Hannah, we hardly knew ye

Hannah Storm is departing her post as co-anchor of "The Early Show" on CBS after 5 years, which is a pretty good run, considering she couldn't get hired for a TV job in Houston back when she was starting out.

So let that be a lesson to all you youngsters out there: the people runnin' the show, whether it's a TV station or somethin' else, sometimes don't know shit from shinola, even though they get paid a lotta money. They just act like they know what they're doing.

So when they turn you down for a job, or fire you, or otherwise take a dump in your hat, don't let it get you down.

Hannah Storm's story goes like this.

After graduating from Notre Dame in 1983 she sent out 175 resumes all over the country, looking for a sportscasting job. She finally settled for a radio disc jockey gig in Corpus Christi. Then she jumped to a radio station in Houston to do part-time sports work.

During her four years in Houston, she held radio jobs (including co-hosting a radio sports talk show with a Houston Rockets team member), freelanced for Home Sports Entertainment cable, and hosted the NBA Rockets' halftime and postgame shows for an independent TV station.

In 1988 she lost her radio job. She tried to land a full-time TV job but no Houston station would hire her. "... I interviewed for openings at all the TV stations there and couldn't get hired. I had a name and a lot of experience, and one news director there said he wouldn't hire a woman over his dead body. I was turned down for more jobs than I care to think about now, some simply because of my gender." (21)

Finally, when one news director told her she didn't have enough experience, "... I came to the realization I had to leave town.'' [link]

So she did, going to a station in Charlotte, N.C., then CNN, then NBC, then, finally CBS.

So all those years TV viewers in the Petrochemical Underarm of Texas were gettin' their TV sports info from Giff Nielsen, Bob Allen, Craig Roberts and all those other palookas, you coulda been getting your daily dose 'o sports from the lovely Ms. Storm, if not for the numbskulls who were running the local TV stations back in the 80s.