Where Are They Now?
Feb. 11, 2017
You watched them on TV newscasts and listened to them on your radio…but then they left. Where have some of your favorite local on-air personalities ended up?
In the fourth installment of our “Where Are They Now?” segments, we check-in with more familiar faces and voices (here are our first, second, and third installments).
Alysha Palumbo (7&4 Anchor/Reporter 2002-2005) You could find Alysha anchoring the 5pm newscast toward the end of her run at 7&4, where she made lifelong friends and met her husband, Chris. She returned to her New England roots and has been a reporter for NBC Boston since 2009. Her accolades include an Emmy award for her extensive coverage of the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. As part of a small group allowed in the courtroom, she was contacted with encouraging words by victims' relatives, and says it’s “rewarding to win (the Emmy) for a story that meant so much.”
Jed Boal (9&10 Anchor/Reporter 1993-1999) Jed was introduced to life in northern Michigan by his father, a former president of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He holds two degrees from the University of Michigan, and says he enjoyed working in the state where he went to school. Jed has settled in at Salt Lake City, where he has worked an anchor/reporter for KSL Television, an NBC affiliate, for the last 18 years. He is enjoying life and nature in Salt Lake City, where “the people are wonderful, the mountains are beautiful, and the skiing is fabulous.”
Mike Conway (29&8 Anchor/Reporter 1983-1984, 7&4 News Director 1993-1996) In between news jobs in northern Michigan, Mike’s journeyman career took him to Dayton, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; and Saginaw. Following 7&4, he was working as a news director in Eerie, Pennsylvania, before the “dramatic life change” of going back to school and receiving his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington, where he’s able to “teach the things I used to do.” As a broadcast news historian, he researches the early days of radio and television, and is working on a book about television during the Cold War and the rise of television news. He still returns to Traverse City, which he calls one of his favorite places on Earth, every summer to enjoy the outdoors.
Omelette (WKLT 1996-2016) After 10 years, the popular Omelette & Friends show on WKLT came to an end. Omelette “hugged it out with management” and “really appreciated the opportunity to grow as a broadcaster.” He says he’s had several offers from around the country, but is waiting to find the right fit – and hoping his next move is something that will allow him to stay in northern Michigan. You can find familiar characters from Omelette & Friends on his new podcast OmeletteRadio, where new episodes are up every Monday and Thursday.
Jamie Kramer (29&8 Reporter 2010-2012; WTCM 2013-2016) After what Jamie lightheartedly describes as “winning a contest for an ABC reporter position,” she was a host of UpNorthLive Tonight, a less formal approach to the daily news. She went on to co-host the Morning Show on WTCM Radio with Jack O’Malley. Then she stepped out of the limelight and is in the process of growing her family in Traverse City. Jamie began working with Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, an organization that archives the genetics of the world’s oldest trees. This led to an interest in arbor culture, and Jamie created and is heavily involved in marketing The Tree Network, an organization aiming to plant a tree in every state and change the way people think about the planet.
Pictured above (clockwise from bottom left) are Jamie Kramer, Jed Boal, Alysha Palumbo, Omelette, and Mike Conway.
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