The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane

Fortunately, within weeks of sending out Lane’s tapes, Willinger was getting calls about her. When she interviewed in Philly, she already had some very attractive feelers — most notably at WABC in New York and KABC in L.A. But Philadelphia made sense to her — CBS 3 was offering her the evening time-slots she wanted, she’d be close to her family, and the position wouldn’t require her to work crazy hours and travel all the time. “In Philly,” her sister Nicole says, “she could still have a life and do what she loves.”


ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2003, Team Mendte and Lane debuted on Eyewitness News. Lane’s main role at CBS 3 was quickly apparent: to look gorgeous and fix the troubled station brand. At first, she was flattered by being called “the hottest story in local TV.” But it didn’t take long for viewers to e-mail CBS 3 and call her snooty and impersonal. Most of the e-mails were from women — not a good sign, since TV stations vie for a coveted demographic of females ages 25 to 54. And she wasn’t exactly making friends with everyone in the newsroom. In front of several people, she screamed at a production assistant who was fresh out of college, causing the woman to cry at her desk; another time, while shooting a promo, she got so angry she hurled her earpiece, which ended up hitting a staffer in the forehead.

This is where the station bosses made their first Alycia Lane mistake. They seemed to give her a pass after the incidents, worried about their star anchor’s feelings. Plus, they figured some staffers were jealous of the new girl, who was pretty much a sensation before she even walked in the door. This sent a very clear message to those around Lane: She was special; don’t mess with her. It also sent a very clear message to Lane: You can do as you please.

The station did have to address that female-viewer disconnect, though. So in spring 2004, then-general manager Peter Dunn sent Lane to Los Angeles to interview Dr. Phil McGraw. To promote his new series Relationship Rescue Retreat, Dr. Phil had granted interviews to reporters in several large markets.

Lane and a cameraman sat in the Dr. Phil studio, watching as two upcoming episodes were taped. Then, with the audience gone, the interview began. It started out as a regular Q&A. But then something happened. Lane asked Dr. Phil, who knew that her divorce had been finalized in November, “Why is divorce so hard?” Her voice cracked. Her chin quivered. She wiped a tear running down her cheek. “You’re crying for the man you wish he was, not the man he was,” Dr. Phil told her. At the end, she hugged him.

Back in Philly, when people at the station watched the raw tape, they realized Lane was suffering more than anyone knew. But management was aware that other stations in Philly were having lots of success with female newscasters airing first-person stories about their own struggles. The previous fall, pregnant NBC 10 anchor Renee Chenault-Fattah brought cameras to her ultrasound. And it was May sweeps.