Philadelphia watched Cecily Tynan blossom.
I remember the first time I met her, soon after she arrived at Channel 6 in 1995.
The station was having a reception for ABC’s “World News Tonight” anchor, Peter Jennings, who was among the last of the greats, and Cecily had recently been hired as weekend weathercaster — now preferably meteorologist; TV’s gotten so snooty — and part-time reporter.
The fitness she became famous for and the poise she’s always exuded showed even then. Why not? She was age 26.
Where her youth and potential for blossoming came through was her being impressed by being in a large East Coast city and media market.
That was among the exciting parts of her new adventure, one that lasted for 31 years on 6 ABC and will no doubt continue in the retirement Cecily announced on the 6 p.m. broadcast on July 24.
Although Cecily came from the East, Connecticut, went to college at Washington & Lee University in Virginia and found a first job in Roanoke, the comment I’ve recalled most from our introduction was she didn’t know much about the world and big cities east of Las Vegas, the market in which she worked before coming to Channel 6.
That touch of youthful naivety was charming because it was said with enthusiasm with what would happen next for her.
The same enthusiasm with which Cecily announced her Aug. 31 departure from Channel 6 and local television.
The blossoming in front of the camera was thorough. Sophistication, in dress, manner, and presentation replaced the greenness of a 26-year-old who came from the unique market Las Vegas is to a big city.
Now comes a new period of blossoming, one that involves winters waterskiing in Florida, traveling with husband, Greg Watson, to see their daughter, Emma, now a collegiate track athlete, in all of her meets, and what I predict will be a rollicking good time in general.
Cecily devoted more than 30 years to her career, the majority of them at 6 ABC. She paid the dues of not having any chance at a normal evening existence by being on the air at 6 and 11 p.m. for so long.
She was diligent, informative and entertaining. She mastered badinage with Jim Gardner, Brian Taff, Rick Williams, and anyone who sat at the anchor desk.
Nonetheless, in the on-air announcement of her retirement, Cecily said this good-bye was “in the works” for a while, that she was “counting down the days” for when it might be feasible.
And look at the marvelous timing.
I guess with a go-ahead from a financial adviser and decades of Disney stock in addition to a handsome salary, Cecily gets to have life on her terms — Florida, waterskiing, spending time with family, which includes her son, Luke, taking her pets for nature hikes and boat rides — at age 57.
Like Channel 3’s Jim Donovan last year, Cecily is shedding a daily grind, one that is much tougher than she or anyone on television makes it look, while she has the youth, stamina and agenda to enjoy it.
Blossoming means being the captain of one’s own ship, and Cecily is taking the helm, with Greg, Luke, Emma, and pups along for a shared adventure.
I think that’s brilliant.
Notice that I haven’t referred to Cecily in the usual journalistic style of using her surname.
“Tynan” doesn’t sound right. Jim, Brian, Rick, not to mention Adam, Ducis, Gray and whomever always speak to her with a cheery “Cecily.”
That’s who she is in the Philadelphia market, a woman who doesn’t need a last name.
And maybe one who’s smart to avoid it. Already this week, people this week people have come up to me and said, “Did you hear about Cecily Tyson?”
“No, I don’t even know a Cecily Tyson. I’ve met the late actress, Cicely Tyson, and I enjoy watching Cecily Tynan, but they’re not the same person.
Not by a New York mile, let alone a country one.
Since that first meeting in 1995, I don’t think I’ve had a full conversation with Cecily.
The television business model changed. Regular visits to stations and talks with people stopped happening. The avenue for knowing everyone on the air and being part of a circle faded.
It’s gotten so bad, I don’t think I can tell you the general managers of some stations without looking up their names, which is a comment on the times, not the stations or me.
Few local stations have a reliable contact to call, check facts with, or meet for periodic lunches, let alone chat with by telephone.
No matter. You can know all that was to business to know by watching Cecily on the air.
She was always easy like one of the gang, only in better shape and more stylish.
You saw no ego. It’s clear the most important on-air personality in the Philadelphia market is and has been Adam Joseph, Cecily’s weather colleague at Channel 6.
The station, Cecily, and Adam are great because roles were maintained. Cecily was chief meteorologist and appeared on what’s considered the primetime newscasts.
You never saw any jealousy from with Cecily or Adam or jockeying for position. Room was there for both to thrive.
And both are welcome.
“Action News” has always been built on personalities, with story count and spreading through the entire coverage range as high priorities. The reason Cecily can enter so many homes so cordially, is her good looks and fitness were icing to a breezy conversational delivery.
Then there were the frequent scenes of Cecily having a good time on water skis or running or in some other physical activity.
And the love for animals. Pet care tips, dog and cat adoptions, and stories from the Philadelphia Zoo were as much a part of Cecily’s repertory and image as her forecasts.
Cecily came to the market at a time when weather became the most important aspect of local news.
Weather, unlike sports, features, or even headline, is a common part of everyone’s existence.
A Ukee Washington or Jim Gardner aside, the stars at most local television station is the — OK, I’ll say it; cue the rolling eyes — meteorologist.
Cecily Tynan and Adam Joseph epitomize that. As do Sue Serio and Kathy Orr; Brittany Shipp, Bill Henley and Kate Milo).
Notice at Channel 6 who the host or lead announcer is of parades or weekly things-to-do programs.
Often the weathercaster because she or he can be a personality and doesn’t require the reserve a news anchor has to maintain.
Cecily Tynan has been an integral, well-received, and well-loved person in this market for almost 31 years.
Luck and good times is the least we can wish for her. The life she described in her announcement sounds great. And, you never know, broadcasters find ways of acquiring on-air projects.
Retirement doesn’t always mean abstinence.
Now comes a question. Who joins Brian Taff, who called Cecily a “treasure” and “pleasure” after her announcement — “I see a songwriter in you, Brian” — Rick Williams, etc. on the primetime newscasts come September and hurricane season?
Channel 6 usually promotes from within, and Adam Joseph certainly has both popularity and a following, so I don’t think GM John Morris has much of a dilemma.
Anyone but Adam would be a big surprise.
Cecily, you be you. Why break a great habit when a freer life is ahead of you?
Broadcast Pioneers Hall class
Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia has announced its Hall of Fame class of 2026.
The class will be formally inducted at a banquet ceremony in November.
WMMR, 93.3 FM, morning hosts Preston & Steve have been named Person of the Year, a distinction that shows longevity and significance in the market.
Entering the Hall of Fame are Channel 6 morning anchor Matt O’Donnell; Phillies TV announcer Tom McCarthy; sports talk panelist and hockey genius Al Morganti; a true pioneer for women in radio Christy Springfield; KYW Newsradio (103.9 FM) veteran Vince Hill; Channel 3 news director Kathleen Gerrow; radio executive and champion of hip-hop and rhythm and blues Derrick “DC” Corbett; Eagles Radio Network producer Joe McPeak; Pantheon Radio programmer Bill Weston; and WHYY (90.9 FM) “Morning Edition” host Jennifer Lynn.
More about all of them in later columns.
‘Ragtime’ No. 1 for Neal
Brows raise and eyes roll when I declare “Ragtime” to be the best and most important of musicals written within the last 30 years.
People will bring up “Rent,” “The Lion King,” “The Producers,” “Hamilton,” “Hairspray,” “Spring Awakening,” or “Billy Elliot,” but they, even “Hamilton,” miss the scope, texture, heart, and sharp-eyed glimpse of a critical part of American history “Ragtime” offers.
This was reinforced when I broke down and spent the $229 to see the Tony-honored revival of “Ragtime” playing for another month at New York’s Lincoln Center.
I was going to skip the production. Finances keep even I, who has been a Broadway regular for almost 60 years, from seeing shows.
I figured I’d seen the original and other productions. I knew the piece front-to-back, reveled in its fidelity to E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel and improvement in sensibility and perspective over Milos Forman’s overdone 1981 movie version.
I could use my theater cache to see works I haven’t seen or need more to see again.
Thank goodness I succumbed and treated myself to Lear deBessonet’s glorious production of this Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and Doctorow masterpiece.
I have been going to the theater regularly since I took my father’ car without asking and drove to Valley Forge Music Fair, a tent, to see Carol Lawrence in “Funny Girl” on Sept. 4, 1967.
For the last 50 years, I have seen more than 100 productions a year, including many on Broadway, in London, and the great Canadian festivals: The Shaw and Stratford.
The current Lincoln Center “Ragtime” ranks as one of the five best productions of that long, entertainment-dominated period. From leads Joshua Henry, Brandon Uranowitz and Caissie Levy to sterling performances by Julie Benko, Jake Pedersen, John Clay III and Marina Kondo, the show is performed to perfection, each character having personality and intensity, each exuding the energy and passion that accompanied one of the most expansively formative period in American history.
The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been celebrated with multiple productions of “1776,” and “Hamilton” provides a valuable view of revolutionary times, but “Ragtime” is just a key to a look at America. It keenly depicts a time between 1900 and World War I when America’s complexion altered.
It may have become a toss salad rather than the melting pot of legend, but it moved from being a land of Anglo-Saxon repatriation to one in which the children of freed slaves started building middle class lives, Eastern Europeans, primarily Jewish people, joined the ranks of more established Irish and German immigrants, and various political philosophies gained some currency and adherents.
The otherwise unnamed character of Mother (Levy) sings of this poignantly in her solo number, “Back to Before.” All of Flaherty and Ahren’s magnificent score comments poetically and accurately on the transition of an homogenous nation to one of variety and diversity.
Doctorow’s novel thrilled me when I read it at age 24 in 1975 and again in middle age around 2004. It not only told an important story with depth, it told it in a rhythm that approximated the ragtime beat that sprang from Harlem (Morton, Waller, Ellington) and theLower East Side (Berlin, Gershwin) and underscored the monumental change Doctorow sought to denote.
McNally, Flaherty, and Ahrens as writer and composers, deBessonet as director, and one of the best casts assembled bring that to vivid, vibrant life.
The stage churns with the march of history as the ascendance of the once enslaved and the arriving immigrant melds with the rattled complacency of life as it was known.
Alternating, intersecting scenes show what is happening to the peoples depicted: from assimilation to resistance to maintaining a national or ethnic character while clinging to traditions.
Each sequence, whether isolated to one group or showing the inevitable blend, emerges with intelligence that brings history home and radiates its human side.
McNally, Flaherty, and Ahrens are not content with confining themselves to their focal characters, the Anglo-Saxons and Jews referred to generically while the Black characters have given names.
They include seminal figures of the time — Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbitt, Emma Goldman, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, etc. — to accentuate America’s experience with the industrial revolution, general prosperity, alternative politics, and penchant for the star attraction of the moment.
All of this builds and swells into a panoramic picture of a time with characters that genuinely move you or satirically entertain you.
The Lincoln Center “Ragtime” in one of the most intense, touching, enlightening, and exhilarating productions ever mounted.It is an experience of a lifetime and should not be missed.
If only we, in this country, had a program like Britain’s National Theatre Live, which brings videos of significant London productions from the National and other theaters to international movie screens and allows people unable to get to London, Manchester or Dublin to see excellent work at a reasonable price!
I’d go to see Josh Henry, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, Julie Benko, Jake Pedersen, and company in this rendition of “Ragtime” every time it was offered.
