"FROM SOUPY TO NUTS, A History of Detroit Television", By Tim Kiska

The following is an excerpt from "FROM SOUPY TO NUTS, A History of Detroit Television", By Tim Kiska.

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Doyle, Anne

    Channel 2’s Anne Doyle was in the vanguard of women sports reporters.  Doyle, on the air between 1978 and 1983, opened the locker rooms to women journalists, earning plenty of discussion along the way.

    Although Doyle is the daughter of longtime WWJ-AM sportscaster Vince Doyle (d: 1990), her pre-Channel 2 background was in news reporting.  After graduation from the University of Michigan, she worked as a reporter and/or anchor in Lansing, Grand Rapids and Los Angeles before returning home to Detroit as a Channel 2 sports journalist.  Time Inc. had successfully sued baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to open the locker room to one of its female reporters – thus opening the doors (literally) for women across the country.  

    Within three weeks of the federal court ruling, Doyle was offered a job at Channel 2.  “I remember my dad putting down his fork when I told him I’d been hired as a sports reporter,” Doyle recalls.  “His reaction about going into the locker room was, ‘Absolutely, you have to go into the locker room.  Otherwise, you won’t have any credibility.’”

    The reactions of others, however, were not as egalitarian.  University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler and the late Tiger General Manager Jim Campbell, were not happy with the idea, says Doyle.  As late as January 1979, the Tigers were telling Doyle she couldn’t enter the locker room – thereby putting her at a competitive disadvantage with male reporters.  (The day before Opening Day 1979, the Tigers reversed course.)  “Personally, I’m opposed to it,” Campbell told Detroit News columnist Joe Falls. “I believe our players have a right to their privacy.  But this is the only way I can solve the problem – open the doors to everybody.”

    “There was a reaction of fear from sportswriters,” Doyle continued.  “Fear that the women would ruin it for everybody – that the teams would simply close the locker rooms to everyone.”

    That did not happen.  Doyle eventually earned the trust of the players, and female sportswriters are no longer an oddity.  “I worked hard to be a legitimate reporter,” she said.  “I was not just window dressing.”  Free Press columnist Charlie Vincent characterized her as “one of the most conscientious television sportscasters in our city.”

    One of her most famous on-air moments occurred when Detroit Lions Coach Monte Clark walked out of a group interview (with cameras rolling) because Doyle had asked about his seemingly dismal future – understandable because the Lions had just finished a 4-5 season, capping it off with a miserable 31-7 drubbing by the Washington Redskins.