Posted by Whaa on March 20, 2010 at 07:30:10:
Loo on way out at WFLD; will Ch. 32 sign Lum?
Newscaster Nancy Loo's contract with Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32 will not be renewed, a station spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.
Loo has in recent weeks begun blogging for the Chicago Tribune's Chicago Now Web site. Her last day at Channel 32 is expected to be April 15.
Sources have said WFLD is close to signing former WBBM-Ch. 2 and WGN-Ch. 9 reporter Joanie Lum, but the Channel 32 spokeswoman said there was "nothing to announce at this time."
Loo and Lum were unavailable for immediate comment.
WFLD earlier this year hired Dawn Hasbrouck, a Chicagoan working in Boston, to replace Loo as Patrick Elwood's co-anchor on its noon weekday newscast. At the time, the station said Loo would remain aboard as a reporter but gave no indication for how long.
Three days after Hasbrouck's hire was announced, Loo alluded to it in a nancyloo.net post on what she called "a bad week" and added, "There’s really not much I can say about that at this point."
Loo seemed on the fast track when WFLD hired her from ABC New York flagship WABC-TV in 2001, but there have been a few regime changes at Channel 32 since then and things apparently got derailed along the way. Sometimes it works like that.
Lum was dropped as a general assignment reporter by WBBM last April as part of a massive reorganization at the CBS-owned station.
Joining WFLD would reunite Lum with Channel 32 vice president and news director Carol Fowler, for whom she previously worked at both WBBM and Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.'s WGN. Fowler, who came to WBBM from WGN in 2002, was cut loose from Channel 2 five months before Lum and one month after the arrival of a new station boss, Bruno Cohen.
Lum had been at Channel 2 since 2003, joining that station after 16 years at Channel 9. She previously worked as a reporter, anchor, producer and weathercaster at Rockford's WREX-TV, an associate producer at KFVS-TV in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and a reporter at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo.