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WQAD president, general manager retires

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By David Burke | Friday, April 27, 2007 12:04 AM CDT | () comments

After a decade as president and general manager of WQAD-TV8, Moline, Marion Meginnis is retiring from a 33-year broadcasting career.

“It was a good time for me personally, and for me and Jack (Haberman, her husband),” Meginnis said Thursday afternoon.

“With the transition coming, it just seems right.”

WQAD is one of nine stations owned by the New York Times that have been sold to Oak Hill Capital Partners, which will operate the stations under the company Local TV LLC.

“They are totally and utterly devoted to local TV, and I think that’s fabulous,” Meginnis, 56, said of the new owners. “That’s very promising.”

Meginnis, who previously had worked for stations in Charlotte, N.C., and Chicago before joining WQAD in March 1997, said she had considered retirement a year ago, before the Times announced it was putting the stations up for sale.

“There’s enough changes when there’s a sale like that,” she said.

Meginnis said she and Haberman, a retired IBM engineer, will stay in the Quad-Cities. They own three homes, including their residence in Davenport’s Gold Coast neighborhood. They also are refurbishing the home of Henry Lischer, a former publisher of the Davenport Daily Democrat, converting it back to a one-family house from its current six apartments.

“That’s kind of my first project. I have things to keep me very busy,” she said.

Meginnis said she will continue to be an active member of organizations in the area. She is secretary of Gilda’s Club Quad-Cities and Gateway Redevelopment Group, as well as on the board of the Illinois Quad-City Chamber of Commerce and Quad-City Health Initiative. She also is a member of the United Way Healthy and Self-Reliant People Task Force. She has been active in fundraising for AIDS Project Quad-Cities and the Quad-City Health Initiative’s Kids HealthNet local initiative.

She said the biggest accomplishment in her decade at WQAD has been how the entire station has embraced technology. Its Web site won a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors Association, and the station had the first satellite newsgathering vehicle in the market, and the first to offer information on cell phones.

“Our innovations have been definitely a hallmark. We’ve got a group of staff that embraces technology, and we have understood for many years,” Meginnis said. “We know people are going to get their local news and information from many different places, and we want to be there for them.”

Meginnis broke the news to her staff Thursday morning. Her last day will be May 11, and a new general manager will be announced shortly, she said.

“I’ll miss this group of people very much,” she said.

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.