Finnegan adds Noon News to duties

Beginning next week, Peggy Finnegan will sit at the WPXI-TV (11) anchor desk at noon in addition to the 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. newscasts. The move is being made to allow morning anchor Jennifer Abney the time to work on reports for the later newscasts. The move also allows Abney to have more of a presence for the evening newscast – a spot she or Darieth Chisolm may inherit one day from Finnegan. There are, however, no plans for Finnegan to be taken off the evening news. In fact, WPXI management has been after her to take the noon newscast. “They’ve been asking me for years, before Jennifer came here to do the noon show,” Finnegan told the Post-Gazette. Now that the youngest of her four children is 12, she feels that she can now take the time to be more involved in the station again. “And just the economic climate at the station is such that everybody is being asked to do more, and anchors aren’t exempt from that.” Finnegan added that she is comfortable with the switch from a station standpoint too and would only be concerned if they took her off the anchor desk in the evenings. At the same time, she admits that she doesn’t plan to be working at the station forever and that it would be foolish not to nurture new talent. It’s a typical practice.