S.A. TV celeb harvests new career focused on food, wine(1)
In a move that proves some things do get better with age, local TV news personality Tanji Patton has uncorked a whole new career as the host of her own wine, food and travel Web site and national public television pilot.
Called “Good Taste with Tanji,” the media venture blends Patton’s passion for vino with her journalistic ability to tell the stories behind the people, places and products. The Web site, launched in July 2008, went live six months after Patton anchored her last newscast at WOAI-TV in San Antonio. The NBC station did not renew Patton’s contract at the end of 2007, after 17 years reporting and anchoring local news. Viewers flooded Web sites supporting Patton and alleging age-ism.
A few weeks ago, San Antonio’s PBS station KLRN gave 49-year-old Patton the green light to produce the second course of her media feast — a 30-minute show that will be packaged and sold to public television stations across the country.
“Tanji has designed a show that is the third generation of television cooking shows,” says Charles Vaughn, vice president of telecommunications for KLRN.
Roll-out is expected in 2010.
“We’ve gone from the simplicity of the Julia Child’s cooking show to a super-hyped, bells-and-whistles Food Network-type show,” Vaughn says. “In Tanji’s new show, cooking is just one part of the food, wine and travel triumvirate. Viewers will see the countryside, learn about the culture and appreciate how all that comes together with food and wine. There’s a quality educational component.”
This next year, as Patton and her husband Mike put the finishing touches on the pilot episode, they’ll also be drumming up financing for the show’s production. Producing a 30-minute television show can range anywhere from $6,000 per episode for a simple talk format to $150,000 per episode for a “ready for prime time” production, think Rick Bayless’ “Mexico — One Plate at a Time.” Television personalities must foot the entire bill of each episode: food supplies, cooking utensils, travel costs, clothes, hair and make-up, camera and production labor, insurance and more.
What’s more, most of the money personalities raise through sponsors and underwriters covers only the production costs.
“People like (the late) Julia Child and Rick Bayless make money on the after-market products: cookbooks, cooking utensils, restaurants, etc.,” Vaughn says.
Already, Patton has harvested a good crop of sponsors for her Web site, www.goodtastewithtanji.com, which features video clips of Patton interviewing local chefs, tips on wine pairings and a blog on local foodie events. High-end clothier Julian Gold, supermarket giant H-E-B, Homewerks, the Luciano Restaurants, Paloma Blanca, Morton’s Steakhouse, Corporate Travel Partners and Westin La Cantera all jumped on board when Patton met with them. “We were sold out before the launch, so that seems like a good sign,” Patton says. Melissa Zuniga, assistant store director at Julian Gold in Olmos Park, who dressed Patton when she was the producer and host of lifestyle show “San Antonio Living,” says the department store is getting good feedback from customers who access coupons and specials from Patton’s weekly e-mail newsletters.
“We were devastated, like everyone else, when Tanji left WOAI,” Zuniga says. “We told her that whatever her next venture, we’d support her. In everything she does — her personal life and her work — she is so classy.”
Nose for news
It’s not as though Patton expected her WOAI contract to go on forever. When she wrapped up anchoring for the Christmas holidays in 2005, she went home and told her husband: “I have this weird feeling that this will be one of the last Christmases I’ll leave that studio,” Patton recalls.
Then, in 2006, the Pattons took a two-week trip to Tuscany, Italy, to explore the wine country. It was the longest vacation the two had taken in years. The couple had fallen in love with a wine made in Camigliano at the Cupano winery. The wine maker hosted the couple at his estate, where he discussed working the land, harvesting grapes and making wine.
“It was sunset, and we were sitting on his patio, looking out over the estate — and we had this Aha! moment,” Patton says. “This man was really living his life. And it was an epiphany for me. As much as I loved my life, I wasn’t really living it, not getting to appreciate all the little things — like ripe tomatoes and sunsets.”
At the time, Patton was anchoring both the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. news and investigative reporting in between. Her journey to the top of San Antonio’s broadcast profession was part hard work, part fateful smorgasbord. Born in Lubbock and raised in Houston, Patton wanted to be a doctor when she was in high school. She graduated from high school early, but then earned a “D” in calculus her freshman year at Houston Baptist University. “This med school thing isn’t going to work,” Patton recalls thinking.
Fascinated by reporting and spurred along by Watergate, Patton transferred to Texas Tech and declared a journalism major. After a stint with the campus radio station and newspaper, she landed a job at the small CBS television affiliate in Lubbock and did it all — the weather, reporting, anchoring and producing. She moved to San Antonio after her brother was injured in a car accident, but could only find work in public relations and as a commercial real estate broker.
After taking time to raise her son, Patton went back to work in 1991 when her husband, an auto industry management headhunter, was laid off for a time. She freelanced for USAA and volunteered for KMOL’s trouble shooter hotline. When the Gulf War broke out, the station needed freelance reporters and hired Patton part time. An anonymous tip about medical waste at Wilford Hall clinched Patton’s full-time NBC gig.
“I took my mommy-car Suburban and drove right on base, no questions asked,” Patton says. “Sure enough, big piles of waste were just sitting there — syringes and all — so I took out my personal camera and started shooting photos.”
Wilford Hall’s incinerator had broken down, and instead of using emergency disposal procedures, waste was accumulating on base. By the third day of Patton’s reporting, the story had exploded all over the city’s media. “My boss paged me and offered me a full-time job,” Patton says.
That was the beginning of a 17-year television career that made her a local household name. “She outworked everybody at the station. She was competitive as heck,” says Don Harris, sports anchor and director for News 4, who worked with Patton for 17 years. “She’s not afraid to put her nose to the grindstone, and that’s not a quality people usually equate with beautiful TV anchorwomen.”
