stories and helping people be heard and I think that’s all a reflection of how grounded and real she really was.”

Schano’s final regular TV appearances came in a series of 90-second “Live Well/Live Long with Eleanor Schano” sponsored segments that aired during WTAE’s noon news in 2008-09.

“I’m reinventing myself again,” Schano told me in August 2008, 50 years into her broadcasting career.

Catanzarite, who produced “Live Well” with Schano, remembers putting together a pitch for sponsors, some of whom expressed concern that Schano was too old to share the live well/live long message.

“She said, ‘There’s just another example: At one point I was too young to do this job, but I’m never going to stop doing this job,” Catanzarite recalled. “I think that where other people might get frustrated or think this isn’t fair, [Eleanor] was just well-trained to keep moving forward because she had been doing it her whole life.”

Former WPGH-TV anchor Sheila Hyland said she was awestruck by Schano.

“Her contributions to Pittsburgh TV cannot be overstated,” Hyland said. “She had a presence when she walked into a room. Everybody just looked up. She was intelligent, she had that smooth, resonant voice; she was classy and glamorous all at the same time.”

Hyland said Schano, who she recalls always had a smile on her face, took a particular interest in the next generation of women broadcasters.

“One of the best things about her, she really embraced the younger women in television,” said Hyland, who’s now a media consultant through her company, FosterHyland & Associates. “We weren’t competitors to her. She was so glad we were there to take over as the next generation. She was excited to hear about what you were doing with your life and where you were with your career. You could tell it was a sense of pride for her because she’d broken the glass ceiling for the rest of us women who followed.”

In a 2006 interview, Schano told me she had recently been approached at Pittsburgh International Airport by a stranger who asked, “Didn’t you used to be somebody?” She took no offense.

“How can you be offended? It’s so funny!” she said. “Frequently people say, ‘Didn’t you used to be Eleanor Schano? and I just say, “I still am.’”