CBC Calgary Anchors: Rosa Marchitelli and husband Rob Brown

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CBC Calgary Anchors: Rosa Marchitelli and husband Rob Brown

Postby jon » Mon Jul 29, 2013 4:51 pm

Over to you, dear: Husband and wife to co-anchor CBC Calgary news
By Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald
July 29, 2013

It’s not as if the conversations between journalists Rosa Marchitelli and husband Rob Brown weren’t already heavily weighted toward shop talk.

But now, the couple will have even more to discuss as they take over the anchor chairs for CBC Calgary, becoming what is surely one of the few if not only husband-and-wife teams to co-anchor a newscast in Canada. Until now, the two operated largely as competitors — she worked for CBC in Vancouver, while he was with CTV British Columbia. They will take over the anchor desk on Sept. 9 as the permanent replacements for Nirmala Naidoo, who left CBC Calgary in February.

“We are news nerds,” says Marchitelli, on the line from Vancouver. “We drive our kids crazy with the news talk in our house. We’re very like-minded in terms of our interests.”

The new post will be a homecoming for Marchitelli, who was born and raised in Calgary. She met Brown, a Vancouver native, in 2000 when they both worked at an Edmonton TV station. She was the consumer affairs reporter and he worked the night shift.

They now have three young sons, an eight-year-old and six-year-old twins.

“The big discussion, of course, is the 24/7 nature of it,” Marchitelli says. “Ten years, three kids later, that was a big part of the discussion. How do you navigate stuff like that, your personal life and your professional life, the togetherness of it. It is unchartered territory.”

Both Marchitelli and Brown have anchor experience at the respective stations, with Marchitelli hosting CBC News Vancouver at Six and Brown co-anchoring CTV News at Five for CTV British Columbia. Brown was also the Vancouver bureau chief of CTV National News.

“In the private sector, there are still some of those who are still host personalities rather than journalists,” Brown says about the anchor job. “But I couldn’t do it any other way. First and foremost, I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself an anchor. I’m a reporter. I was thrust into it straight out of (journalism) school, that was the goal.”

Recently Brown received international attention for his on-the-scene coverage of the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver, which led to him being named to Sportsillustrated.com’s Media Power list.

So while there is a certain novelty to the husband-wife co-anchors, Brown says they are coming to the roles as journalists first.

“First and foremost our role is to present the news and not to come across as some hokey, look-at-us couple,” Brown says. “We are not interested in that. The CBC is not interested in that. They made it clear they were interested, first and foremost, to what we bring to the table journalistically.”

Since February, CBC News Calgary at 5, 5:30 and 6 has been hosted by reporter Carla Beynon, with Warren Dean on weather. On Sept. 9, CBC Calgary will get a new set and weather person to go along with the co-hosts.

And how do Marchitelli and Brown plan to address any professional disagreements that will inevitably pop up at the job?

“We’re not the kind of couple that has really vocal fights,” Marchitelli says. “Just like we would discuss things at home, we plan to discuss things in the workplace. Different issues of course. We’re talking about news content and delivery versus what school to send our kids to... I don’t see the mode of communication being any different for us than it is now.”
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