Charles Perez, who only spent two years at WABC/Channel 7, was believed to be groomed for the main anchor gig.
In his new book, Confessions of a Gay Anchorman, Perez discusses his coming out and how his TV gigs were affected by it.
For the chapter on his stint at WABC, (lasting all of 12 pages), however, Perez’s focus was not on his sexuality, at least not on the surface.
But Perez, hardly a memorable name in the annals of Eyewitness News history, took one jab after another at his former colleagues.
“To me it’s not about any of the people I mentioned,” Perez tells FishbowlNY. “It was about how shocked I was to get to a place that I thought was going to be about professionalism and journalism. In my experience, it was about ego more than anything. It was a culture of inflated egos and inefficiency,”
In the book, Perez calls WABC’s shop “by far the most overstaffed facility I’d ever worked in.”
In response, Perez joked, “How many people does it take to put in a light bulb?”
Faced with breaking news, Perez says he was forced to be at the cameraman’s beck and call.
“I could sit down there waiting for a photographer for a freaking hour and a half before he would actually get in the truck and pull out,” Perez alleges. “Everybody was moving like snails.”
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