Sometimes it’s beneficial — even necessary — to rely on your “second family” at work. Bernie Smilovitz knows.
WDIV’s nighttime sports anchor for nearly 40 years, the undisputed king of comedy on Detroit TV news with his “Bernie’s Bloopers” and “Weekend at Bernie’s” segments, Smilovitz needed to lean on his Local 4 News family more than ever just a year ago after what he describes as “the single worst day of my family’s life.” He’s got lowlights.
“My wife [prominent local clinical psychologist Dr. Donna Rockwell] woke me in the middle of the night,” he recalls. “She had surgery two days before and said her heart was beating 100 miles an hour. A blood clot had moved up to her lungs, cut off her oxygen. She died in my arms. It’s one of the most horrific things that can happen to any human.”
In that moment, consumed by grief, Smilovitz seriously considered leaving Channel 4. However, “our two sons were going back to their jobs in New York, and we felt that creativity was going to help get us through this,” he says. “So I went back to my other family, and they were just spectacular.
“It’s brought me to tears many times. Channel 4 will always have a special place in my heart. Not just because of the work, but because when you have that life-altering experience and there are people there to pick you up and help you through, it’s something you can never thank anyone for enough.”
And now his work family is going through a life-altering transition of its own … and Bernie has left the building. In one of the most talked-about Detroit media stories of the year, Smilovitz and three other on-air mainstays — reporters Paula Tutman and Mara MacDonald and Business Editor Rod Meloni — representing more than 100 years of combined service on Detroit’s NBC affiliate, accepted voluntary retirement buyouts this past spring offered by station owner Graham Media Group, along with 16 behind-the-camera employees.
Such an unprecedented mass exodus stunned viewers and our media market. Yet each of the “Fantastic (Channel) Four” seems to understand that such transition is both inevitable and unavoidable.
“The TV landscape is changing in that broadcast is eroding all over the place,” observes MacDonald, a metro Detroit native who has worked for her hometown station since 2004. “Not just local TV, but everywhere, because everybody under 40 is using their phone to get their news in mini-increments. I could see the business model changing. But did I think I’d ever leave WDIV? I thought I would die in this newsroom with my boots on. I truly did.”
In fact, when the buyout was offered, “my immediate reaction was, ‘I’m not taking this,’” she says. “And they offered me a new three-year contract. They made it clear it was completely my choice. But my financial adviser and my accountant both said, ‘Are you kidding? Take the money!’ The final straw was my mother, who’s in her 90s. She said, ‘You can have a life beyond television. Could this be the universe’s way of telling you to consider something different for yourself ?’”
For Meloni, who has covered every major bankruptcy in Detroit for the past quarter-century, the universe’s timing could not have been finer. “I’m 65, and I’ve been doing this for 43 years,” he explains. “I genuinely like what I do, but it gets to be a heavy lift after a while, you know? So my wife and I decided this contract would be the end. When they came to me with the buyout, I said, ‘You’re going to pay me to leave six months early?’ How long do you think it took me to make that call?”
Tutman, who has covered breaking news on the mean streets of Detroit for 32 years, has written numerous screenplays and invented something called the Bra-Less Bra. She has more than enough pursuits to occupy her time. “That’s what my friends tell me when they’re trying to talk me off the ledge,” she responds, laughing. Her primary concern now is how she’ll continue to interact with others.
My husband [Southfield Fire Chief Johnny Menifee] and I have a cottage, and I was recently there by myself,” she relates. “I love people, but I do like my own company, and that concerns me. Because every single day I’ve created relationships with strangers, gotten to know them, had conversations with them. That’s not going to happen now unless I find a way to make it happen. And there are still a lot of important stories out here in Michigan.”
It’s almost unfair to ask broadcasters who’ve covered tens of thousands of stories if they have a standout, but upon reflection, some memories returned. MacDonald vividly recalls the daily anxiety of covering Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy in 2013: “Every day for months on end, people were wondering if they were going to have a pension, or even a job.”
Meloni, who grew up fascinated by the Apollo space missions, says his “pinch-me moment” was interviewing former astronauts Chuck Yeager, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell while on assignment in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And Smilovitz can’t forget one memorable exchange with Red Wings captain (now Executive Vice President and general manager) Steve Yzerman after the Wings clinched the Stanley Cup in 1997.
“I was interviewing him in the locker room, and he had played even though he had been hurt,” Smilovitz relates. “I asked him, ‘How can someone like you play this well at this point in your career?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Viagra.’ It was one of the great comeback lines I’ve ever heard.”
What does the future hold for these local legends? MacDonald plans to stay in Detroit. “I’m a local girl. I’m an only child. These are my people,” she says. Tutman is even more demonstrative: “You can’t crowbar my butt out of this market. I love Detroit.”
Meloni, who passed the exam to become a certified financial planner while working as a TV journalist, may transition into that profession full time … but not here. “That’s no shame on Detroit,” he explains. “This city has embraced me in ways I never dreamed possible. But my wife and I purchased a home Up North about seven years ago. That is our happy place.”
And although his sons, Zach, a successful comedy writer, and Jake, a private equity executive, both live in New York, Smilovitz has no intention of moving. “I’ve loved it here,” he says. “I mean, the people are just phenomenal. And New York, I’m an hour and 10 minutes away by plane. So to me, New York is like a suburb of Detroit city.”
This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on Sept. 6.
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