TV Host Retires After 35-Year Run

By Allison Schonter

After 35 years with NewsChannel5, Talk of the Town co-anchor Meryll Rose has retired. The beloved Nashville icon marked her last day at NewsChannel5 on Friday, Jan. 6, concluding a storied career that included interviews with high-profile figures including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, actresses Julie Andrews and Jane Seymour, and country music legends like Randy Travis and Dolly Parton.

A graduate of Hillsboro High School in Nashville and the College of Communications at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Rose landed her first job after graduation as a reporter and weekend anchor at WRCB-TV in Chattanooga. A year later, she returned to Nashville to co-host the city's first magazine show, PM Magazine, which she also produced. She went on to join Jim Owens Entertainment as the producer of the weekly series This Week in Country Music before joining the NewsChannel 5 team in 1987 as the Executive Producer of Talk of the Town. In addition to her role on Talk of the Town, Rose also co-anchored NewsChannel 5's Weekend Morning Report for three years before being named co-host of Talk of the Town.

Harry Chapman who co-hosted the midday show with Rose until his retirement in 2006, said, per NewsChannel5, "Meryll was always ready, you know? If I couldn't do it, which was a lot of the time, she could pick it up and make it happen." Reflecting on their decades together, Amy McLemore, a former producer for Talk of the Town, said Rose and Chapman "were kind of like Regis and Kelly meets Martha Stewart, meets HGTV all wrapped up into the highest rated, most watched, locally produced talk show in the country for decades." Rose was a crucial member of the Talk of the Town team, not only co-anchoring, but also producing, with McLemore revealing that Rose is "the best grammar police, the best spelling expert. If she wasn't so nice and sweet and honest about it, it'd be a little hard to love her."

As Rose joined the NewsChannel 5 team for the final time, sharing that she is looking forward to traveling with her husband, Dan, and spending more time with her five grandchildren, her co-workers were quick to send her off in style. Talk of the Town aired a special six-minute tribute to Rose. Many also took to social media to celebrate the Nashville legend. Rebecca Schleicher celebrated Rose as "the amazing, the talented, the *legendary* Meryll Rose," with Aaron Cantrell calling her "an amazing journalist and just a good person. Congratulations and thanks for being a great mentor to me."

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