Alt, Larry

WXYZ: Program director.

Detroit Free Press, March 8, 1989, Page 22.

Larry Alt, the man whose job is being filled at WXYZ-TV, was evidently not aware of the growing influence of women in TV, if we are to believe some of the charges leveled against him in a sex discrimination suit filed last week. The suit was filed by Nancy Pushee, who worked at WXYZ for 12 years, most recently as a publicist, until she was laid off last July.

In court papers, Pushee charges she was the target of sexual advances and verbal abuse from Alt. She quotes Alt as making such remarks as “What would it take to get you to bed?” and “If I had your body, I would be rich.” The suit also alleges that Pushee was told by her superiors that, when she attended station events, she should dress in a “seductive, revealing, and/or otherwise inappropriate manner of a sexual nature.”

Alt resigned abruptly from WXYZ in December. Several station insiders said he was asked to leave. He reportedly is working as a consultant to a company that is trying to start a TV station in Texas. Several attempts to reach him for reaction to the charges have proved fruitless.

• Insider Expected to Replace Findlater

  

  JEANNE FINDLATER is expected to be replaced as boss by one of four key people within WXYZ-TV (Channel 7), possibly as early as this week. The likely candidates, according to a high level source at parent Scripps-Howard Broad- casting are: Tom Griesdorn, assistant GM; Grace Gilchrist, general sales man- ager; Tom Rosenbaum, news director, and Larry Alt, program director. According to the source, Scripps Howard prefers to replace top level positions from within each station rather than tap executives from its other properties.

---

Recommended Reading

Watching TV: Eight Decades of American Television, Third Edition (Television and Popular Culture)

Castleman and Podrazik present a sweeping season-by-season story, capturing the essence of television from its inception to the contemporary era of anytime access and online streaming, including every prime time fall schedule since 1944. The authors have dug through the mounds of obscure facts, offbeat anecdotes, and corporate strategies that have made television a multibillion-dollar industry. Watching TV provides a fascinating history of how the personalities, popular shows, and coverage of key events have evolved across eight decades.

Full of facts, firsts, insights, and exploits, as well as rare and memorable photographs, Watching TV is the standard history of American television. This third edition includes coverage up through the mid-2010s and looks ahead to the next waves of change.