![]() ![]() “We did live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the City Council hearings on the creation of the Civilian Complaint Review Board,” says Dan Jacobson, who joined NY1 that first year and eventually became news director. Since it was (and still is) funded by cable subscriptions, its journalists were freer to report on topics that weren’t a ratings hit. When competing cable companies came knocking, “Time Warner Cable’s primary message to subscribers was ‘They don’t have NY1.’ ” “Everyone hated the cable company, but they loved NY1,” says Steve Paulus, a lifelong New Yorker who, along with Paul Sagan, was tapped by Aurelio to get the station off the ground. It would come to serve a more practical purpose as a retention tool for Time Warner Cable customers. ![]() NY1 would cover the city the way the big networks couldn’t - diving deep into education, theater, crime, and politics. Aurelio imagined a station with editorial judgments “based on the relevance of the news to our New York City viewers” and “not driven by ratings or sensationalism,” as he wrote in an early memo. NY1 launched in 1992, the brainchild of then–Time Warner Cable executive Dick Aurelio, a former deputy mayor of New York who had worked as a reporter and editor for Newsday in the 1950s. The sense that only a chosen few would get to shine turned a once-collegial news channel into a den of vipers. The drama around the lawsuit revealed not simply sexism at the station but a sharp-elbowed culture in which the rewards were meager and the egos outsize. It’s no coincidence that 75 percent of broadcast news is reported by men and that roughly two-thirds of prime-time-TV news shows feature male anchors and correspondents, per an analysis by the Women’s Media Center. TV has always been a brutal business for women, particularly women over 40. The allegations in the lawsuit were damning but not shocking. The drama played out in the newsroom - hence the bagel incident - and in the city tabloids. Kiernan, now 52, was used as a benchmark it was alleged that he made significantly more money than Torre despite having similar responsibilities and was given more resources. All five women, who ranged in age from 40 to 61 at the time, claimed they had been pushed aside in favor of younger, less experienced (and presumably cheaper) talent - mostly women in their 20s and 30s, the same ages they had been when they were hired. Shaughnessy and co-anchors Roma Torre, Amanda Farinacci, Vivian Lee, and Jeanine Ramirez sued NY1’s parent company, Charter Communications, for age and gender discrimination. ![]() Then, in 2019, the public illusion of the NY1 family blew up. NY1 wasn’t polished, but it made good on its promise: hyperlocal news delivered by someone who could very well live in your neighborhood. Sure, the major networks had fancy studios and flattering lighting, but NY1 was where New Yorkers learned about a delay on the Q train and had the day’s headlines read to them as they swigged their coffee. ![]() To watch NY1 - at home or in a laundromat, a nail salon, or the waiting room of a doctor’s office - and recognize its faces was to be a true New Yorker. Viewers were still buying into the camaraderie years after the chummy vibe had begun to dissipate behind the scenes, the launchpad morphing into something of a professional flytrap. They were cub reporters convinced they weren’t simply doing a job but performing a public service. The news team was young back then: Shaughnessy and Kiernan were in their 20s their managers were barely over 30. They were both part of the ragtag team hired at the 24-hour local-news station in the ’90s, when NY1 seemed like a launchpad for a sparkling career in broadcast journalism. On 9/11, Shaughnessy reported live with Kiernan as the south tower collapsed, Kiernan from the anchor desk, Shaughnessy from outside the World Trade Center. Shaughnessy and Kiernan had worked together at NY1 for more than two decades. “They literally dropped the bagels,” says a former producer. “The second he heard that it was Kristen, it was like, Do not touch - it’s poison,” says a colleague. The bagels had been sent to weekend anchor Kristen Shaughnessy, but Kiernan didn’t ask where they’d come from until he and his co-anchors were under the lights, ready to go live. It was JanuNational Bagel Day - and the crew of NY1’s morning show, Mornings on 1, had already pillaged the breakfast platter in the control room when word came down that it was being requested on set. ![]()
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