Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Laurie Jennings leaves WPLG this week; Nicole Perez to fill in
After 15 years of delivering the biggest stories at WPLG Channel 10 and 21 years in South Florida, Laurie Jennings is leaving the ABC affiliate this week.
Her last broadcast is Wednesday.
“After a year and a half of real soul searching, I’ve decided it’s time,” Jennings said on the WPLG broadcast when she announced the news April 8. “It’s time for me to take control of my time after 30 years in this wild, wonderful, 24⁄7 intense TV news world.”
Succeeding in her anchor chair will be Nicole Perez, an early afternoon and evening anchor.
“Anchor Nicole Perez will fill the spot temporarily for the next couple of months while we conduct our search,” said Bill Pohovey, vice president and news director at the Pembroke Park station.
Perez takes over for Jennings starting Thursday.
Perez, a Miami native and Florida International University graduate, joined WPLG in 2016 as a traffic reporter before moving up to the anchor desk. She recently traveled to Rome for Holy Week and the celebrations leading up to Easter Sunday. While in Europe, she and her crew also traveled to Paris to report on the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral.
“It is so hard to say goodbye to you Laurie Jennings. A woman so many aspire to be and be like,” Perez recently posted on social media with a photo of herself with Jennings. “I am so grateful to have been able to work alongside of you, to learn from you to grow with you. You will always be the queen of our hearts at Channel 10.”
In her April departure announcement, Jennings said she was stepping down from the anchor chair to spend more time with her aging parents, who are 80 and 87, and her twin sons who are 13-years-old.
“I’m sure a lot of you can relate to being in the sandwich generation as it’s called. We are trying to be there for our kids and our parents,” said Jennings, 52. “I am so blessed to have them around but they are up north in two different states and I really need some quality time with them. I cannot get to them enough so this isn’t easy of course.”
Jennings has been in South Florida for 21 years. She worked as an morning anchor at WHDH-Channel 7 in Boston before heading to sister station WSVN-Ch. 7 in North Bay Village. In 2004, she began working at WPLG where she co-anchored with Dwight Lauderdale and then Charles Perez. For the past decade, she and Calvin Hughes have been the station’s lead team anchoring the 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. weekday newscasts.
In the past month, WPLG has been posting tributes to Jennings from local and national celebrities. They include Miami Heat executive Pat Riley and team mascot Birdie who presented Jennings with a red team hersey with her name and the No. 21 for her years in South Florida.
Other tributes came from ABC “Good Morning America” anchors Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos and Michael Stranahan and morning talk show hosts Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest. And there have also been tributes from organizations that Jennings worked closely with such as the March of Dimes. Jennings connected with the group after her sons with husband Josh Salman were born four and a half months early and spent time in incubators.
Jennings hasn’t said what she will be doing after departing WPLG.
“Who knows,” she told viewers, “maybe you’ll see more of me because I’ll definitely stay involved with all the great charities out there, making a real difference in our community and I’ll still be the TV lady doing occasional television products all around South Florida.”