Thursday 26 January 2012

The mystery of Tamara Taggart

Three weeks after the sudden disapered from Vancouver's CTV News At Six Tamarra Taggart has emerged with somer serious personal news. On January 3rd before was due to go the air she tweeted the following...


Wow. At 5:30pm I was hit with a major case of food poisoning. Passed out at work, the rest is too much info! Missed my anniversary show!

The following tweet hours later blamed the food poisioning on Lasanga. This would be the less peep out of Taggart. Tonight three weeks off the air, and off the internet Taggart let her fans know where she has been.

I’m back! Well not quite. It wasn’t food poisoning, the lasagna was wrongly accused. Had emergency surgery. All is well, back in March.



A full blog was posted on CTV's website...
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120125/bc_ctv_news_british_columbia_tamara_taggart_update_120125/20120125/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

While she mentioned the seriousness of her health circumstances she did not elaborate on what exactly she was treated for. Taggart has lived a very open personal life which has discussed in great detail through various local publication like TV Week magazine and in her blog Modern Mommy. Despite the admission of surgery all it does it add more mystery to her sudden disaperence from television.

The day before Taggart fell ill she wrote a blog regarding her aniversary in the anchor's seat. T




It's been exactly one year since I anchored CTV News at 6 for the very first time. Time flies. A year ago today I was freaking out, for a number of reasons. It's always nerve-wracking when you start something new, especially when you know everyone is watching.

2011 was an interesting year. It was exhilarating when it was announced that I would be anchoring the news with Mike Killeen but also quite sad & stressful - I definitely discovered who my real friends were. There's a lot to be said for having grace and some people just didn't have it. I found that people reacted in one of three very different ways: those who were genuinely happy for me and told me, those who were angry that I got the job as they felt I wasn't worthy of it (these people had no problem telling anyone who would listen - but never me) and then there were the people who said nothing and just stopped talking to me.

It's the people that stopped talking to me that I find most interesting as most of them were people I considered friends. Obviously I was mistaken. At first my feelings were hurt and I obsessed about it, wondering what I could do to make it better. Now I don't care. Those people weren't my friends...a tough lesson to learn, but now I know.

The blog ended with a reflection of the year. It reflects a stressful transition over what many would argue was a risky manuvure on CTV's part. Taggart was clearly the station's most popular personality, and was trying to transend her role as a weather presenter. In addition to doing articles on parenting she co-hosted olympic medal ceremonies with Ben Mulrouny and won a audience survey to co-host Live with Regis. Taggart was still on Maternity leave after giving birth to her third child when she was named to replaced 35 year veteran Pamela Martin on CTV Vancouver's flagship newscast. While arguably worthy of a promotion, and a 15 year veteran of doing live television, her absense of experience in reporting on hard news alarmed skeptics. The promotion for the revamped newscast focused heavily of the personalities in the newscast and Taggart sparkeled in the promos. However when she was on camera it was a different issue. It was clear she was uncomforatble at first when dealing with the serious items of the day. However time corrected this inital problem and she seemed more at ease and gave the appropiate cadence to the issues of the day, while still excelling at the "happy talk" format which is the standard of local news. There is a strong chemistry with vertan reporter Mike Killene.

While no names were mentioned in those who estinguished their relationships with Taggart when she was given the anchor's seat. It wouldn't be fair to name names but it is nto surprising that there would be stress. It is a highly unusual for the weather presenter to move into role of news anchor, with no news experience, especailly when there were other anchors who had been at their psotions for years. It is logically to assume that there would be jeleousy and even anger, when Taggart was having issues with early brodacasts. Her on air performance improved but one has to wonder about the costs.

In the next few weeks we are sure to find more details about Taggart's illness along with a lot of gossip about what is happening to her. Questions of stress are bound to be raised. She ceratinly raised in the issue with her blog. Taggart has three children under the age of 5, and her oldest has Downs Syndrome. She has often written about the challeneges and sucesses she has had in being the mother of a special needs child.

The lack of details from this open book person does have me worried as I fill in the blanks with my imagination. My best wishes for her recovery and return to television.

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