Former News 8 Anchor Telling Stories Again on TV
By JOE AMARANTE
Jon Crane, the one-time WTNH anchor and reporter, started in the news business early and left early — at 38, when a Channel 8 news director wouldn't renew his contract because audience research wasn't nearly as bullish on him as it was about Ann Nyberg.
But viewers love a comeback story, and Jon Crane the news reporter is back, sort of. At 52 he's a correspondent for an AARP show that airs on PBS stations nationwide called "My Generation."
Crane fronts a lively report for the show about Peter Tork, The Monkees star who lives in northeast Connecticut.
The show pops up on PBS outlets in various obscure time slots (not yet in Connecticut), but you can watch the report here:
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Torked Up
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It's a nostalgic trip to a baby boomer's childhood, almost like seeing Crane report again. The Wilton native reported and then anchored at Channel 8 from mid-1989 to May 1997, when "I kind of burned out."
When the WTNH job ended, he could have jumped to a station in Denver or San Antonio, but he had two young daughters here (with ex-wife Liz Gray Crane) and he had already spent 18 years working nights and weekends.
The other element was the money.
"I became a news anchor for the money," he says in a phone interview Wednesday. "My wife and I were from Connecticut and wanted to live back here. When 8 didn't renew my contract, I didn't like the thought of picking up and leaving Connecticut to redo it all."
Crane says he had worked in seven or eight markets and it was "a vagabond life."
His reporting style — moving around, a bit slick, very demonstrative — was unforgettable, similar to Channel 8 veteran Bob Wilson today.
"I was not the best anchor in the world. ... I was a reporting guy... but I decided I couldn't make a living at that."
So he started a production company with a former Channel 8 guy, Ray Flynn, and did "a lot of good things" until that business changed, too. Along the way he grew his main business now, a public relations firm called Critical PR.
Working with media companies again was "not by choice," he says, but that's where his expertise and contacts were. Along the way he became a speaker to civic and PR groups, a CRIS volunteer for the blind and was on the board of directors at the Cove Center for Grieving Children.
His daughters are 20 and 17 now, and fairly oblivious to his TV career in a top-30 market.
"I never talked much about the TV thing with my kids. Then one day my daughter called; I was about to meet her boyfriend. She said 'He Googled you and there's this website called joncrane.com.' I said, 'Yeah, that's mine!"
It's Crane's demo site for his PR and TV work.
About a year ago, Crane says, he "got the itch" to do TV again, but "most doors where shut," with producers deciding either he hadn't done it "in a million years" or he wasn't a good candidate because of his PR firm conflicts.
Crane's PR company has "carved out a little niche of public policy stuff," including probate reform and representing the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.
But an old contact, a producer for the AARP show, gave him a chance and now he says, "I'm so fortunate; I can't even express it. ... I'm having a ball."
For the Tork piece, he interviewed and shot footage at Tork's home and then at a gig for Tork's group Shoe Suede Blues in Boston. (Tork, 69, was in the news Wednesday as it was announced The Monkees will do a summer tour in the UK.)
Crane subsequently shot two other stories for the AARP show that are waiting to run.
"We focus on people 50ish and above with inspiring stories, people trying to make a difference and who are expanding and doing greater things at 50-plus," Crane says.
People like Jon Crane maybe? Today, the once-baby-faced and still upbeat Crane refuses to say anything bad about WTNH or TV news, noting that while production has changed, with fewer people and lower production costs, the news itself hasn't changed substantially.
"I was at a huge press conference two weeks ago on the death penalty stuff and in comes this gal from Channel 61, a one-person crew. I started out as a one-man band at small stations (shooting his own standup, for instance). ... I checked out her report later ... and it was outstanding.
"TV has rarely gone deep anyway so production is consistent with my day. ... I'm optimistic about news."
Crane, who lives in Burlington, chuckles to think about what he considers WTNH's "greatest ratings gimmick" in his day — scrolling names of people owed unclaimed state money during the news for the whole ratings period.
He says he "totally loved covering the Special Olympics World Games in 1995." But he's proudest of his news series that probed racial isolation in Connecticut public schools. "Give the station credit; it was not making friends in a lot of communities (with that topic). But the issue is still front and center today."
