So ol’ Lloyd Robertson, the man who has had a grandfatherly smile for as long as I can remember is finally going to retire after leaving a 35 year butt-print in the CTV anchor chair. Well, he wasn’t the main anchor that whole time but I really wanted to write “35 year butt-print”. Naturally, people are asking me about his replacement, Lisa LaFlamme. I say “Hurrah!” but not because she’s a woman, because she’s a Lisa.
I mean, really, who can we Lisas look up to right now? Who is carrying the Lisa torch into the world and shouting, “We’re here! We’re Lisas! Get used to it!”
Arguably the most famous among us is Lisa Simpson. She’s a bit of a fussbudget albeit a bright one. But you can’t really expect a cartoon to set any sort of example. If I had a dollar for every time someone called me Lisa-Lisa, referring to the one-hit-wonder group Lisa-Lisa and Cult Jam, I would be able to buy a yacht and retire on it. But where is Lisa-Lisa now now? Then there’s the Jesse Colter song, I’m Not Lisa. Yeah, sing that one to me again. It’s SO original!
There’s Mona Lisa and her silly little start of a grin but she’s long dead and who knows what her character was like? Did she have a good work ethic? Would she have taken reporting assignments overseas and worked the weekend anchor desk as she waited, waited, oh-so-patiently waited for fermenting Lloyd to finally hang up his microphone? We simply do not know.
The year that Lisa came up as a hurricane name I’ll admit that I rooted for it to do something memorable like destroy an unoccupied trailer park. Hey, I’m not heartless – I didn’t want lives to be lost in my bid for namesake noteriety! But Lisa blew hard and then blew out. So much for that Lisa. Lisa Kudrow who played Phoebe on Friends is a definite Lisa but despite being on one of the most successful TV shows of all time she didn’t become a one-name Lisa like Madonna or Cher.
So thank you CTV for giving us a Lisa worth talking about. She’s respectable, she has worked hard, she’s pretty enough for the guys to like her but not a crazy, raging sexpot so women hate her. She’s smart and inquisitive and enthusiastic about her vocation. And now she’ll be out there for all to see every night. Anchoring the news. On Canadian television. A job that used to carry a lot of weight back when Lloyd took it over, before the Internet and possibly before the printing press was invented. Well, we Lisas will keep trying but LaFlamme is a good start.
Having had the opportunity to watch Lisa LaFlamme fill in at the anchor desk numerous times over the past couple of years and her various reports from where ever, I think she is an excellent choice as anchor with the diversity of her experience.