At 95, broadcasting pioneer Florence Sando Manson dies

Longtime Riverdalian Florence Sando Manson, a pioneering woman newscaster in radio and the early years of television journalism who hosted “The Florence Manson Show” in Pittsburg, died on Nov. 25 at home from complications related to dementia. She was 95.

Ms. Manson was born in 1918 and graduated from Westminster College in 1939.
She received her master’s degree in drama from Case Western Reserve University the following year.

Ms. Sando broke out of the confines of gossip and fashion coverage that women broadcasters were usually relegated to, spending 18 years as a popular on-air, Pittsburgh–based personality.

In an era when women broadcasters were expected to keep their shows light and frothy, Ms. Manson tackled the hard news of the day from 1941 to 1959.

Longtime viewers of Pittsburgh TV stations — with signals that broadcast up and down the east coast and into the Midwest — would remember her for “The Florence Manson Show,” which featured her as a host-interviewer, a pioneering use of that format.

She interviewed well-known public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt on radio as well as celebrities on TV. Danny Kaye and Louis Armstrong were among her guests. Some of these interviews are available at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York.
She also produced the hard news breakthrough “Women’s Angle,” a 15-minute morning broadcast. Ms. Sando’s “Women’s Angle” spoke to women as adults, presenting news of the world rather than the mix of fashion and decorating tips dished out to female audiences until then.

“It was easy when the news was about Madame Chiang Kai-shek, or the ten best dressed women, or Mrs. Roosevelt or Senator Margaret Chase Smith or Oveta Culp-Hobby, but when the story was about some returning prisoners from Indochina or a Supreme Court ruling on desegregation, then I would have to introduce it with some ridiculous little line that seemed to indicate that it related to women, and then I would get into the story as it was,” Ms. Sando told author, educator and former broadcaster Lynn Boyd Hinds in Broadcasting the Local News: The Early Years of Pittsburgh’s KDKATV.