Beth Ward makes return to local TV newsDate: 9/9/2016 SPRINGFIELD – Although there have been some changes to television news, Beth Ward is back on familiar ground.
The East Longmeadow resident once again is at the anchor desk on WGGB – Western Mass News – and is clearly enjoying the return to full-time broadcasting.
It’s not that she was ever completely away from television. With a young family at home, she left WGGB in 2005 to start her own public relations company and started as the host of “As School Match Wits” when the long-running show was picked up by WGBY.
She said she is still hosting the show and explained that as many as seven contests between high school scholars would be taped over a weekend.
“It is grueling, but fun,” she told Reminder Publications.
Ward, who is a graduate of Western New England University, came to Springfield after stints in Washington D.C. and Hartford, CT. In Washington, D.C., she reported for local stations, as well as CNN and Fox News. A time at WWLP, after she and her family moved back to the area, was followed by a decade at WGGB.
While the pace of her new job might be fast, Ward is enjoying her return.
“It is nonstop from the time you walk in until you walk off the set,” she said.
Currently, she is anchoring two and a half hours of the station’s evening newscast.
She said Western Mass news anchor Dave Madsen, a colleague from her previous time on air, has been “awesome.”
Ward added, “Dave and I have been friends forever.”
She explained that while returning to television news “wasn’t on my radar,” when the opportunity became available, she “couldn’t say no.”
Ward acknowledged the Springfield media market is “a great proving ground for talented young journalists” and she had nothing but praise for her colleagues at the station. She said they are “really smart and really hardworking.”
Ward’s presence on the newscasts shatters a staffing format common to many television stations of pairing an older male anchor with a younger female one. In her discussions with the station she said, “Age was not brought up at all. They seemed genuinely happy to have someone who has been in the area, who knows the area – a veteran who is seasoned and not going anywhere.”
One of Ward’s children is in college while the other is at East Longmeadow High School. The opportunity to join Western Mass News came at a good time for both her and the station, she said.
“It’s been a really good fit,” she added.
What she also enjoys about her new assignment is getting into the field reporting as well as her anchor duties.
She had left television news because of the hours she worked – from noon to midnight. “The kids never saw me,” Ward said. She added the culture at the station is very different now.
“It’s so very family friendly,” she said.
Perhaps the only challenge is the addition of social media to the job. Although Ward said she prides herself on her knowledge of social media, she readily admitted her colleagues “have been helping me out.”
She recently did her first Facebook Live on her page www.facebook.com/bethwardnews.
www.facebook.com/bethwardnewsReflecting on her new role, she said, “It did feel like I hadn’t left.”
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