Jennings pregnant starts next month

The Sun Sentinel has finally written a blurb on Larie Jennings’ return to South Florida. Turns out she’s pregnant. According to the article she’ll be starting at WPLG on October 4th and will be missing during the February sweeps for the birth of her and husband Joshua Salman’s new bundle of joy. Congrats!

SunSentinel.com
Laurie Jennings returning to local TV (scroll down to middle of the page)

Also: Miami Herald – Coming home

Laurie Jennings returning to local TV

Another former WSVN-Ch. 7 news figure is coming back to South Florida after tasting a bite of the Big Apple.

Laurie Jennings, who left WSVN a little over a year ago for a job in New York at cable news station MSNBC, has been hired as the new 6 and 11 p.m. anchor at WPLG-Ch. 10. She starts Oct. 4. She replaces Kristi Krueger, who asked to have her workload scaled back to only the 5 and 5:30 p.m. newscasts.

Family considerations figured into both situations. Krueger asked for a shorter workday to spend more time with her children.

Jennings said she was loving New York. “I thought we would be there a long time,” she said. “We were soaking up every inch of the city.”

Apparently MSNBC loved her, too. She started in September 2003, anchoring two hours a day, but her airtime quickly expanded to three hours, then four.

Then she became pregnant for the first time. Her husband, Joshua Salman, who had sold a business to go to New York with her, got the opportunity to start another, Healthcare Underwriters Group, which quickly blossomed but kept him in South Florida much of the time. He commuted on weekends to New York, but when he and his wife learned they would be starting a family, they decided it was important to be together full-time.

WPLG had made discreet inquiries about Jennings’ availability as soon as Krueger requested a lighter schedule. It wasn’t until Jennings learned she was pregnant that she indicated her interest.

“It all happened quickly after that,” WPLG news director Bill Pohovey said. “Laurie is a class act. She will bring familiarity, experience and professionalism to us.”

Jennings’ former WSVN co-anchor, Rick Sanchez, also left for a job at MSNBC, only to return to the market at WTVJ-Ch. 6. However, his morning talk show was a ratings catastrophe and he wound up leaving again for CNN.

Another former WSVN newsman, Robb Hanrahan, became the co-anchor at WFOR-Ch. 4 after seven years in New York at WABC.

WSVN is also fertile ground for local rivals. Brian Andrews and Beatriz Canals are both sitting out no-compete periods in their WSVN contracts after agreeing to jump to WFOR.

Jennings is due to deliver in February — right in the midst of an important ratings sweeps period. — TOM JICHA

Coming home

Laurie Jennings must have really missed Key lime pie. Otherwise, why would she decide to come back to South Florida just as the third hurricane in three weeks is lurking out there in the Caribbean? But coming back she is, to anchor the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts on WPLG-ABC 10, the station announced Wednesday night.

Actually, the decision may have more to do with pickles and ice cream. Jennings, who left the anchor job at WSVN-Fox 7 last year to join MSNBC, says she decided to return after learning she was pregnant.

”Having a commuter marriage was hard enough when it was just the two of us,” Jennings said, referring to husband Josh Salman, the chief operating officer of a South Florida insurance company. “But I didn’t want to try to raise a baby over our cell phones.”

Jennings — who worked at TV stations in Youngstown, Ohio; Cleveland and Boston before joining WSVN in 1998 — will co-anchor with WPLG’s Dwight Lauderdale starting Oct. 4. She’ll vacate the position left by Kristi Krueger, who asked off the 11 p.m. newscast earlier this year in order to spend more time with her children. Expect Krueger to return for a short spell in February, when Jennings’ baby is due.