Alumni/ae Profile
Michael Milhaven: TV News Producer
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"Mike says he never felt overwhelmed by the expectations or workload [of college] because PDS 'taught me how to analyze subjects' and 'appreciate multiple points of view.' Most of all...he was well prepared for all of the writing he would be required to undertake as a broadcast journalism major." (Mike is pictured at right with his wife) |
When Michael Milhaven '90 played the anchorman in the PDS original musical, Say Cheese, he swears he knew then and there that he wanted to be a television journalist when he grew up. Little did he know the turns his career--and the world--would take and where he would find himself only a decade and a year later.
Mike grew up in Poughkeepsie and entered PDS as a 6th grader from the Arlington district. His parents, both IBMers, had seen that he was bored in public school and were confident the change to PDS would be positive. Mike says the school's small classes "kept kids from getting lost." And it was as a student at PDS that he came to really enjoy writing. Helping develop the scripts for and performing in the annual original musicals was "an incredible experience" that tapped Mike's creative side and helped him learn how to work as part of a team.
Senior year, Mike was admitted to all the schools to which he applied and chose Emerson College in Boston. Once enrolled, Mike says he never felt overwhelmed by the expectations or workload because PDS "taught me how to analyze subjects" and "appreciate multiple points of view." Most of all, says Mike, he was well prepared for all of the writing he would be required to undertake as a broadcast journalism major.
At Emerson, Mike discovered he preferred working behind the scenes rather than in front of the camera. He served as news director for the campus radio station and the general manager for Emerson's independent video studio (which was named "Organization of the Year"-a first for the studio-because of the community-service oriented projects it produced under Mike's stewardship). A summer internship brought him back home to Marist College's Lowell Thomas Center for television news. And for his required one and one-half year internship (which he pursued in addition to regular Emerson classes), Mike worked at New England Cable News, the area's only twenty-four-hour news organization. (Coincidentally, there his supervisor was the former cameraman at WTZA, now RNN, in Kingston, where PDS assistant director Jose Spencer had arranged Mike's senior internship years before.)
His first job after graduation with Cable News was followed by a stint producing the noon and then the 6 p.m. news for WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire. Luck would have it that Cable News was also the producer of the fledgling Fox 25 News program at WFXT in Boston, which hired Mike in 1997 as a writer and part-time news producer. A year and a half later, he was promoted to producer of the station's primary 10 p.m. news broadcast, which became the number one news program in that time slot among all of metro-Boston stations. With the departure of his boss in early September of this year and as the station conducted a nation-wide search for his replacement, Mike found himself interim executive producer at Fox 25, responsible for all the station's news programs in the extremely competitive #6 national market of Boston.
Having supervised the late-night news shift the evening before, Mike was asleep on the morning of September 11th. But soon he was back in the studio, producing the station's "wall-to-wall coverage" of that tragic day's aftermath. The national news community had largely ignored Fox 25's exclusive report the previous spring, which exposed the security debacle brewing at Boston's Logan International Airport. Ironcally and sadly, notes Mike, "All of a sudden everyone wanted a copy [of the tape], including CNN and the other major networks."
Today, Mike and his wife of two years, Laura Lee, live on Boston's south shore. And, yes, he is Fox 25's new executive producer. Although Mike has mixed emotions about receiving his promotion under such tragic circumstances, he clearly loves his work. Mike's parents are understandably proud of their son's many accomplishments. (Father Ed Milhaven served on the PDS board as a parent and then, after Mike's graduation, as a community trustee.) And Mike is happy to have met an important career goal, especially at such a young age.
Looking back on all that has shaped him, Mike specifically credits his PDS teachers: Dwight Paine, who supported him throughout the anxiety-filled college admissions process; Don Fried for his wisdom and guidance in theatre; Jose Spencer for making his internship a reality and former history teacher and mentor Andrew Hoover. When Mike was regularly completing history essays just under the wire, a habit that concerned some members of the PDS faculty, it was Andrew who expressed a different view of the situation. Noting that, unlike most kids his age, Mike thrived under this kind of pressure, Andrew advised him to "find a field in which you're always on deadline." How fortunate that he did.
Sandra M. Moore/12-2001
Editor's Note: Since this profile was written, Mike's brother Ed and his wife,Lisa, have enrolled their son, Mark, in the PDS lower school--keeping it "all in the family." :)
Read a profile of choreographer Kara Tatelbaum
'96.
Read a profile of Lee Miringoff '66, national political pollster.