Season 5, Episode 9- Fran Harris, The First Female Newscaster in Michigan

The Detroit History Podcast

Broadcaster Fran Harris's life was a lifetime of firsts. She was the first woman newscaster in Detroit radio during World War II, persuading her bosses at WWJ to abandon its "guys only" tradition. And when television came along in Detroit on Channel 4 in 1946, she was on the air for that, too. When she retired from the station in 1974, some 200 women showed up at her goodbye party, grateful to Harris for the barriers she broke. We have a tape of a 1989 Harris interview, and talk with Michigan State University professor emerita Sue Carter. Former Channel 4 newswoman Betty Carrier Newman describes life in the newsroom when she arrived in 1969.