NBC Correspondent Shamlian to Receive Award at Mirror-Spectator Banquet

Shamlian did not always have a high-profile position. Fresh out of school, she got a job at Grand Rapids, Mich., on WOOD-TV. After three to four years, she moved to Houston, “where I knew no one, [at] KHOU-TV. It is a very highly regarded TV station. [At that point] my ultimate goal was to work in local TV in Chicago.”

However, fate had something different in mind for her. While in Houston, she met and married LeRoy Melcher III and together they moved back to Chicago, where Shamlian start- ed to work at WBBM, the local CBS affiliate. While she thought she had reached her goals, she got pregnant and she and her husband decided to move back to Houston, where he had family. Sadly, by this point, both of Shamlian’s parents had passed away.

Shamlian’s mother died when the young Janet was 14 and her sister, 12. “My father raised two little girls,” she said. “He really believed in me.”

Shamlian lost him when she was 22. “After all he put into me, he didn’t see it or his grand-children,” she said. “He gave me a good launch.”

She continued, “I was working part-time for the NBC station in Houston. I was pregnant with my second child when I got out of TV.” She went on to have five children eventually and was a stay-at-home mom for seven years.

Then, “I just had the bug to get back in,” she recalled. And against all odds, she succeeded. “I got very, very lucky.”

It helped that her work ethic had impressed a couple of powerful players, Robert Brandel and Williams. Brandel, a news producer at the NBC News desk in New York, agreed to give Shamlian a shot as a freelancer in 2004, something that does not often happen to those who have left the business.

“NBC would hire me for days and I would go to MSNBC all day covering hurricanes. I was a day hire, but I fell in love with it,” she said. After doing it for about 18 months, in 2005, “with a very, very young family and a great husband,” she was able to become a full- fledged national correspondent. Steve Capus, the president of NBC news, took a chance with her and gave her a job.

Shamlian works out of Houston, but she does not have an office there. “I travel all over the country and all over the world, from the White House to Buckingham Palace.” Aside from glamorous locations, she has to file stories from difficult places, such as an oilrig off the Atlantic coast or climbing atop a tall wind turbine in New Mexico.

Shamlian was happy to note that the reports predicting the demise of broadcast television news have been premature. “They predicted network news is dead but the audience is up. It is still a large and significant market for an impartial recounting of the day’s events.”

By contrast, she said, much of cable news is “very opinionated.”

Shamlian’s goal is to do more long-term reporting for programs such as “Dateline” and “Rock Center.” She expressed her fondness for and gratitude to Williams for being “a big sup- porter of me.” She credited him with under- standing that the audience for a typical news program is mostly female who can relate to another female. “He is very supportive of his people,” she said.

When asked for advice to young reporters starting out, Shamlian said: learn how to write. “Writing is very important. People need to learn how to write. Local news is a great train- ing ground. You need to get local news experience and get yourself in front of the camera.”

Shamlian credits her husband of 21 years as the person who has made her career and family possible. “He is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Shamlian will receive one of the two Awards of Excellence to be given out at the Armenian Mirror-Spectator’s celebration on Thursday, May 24, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. For tickets and more information, call (617) 359-0413.