After almost 37 years, Janet Davies has announced in a Facebook post that she is no longer affiliated with the ABC owned Chicago station WLS.
Her post followed the station’s recent decision not to renew her contract as a freelance employee after her status as a full-time employee ended in 2013, when ABC 7 cancelled her long-running weekly show 190 North, an Emmy Award-winning, Chicago-based entertainment and lifestyle program, which had been on air since 1998.
Her Facebook post:
“COVID certainly has had an impact in some way on everyone. My heart goes out to those affected in big and little ways. With me, well, my time has come to an end with ABC7.
It has been an honor and a joy to have worked at 190 North State Street for 37 years. To have had such breadth and depth in a broadcasting career is humbling. Many at the station have been dear colleagues for years and working with them always made me better. Chicago viewers are kind, enlightening and their stories will forever have meaning and import.
I was thinking about highlights, but every news story, 190North, programming show, etc. WAS a highlight.
For now, I will not be looking backward but forward. That’s just me. Stay tuned. Plots and plans afoot.
And, no, I thankfully have not had the virus. CDC guidelines rule!
Also, please support the Chicago area theatre/music/dance and art communities when they come roaring back – which they will sooner rather than later. We all need to be refreshed and rewired..”
190 North is the longest running magazine program in the history of Chicago television broadcasting.
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In addition to 190 North Davies is also well known as co-host of Channel 7’s annual New Year’s Eve broadcast with sports anchor Mark Giangreco, as well as Pride Parade, Columbus Day Parade and St. Patrick’s Day Parade specials (prior to the Covid-19 pandemic).
Davies began her broadcasting career at Cincinnati’s WKRC-TV as general assignment reporter and noon news weather anchor. She then hosted/produced the half-hour magazine show, Front Page Saturday Night at WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and hosted Columbus Alive on Warner Cable’s Qube-TV. After that, she co-hosted, co-produced, and wrote for the #1 rated local talk show A.M. Philadelphia while providing features for the news department at WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Janet Davies joined ABC 7 Chicago as a feature and entertainment reporter in August 1984 and has covered stories from the British Royal family, to the endangered species of Kenya to Israeli reaction in Jerusalem during the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. She has also reported from the Academy Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the American Music Awards and International Fashion’s Pret a Porter in Paris, France. Her Black History Month documentary Re-discovering a Black Pioneer’s Dream was placed in the permanent collection of the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois.
Janet Davies has been nominated for 73 regional Emmys and she won 16 awards for hosting, producing, writing and reporting. She was a 2013 inductee into the Chicago Television Academy’s Silver Circle for recognition of her significant contributions to local broadcasting and has won three Silver Dome Awards from the Illinois Broadcasters Association. She also received an Iris Award for children’s programming from the National Association of Television Program Executives.
Davies sold her five-bedroom longtime Ravenswood home for $1.26 million in August and it has been reported that she has been living in Michigan.
