WASHINGTON – TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group has decided not to extend WJLA news anchor Maureen Bunyan’s contract, signaling what could be the end of her decades-long presence on D.C.’s airwaves.
Bunyan, 71, is a pioneering figure in TV news; she was among the first African-American women in the nation to anchor a local evening newscast. She has appeared almost continuously over the past 44 years as a reporter and anchor on local stations, first at what is now WUSA and since 1999 on WJLA.
Sinclair’s management told Bunyan late last week that it intends to exercise a “window” in her contract that enables either party to end the agreement before its full term, according to people familiar with the arrangement. As a result, Bunyan will leave the station next month.
She will join a growing list of TV news veterans who have been ousted by Sinclair as part of a broad cost-cutting strategy implemented since it bought WJLA, NewsChannel 8 and seven other stations from longtime owner Allbritton Communications of Arlington, Virginia, in mid-2014.
The company, based in the Baltimore suburb of Hunt Valley, has previously terminated entertainment reporter Arch Campbell, sports anchor Tim Brant, reporter Greta Kreuz, and longtime anchors Leon Harris and Gordon Peterson. Harris and Peterson both co-anchored with Bunyan at WJLA; Peterson did so for decades at WUSA and WJLA.
On Friday, in another cutback, the station laid off several behind-the-scenes news producers and photographers.
Sinclair, the nation’s largest owner of TV stations with 173 outlets, declined to comment about Bunyan on Sunday. She also had no comment.
Bunyan is the second longest-serving anchor in Washington after Jim Vance, who joined WRC in 1969 and remains its leading anchor.
She started her local career at WUSA (then known as WTOP-TV) in 1973 as a reporter and weekend anchor after stints at stations in Boston and New York. She became the station’s lead anchor with Peterson in 1978, forming a ratings-leading team that included sportscaster Glenn Brenner and weather forecaster Gordon Barnes.
Her resignation from WUSA in 1995 over a salary dispute contributed to the station’s fall in the ratings and the rise of rival WRC. News4, as it is known, has been the dominant local news station in Washington ever since, led by Vance and co-anchor Doreen Gentzler.
Bunyan, who anchors WJLA’s 6 p.m. news, left the local airwaves for four years after her departure from WUSA, but returned in 1999 at WJLA, eventually reuniting with Peterson.
In addition to anchoring the news, Bunyan – a winner of seven local Emmys – is a co-founder of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the National Association of Black Journalists. She was inducted into the latter organization’s hall of fame in 2014.
Bunyan also is perhaps the only American journalist who has received a knighthood. A native of Aruba, she was knighted and inducted into the Order of Orange-Nassau, a Dutch chivalric honor, for her educational efforts on behalf of the United States and Aruba, a Caribbean nation that maintains its historic ties to the Netherlands.
Bunyan, who is of Guyanese descent, was born in Aruba and grew up in Wisconsin.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท Paul Farhi
