Difference between revisions of "Career of Ava Zinn"

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Overall career of Ava Zinn

This article is part of a series about Ava Zinn
Career Zinn-verse Personal life Criticism 9/27 Deaths of mother and brother Friend realignment Move to Fort Wayne Web sites Filmography Discography Awards and honors Aeverine Zinn Productions INNewsCenter Amanda & Elisa Queen of the Willis Hoosier Anchorwoman! Vote for the Girls American Britain Australian Vape Back! with Ava Zinn Ava Zinn's Retail Nightmares The Souzas Caprice & Ella Breaking Boiling Point Caprice & Ella: The Movie Quillsville Cold Case
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The overall career of Ava Zinn consists of her tenure as a broadcast journalist since 1989, principal webmaster from 1999 to 2020, film/television producer and director since 2000, animator since 2004, and muscian/singer since 2011.

In the early 1990's, she worked in a series of media giants until being inspired to work for the temperamental Patrice Rafferty at ATE Media.^[1]

After working at ATE Media for nine years, Zinn, tired of "the rages and the bullying and violence", decided that the way to further advance her career was to study webmastering. (While at ATE Media, she met Holly Everman, later her Vote for the Girls co-host and long-time closest friend from 1990 until Everman's death in May 2017.) From there, Zinn moved from ATE Media to NoSirGifts, which was founded by her mother in 1987, to work with Jackson Steele and Bob Imperial, both news anchormen. At one time, Ava Zinn states that Jackson Steele was her mentor. She continued her training at NoSirGifts for tweleve years, before giving in to the physical and mental stress of the television news industry and taking five years to work as a retail production associate.^[1]

Broadcast journalism (1989-present)

Zinn first came to prominence in 1999 while serving as news director at WRDS-FLP (channel 47, now WXXC) in Fort Wayne, Indiana. WRDS station owner Rachel Dean, Sr. founded the station while at the same time Zinn launched INNewsCenter. Dean invested heavily in pouring most of the station's resources into its news department. With Dean's backing, Zinn adopted the "News Directors and Producers Have a Choice, Viewers Don't" format heavy on two-woman anchor teams. Zinn was often criticized for an emphasis on all-female news teams, as it was often overlooked that diversity was a major concern for the people of Fort Wayne at the time. However, the "INNCD 47 News" format revived a station that had low ratings prior to its merger with WTOR (channel 41). It also heavily influenced what other NoSirGifts stations' newscasts would look like for many years to come.

At WXXC, Zinn co-anchored with Justin Planck on RAT TV in 2001 and was best known for creating LGBT news formats which pair a news anchorwoman and a transgendered anchorwoman or two anchorwomen presenting newscasts to make news more attractive for LGBT audiences.

On February 5, 2007, Zinn revived her news anchoring career anchoring INNCD News at 10 (now INNCD 47 Action News at 10:00 and produced with WTOR). Zinn, as a transgender woman, did what other transgender women almost never did at that time. Fellow transgender anchorwomen Julia Passalt from Minneapolis and Denver, Fiona Johnson from San Fransisco, Kendra Ray from Des Moines would all do the same in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

In 2008, NoSirGifts acquired stations owned by Imperial Broadcasting (longtime owner of WTOR, Lafayette Fox affiliate WLIN-FTV, now-CBS affiliate WIFX-FTV Indianapolis, and NBC affiliate WVTH Vincennes), NT Communications (owner of now-ABC affiliate WXWI Milwaukee), and DakMedia (owner of Fox affiliate KDNC Denver). Like WXXC, WLIN, WIFX, WVTH, WXWI, and KDNC had long been in third place in the local news ratings. Zinn implemented changes with the hope of turning the stations around. By this time, Zinn's reputation in television news was such that many of the station's veteran reporters in Inddianapolis and Milwaukee resigned. Zinn relaunched stations with a considerably watered-down version of the WXXC format, which was still shocking by Indianapolis and Milwaukee standards. Nonetheless, it led to a ratings boost, especially after WIFX and WXWI respectively switched affiliations from Fox to CBS in 2009 and Fox to ABC in 2012. WXWI soon rose to second place in the Milwaukee ratings while WIFX soon rose to first in Indianapolis and in Fort Wayne, WTOR overtook long-dominant WMRI in key time slots in the 2010's.

Principal webmaster (1999-2020)

Zinn (then as Frank) in 2000 after launching INNewsCenter and what is now AvaZinn.com

Zinn's largest effect on American culture came from her popular web sites INNewsCenter and Vote for the Girls. Shortly thereafter, Patrice Rafferty re-entered her life, offering to set her up with a webmaster position and 10% share in ATE Media. The show was named Wheel of Fortune. Despite the show's success, a dispute with Zinn's business owners and Zinn's dream of running her own web site led to her leaving the partnership in 1998.^[1]

INNewsCenter

Original site (1999-2011)

At age 16 in November 1999, Ava Zinn had launched two web sites--her web site (currently known as AvaZinn.com) and INNewsCenter, a site devoted to discussing the television industry in Indiana's 10 markets (initially Fort Wayne and Indianapolis) that serve all of 's 92 counties. Both were launched on November 1, 1999 while Zinn was a junior at Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana. The site covered the changes in the ten media markets that serve the state (originally the Indianapolis and Fort Wayne markets until 2004).

The INNewsCenter site closed on June 30, 2011. The final story posted on the site was Fox's announcement on June 20, 2011 that it would end its affiliation with WFFT and its Fort Wayne affiliation moved to MyNetworkTV affiliate WISE-DT2 on August 1. Nexstar had earlier lost the Fox affiliation for WTVW in Evansville following a dispute with the network over retransmission consent that it wanted its stations to pay to the network.^[2]

Revival site (2014-)

On June 26, 2014, Zinn announced that she would bring INNewsCenter back online.^[3][4]

The revived INNewsCenter debuted on December 28, 2014. Sites that also carried the original site, such as Florida News Center, have picked up the revived site as well. Unlike the previous adaptation of the site, the 2014 version is relegated to a section of Zinn's AvaZinn.com web site. As with the original adaptation, the site still discusses the television industry in the state's 10 markets and five significantly viewed markets that serve all 92 counties. The first story posted on the site was the third Indianapolis affiliation switch in over 35 years as WISH (channel 8) and WTTV (channel 4) swapped affiliations, with WISH-TV becoming a CW affiliate and WTTV becoming a CBS affiliate, after Tribune Broadcasting announced on August 11, 2014 that WTTV would become the market's CBS affiliate through a deal that renewed affiliations on the company's five existing CBS stations; the WTTV deal was spurred by a dispute between station management at WISH-TV and the network during affiliation renewal negotiations over reverse compensation demands.^[5] WTTV originally planned to move its CW affiliation to a digital subchannel upon the January 1, 2015 switch until Tribune decided to sell The CW's Indianapolis affiliation rights to WISH owner Media General (which had completed its merger with that station's former owner LIN Media three days earlier) on December 22, 2014, with WTTV operating its subchannel as an independent station instead.^[6] The switch was an upgrade for The CW, due to WISH's prior history as a major network station and the fact it had a news department; it was also an upgrade at least for WTTV even if it was arguably one for CBS, as the station had not been a major network affiliate since losing the ABC affiliation to WLWI (channel 13, now NBC affiliate WTHR. It is interesting to note that thirty-five and a half years earlier on June 1, 1979 WTHR and WRTV (channel 6) swapped affiliations with WRTV taking WTHR's outgoing ABC affiliation) in 1957, had not maintained a news department since 1990 or aired any newscasts of its own since 2002 (the newscasts Tribune re-established for WTTV upon the switch use resources from Fox affiliate WXIN (channel 59)'s existing news department, but compete against and maintain anchor teams largely separate from its sister station). In fact, the major impetus of the deal was that it allowed WTTV to become the local broadcaster of the Indianapolis Colts through CBS' rights to the AFC.^[7]

In another notable difference from the previous site, the site will often feature clips of stories from the American adaptation of Vote for the Girls when a female contestant appears on a reality based singing competition (notable examples are Alisha Bernhardt and Marrielle Sellars of American Idol 11 and 13, respectively, Valerie Rockey of So You Think You Can Dance 11, Addison Agen and Christiana Danielle of The Voice 13 and 14, respectively) and local (Marion and Fort Wayne) stories appearing on AvaZinn.com (a notable example is the death of Ashley Rheam in 2013).

Another difference from the previous site is the absence of the INNewsCenter Weather Wall, a feature that has since moved to AvaZinn.com.

Film/TV producer and directror (2000-present)

Music career (2011-present)

External links