Rena Sarigianopoulos doesn't need a part-time job

It's not exactly breaking news: Plenty of our local celebrities aren't living on easy street.

By local celebrity I refer to those who speak on TV or the radio. They're not celebrities, but we like to think of them as special, and act accordingly.

It has long been known that those who have "cool" jobs in major market radio don't necessarily cash fat paychecks. Sure, there are heavy hitters whose presence are a major draw, and their salary will reflect that. But even those folks aren't on the fast track to living next door to a lion hunting dentist, either in Eden Prairie or Marco Island, Fla.

Our local jocks are often shilling for products when they're not dazzling us with their dulcet tones. I'll never forget listening to Jeff Dubay shill for Body Solutions, along with many other local jocks, many moons ago. They were essentially shilling for snake oil, but as long as the checks were being cashed.

When Dan Barreiro was splitting time between sports radio and writing columns for the Star Tribune, he didn't do commercials. Not so long ago we liked to hold our "journalists" to a higher standard. Barreiro wasn't a journalist, but nonetheless.

Wait a minute. Why was Barreiro holding two jobs simultaneously for several years? Like radio, the newspaper game isn't exactly a license to print money. Sports guys working in television or newspapers by virtue of their jobs were a wealth of information, and ultimately opinions, therefore they were good candidates for the low-paying world of talk radio.

Barreiro obviously built a reputation and following that afforded him the luxury of not answering to bosses at the Strib, and therefore bailed out on the newspaper biz, which has taken it in the shorts since the Internet era began. (The rapid decline in the broadcast and print industries both have the Internet to thank for the deterioration of their business model, and the low quality product you're commonly served in 2015.)

Soon after Barreiro sold his soul to radio, he started endorsing products. You'd think that a successful, heralded personality like Barreiro would forgo attaching his name to whatever bidder came along with the fattest check, but obviously the money's good enough for him to grab. Whether his salary is hefty or modest, none of us tires of banking easy money.

Commercial reads and promotional appearances at bars, restaurants and Best Buy have long been a staple of the radio jock. I've heard it said that jocks can double their salary with work outside of, or in conjunction with, their on-air shifts. It's no surprise the time-honored tradition continues, even with the heavy hitters in the industry. Tom Barnard has made obscene amounts of money in his career, both at KQRS and in the commercial voice over biz, and yet he's still hustling gigs.

In recent years we've seen plenty of TV people wading into pools they wouldn't have dipped a toe into years ago. Just as newspaper folk have found income opportunities in radio, sports anchors and reporters from TV land have been offering their talents to the AM and FM dial. Mark Rosen has been the leader in this, dating back to the 1980s.

Randy Shaver has also had a long association with the local radio airwaves, albeit to a far lesser extent, as he mysteriously chats with the metalheads of the 93X morning show. And more recently Joe Schmit has made his presence felt on a recurring basis, thanks largely to his TV station also owning the local ESPN affiliate. (Perhaps he has long had a presence on the airwaves, predating the flip to sports talk, and I just never knew it.)

Although Schmit's arrangement is all about corporate synergy, he's no stranger to shilling for extra cash. Thanks to the loosening of our journalistic standards, the sports guys can hawk all sorts of non-sports products on the airwaves. Schmit has long shilled for local pizza, and was "Vacation Joe" under a previous ownership of Sun Country airlines, an arrangement that Schmit tried to capitalize upon once upon a time, going so far as to leave KSTP-TV for a while. That didn't work out so well. It turned out worse for his buddy, the former owner of the airline.

Schmit may not be hawking vacations this year, but he figured there's a buck or two to be made in the world of print, so he has his own vanity publication to capture them.

It's easy to blur the lines between sports broadcasters and corporate pitchman. These guys may be journalists, technically, but so are the anchors and reporters bringing us important stories via Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. Rosen, Schmit and the rest are merely entertainment reporters.

Where it gets interesting is watching our local journalists find ways to double dip. Examples of this are fewer, but we've seen some entertaining double dipping in recent years. And I'm not talking about Elizabeth Ries or Jason Matheson, mostly because they're not journalists any more, although Matheson went through the motions not so long ago at WCCO-TV.

I'm not familiar with Ries' resume, so I don't know how much news reporting she did or was doing prior to whenever she arrived at KSTP-TV, but when the door opened to become a shill for local products under the guise of co-hosting a local "talk show," she gave up all pretense of being a journalist. She's now determined to milk it for everything she can.

She became a co-host on the company-owned chick talk station in addition to her hourly TV show responsibilities, at least until she gave birth to a child. She continues to smile for the TV camera on weekday afternoons, but ceased gabbing about celebrities all morning on the radio. She was reported to remain a part of the chick talk radio station as a contributor in some capacity, but I can't vouch for that actually happening.

Matheson has dabbled in news reporting, as I noted, but he's carved out his niche in celebrity talk, as evidenced by his tenure in morning drive at the same chick talk station. One morning radio job isn't enough to pay the bills, evidently, as he has been pulling double duty for a while now. He returned to his mistress, Fox 9, earlier this year after about two years apart, and there's no pretense that his job is to report news of any kind.

I get it, maximize your earnings while you can. That second job may not be necessary, but if it keeps you in the public eye and helps solidify your brand, (I detest that term,) rake in that extra cash.

Anchors can make good money reading a teleprompter and smiling for the camera, as if they're some sort of geniuses. Occasionally an anchor steps out from behind the desk, but often they have it easy. I often wonder how well Leah McLean would do if she had to actually report a story.

Reporters who are well established and specialized probably do OK, but reporting isn't a great gig.

A guy who went by the stage name "Bryce Williams" is well known now that he shot and killed a reporter and camera man during a live news segment this past summer. Williams was a former employee of the Virginia TV station the reporter and camera man worked for. He was reported to have earned $36,000 annually while employed by the station. Major market station? No. But Williams wasn't fresh out of college. Perhaps his odd behavior and issues during his previous employment resulted in his being mired in small market TV. Even had his career progressed to Minneapolis, I doubt his salary would have increased exponentially.

How great is the pay in reporting? You can find several examples of former reporters who have given up their career for something that has nothing to do with TV. As pointed out not so long ago, KMSP-TV's Kelsey Soby bailed out of television for a job she hardly seems qualified for. I can name a few people off the top of my head who bailed out in recent years for jobs in public relations, sometimes as spokespeople for governmental agencies. Somehow being a TV reporter makes you good at communicating the business of the county attorney, county sheriff or a police department.

Tim McNiff, a former sports guy who spent many years anchoring the morning newscasts at KARE-TV, bailed out last year to become the executive director of media relations for some Minnetonka p.r. firm. Really, he was the most qualified person for the job? A guy who had spent the previous decade reading news nuggets that others wrote is the best guy to relate to the media? Perhaps, but doubtful.

And why did McNiff give up a life in the spotlight? He was probably bored with it, a little bit anyway. And he might not have been in line for a better gig at Ch. 11, so that might have been a factor. You think he traded in a hefty paycheck and a few hours of on-air time every morning for a 9-to-5 job and a pay cut? Don't bet on it.

The bottom line: TV isn't all that glamorous, and even if it's not construction work, it's not a ticket to easy street. You'd better be lucky like McLean or able to parlay your pseudo-fame like sports anchors or Matheson if you want a nice house in Eden Prairie. And no, I'm not forgetting another option: Marrying a six-figure salary. What car salesman doesn't want pseudo-celebrity arm candy?

Which brings us to Rena Sarigianopoulos. For a while she walked the fine line few reporters do. She double dipped.

Yeah, Jason DeRusha must bank a few bucks for penning his brilliant observations about the restaurant industry. But other than weather people flashing their smiling mugs on the weather page of a local daily newspaper, few non-sports folks seem to make a habit of parlaying their brilliance into meaningful second incomes.

But Sarigianopoulos pulled it off for a while. She inexplicably was chosen as part of a trifecta that helmed a morning show on 96.3 FM. Alongside her colleague Eric Perkins, who also had no business being on local radio, Sarigianopoulos had an early morning gig on FM radio to go along with the many hats she wears at Ch. 11. I'm not sure how often she was absent from her radio gig, but if she worked every weekday morning, then she didn't have a day off, as she is a busy beaver during the weekends at Ch. 11.

Besides anchoring weekend newscasts, Sarigianopoulos would be on the air bright and early on Saturday mornings to do two hours of local chat, which often blurs the line between human interest and paid advertising. And she'd be on the air a few weeknights filing a report from the asphalt jungle. The woman had a crappy Ch. 11 schedule and yet she added weekday mornings to it? Why would she do something so ridiculous? I'm going to guess her mortgage payments were a little hefty for her KARE-TV paycheck.

But she's married now, and her trophy husband is a car salesman. He sells nice cars, too, it sounds. The commission ought to be good. And if so, Sarigianopoulos – who no longer cashes paychecks from 96.3 FM – won't have to find a second job to pay the mortgage.

For every overpaid face on local TV, there are plenty of others who aren't being compensated as if they're anything special. But the public likes to adore these fine folks as if they're royalty. If only they knew.

Let's not shatter the illusion.

Kelsey Soby proved that it sucks working at Fox 9

Not everybody works for peanuts, but as we've learned time and time again, being a local TV broadcaster ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Minneapolis is a major market, and it employs a lot of people. Some of those people are paid obscene amounts of money. Some aren't paid nearly as handsomely as you might think. (More on that soon.)

Without fact checking the story: Kelsey Soby came to KMSP-TV years ago. She babbled about the morning traffic. It's not a prestigious gig. She had worked at smaller stations, and moving to Minneapolis, even in a menial capacity, was a foot in the door.

During her years at Ch. 9 she did fluffy news features occasionally, pinch hit whenever she was needed throughout the morning and co-anchored a nightly radio show disguised as a TV show. When Soby was anointed co-host of "On the Fly," it seemed like her ticket had finally been punched.

After approximately 18 months of co-hosting she left the show. That was this spring. It was claimed that her departure from the weeknight fluff was so that she could focus upon her news duties. Presumably she was going to have an increased role during the morning newscasts.

And within a few months she hastily announced her departure from Ch. 9.

After a great cloak of secrecy, we learned recently that she has a new gig. She is the director of marketing and business development at Periscope. Periscope is "a fiercely independent impact agency." Seriously, that's what they call themselves. Feel free to stop reading for a minute and grab a barf bag.

The Periscope website cites all of Soby's professional experiences as the reason why she's a director of marketing and business development. Yeah, reading traffic tweets on morning television is an essential qualification for a marketing gig.

There's little doubt that after all her time at Ch. 9 Soby was still earning relative peanuts. She traded in her fun, early morning TV persona for a desk job in marketing and business development with some pompous p.r. firm. Yeah, that's why she took a job at Ch. 9, to parlay it into a marketing and business development gig.

Did she need the presumably fatter paychecks her new gig offered? She's married, evidently, so perhaps not. But perhaps being a pretty face on morning TV wasn't fulfilling enough. Maybe she was tired of the weekly circus peanuts Ch. 9 filled her purse with.

You don't hop from one TV gig to the next in order to land a marketing and business development job in Minneapolis.

As prestigious as it is to be a local TV broadcaster, it's not a get-rich-quick profession, as has been proven many times. (Again, more on that soon.)

There's no chance Soby is the most qualified person for the job. Somebody at Periscope either took pity on her and gave her the gig or somebody at Periscope wanted a TV babe on the payroll.

Nobody said life was fair, we all know that. If you can parlay a modest career in local broadcasting into a gig like Soby did, shake what God gave you and cash those checks!