Sands celebrates 41 years at KWQC, eager for life after PSL

After 41 years of being welcomed into Quad Cities homes and sharing tens of thousands of the community’s stories, Paula Sands will sign off Friday, Dec. 29, as host of the KWQC-TV program that bears her name. As she counts down the final episodes of Paula Sands Live (PSL), the television pioneer sat down with a QCBJ reporter to talk about her career, that signature 30-year-old program and where she hopes life will take her next. The Nov. 29 interview also included a chance to watch a PSL live broadcast that was No. 8 on the countdown to Ms. Sands’ final PSL broadcast. It is perhaps a mark of the success of the KWQC programming she pioneered that a new 3 p.m. lifestyle program will begin airing on Feb. 5, 2024, called Quad Cities Live. It will be hosted by KWQC’s Morgan Ottier. In the meantime, however, the next few weeks will continue to be time to reflect on the past, enjoy the present and contemplate a future full of possibilities for Ms. Sands, who first joined the station then known as WOC in August 1982. At age 23 she was the youngest co-host of the syndicated local PM Magazine lifestyle programs in the country. The Nov. 29 PSL episode was an emotional one for the smooth and always professional Ms. Sands and it included post-broadcast hugs from PSL regulars Tenneil Register of RF Reclaimed in Grandview, Iowa, and Travel Iowa’s Jessica O’Riley. Those women represent a tiny fraction of the people who have told their stories on PSL. “I’ve had every kind of guest and interviewed more than 50,000 people,” Ms. Sands estimated. That amounts, the Moline native said, to “the population of the city where I grew up.” No wonder she’s not only recognized in the QC but at “every vacation I’ve ever taken wherever it is – even overseas – I run into people who know me.”

PSL fans are everywhere

For example, there was the trip to the sparsely populated French Riviera village of Eze with her husband David Sands. “We’re walking down this little windy stone village road and this little family walks up – beautiful people, mom and dad and cute little kids like out of a magazine – and the mom says, ‘Is that Paula Sands?’”  The Sands were, she said, “floored” to meet a family from Rock Island there. Equally remarkable, she said, was that shortly after posing for photos with the Rock Island fans Mr. Sands spotted actress Jane Fonda vacationing in Eze. Such unlikely encounters show two things, Ms. Sands said: “the power of TV and that Quad Citians are everywhere.” That spontaneity and her love of the Quad Cities are also key reasons she has loved a job she never expected to be doing when she began her broadcast career at Moline’s WQUA while she was a student at the former Academy of Radio & Television in Bettendorf. The radio station was not only where the former Paula Gillette met co-worker and future husband David Sands, she also fell in love with voice and production work and writing copy and commercials. The job “didn’t pay a darn thing,” she said, “but it was just fun.” So much so, she said, “I would have kept that radio job forever.” Then, however, while watching PM Magazine she learned a co-host was leaving and auditions were planned to fill her job. She found the small newspaper advertisement for the position – which read “Would you like to have the job of your life? Come to WOC Saturday morning for an audition.” –  and applied. Surviving the audition was just the start of her journey. “Don Ryne was the main anchor here when I was 25 and he was 50,” Ms. Sands said of her mentor. “I was young enough to be his daughter and I grew up watching him so it was kind of scary when I first started, but he was always so kind and patient with me because I had no idea what I didn’t know.” She learned on the job, which initially included hosting PM Magazine and anchoring the 6 p.m. news. She later hosted 5PMLive, an earlier version of the daily news. Then in 1983, her signature Paula Sands Live was born. 

Spontaneity can be a bear

While the names of the programs she led may have changed, one constant has always been the unpredictability and messiness of live television. Take for example, animal wrangling.

A young Paula Sands found that out the hard way when she met a Pepsi-drinking pet bear three months into her PM Magazine gig. When the PM team met the owner and his bear in a park, she said, “I’m feeding the bear the bottle of Pepsi and I’m speaking to the camera and you see the bear’s jaws open up ... and he wraps his jaw around my thigh,” Ms. Sands recalled. “I jumped out of frame so fast and so spontaneously that he was not able to bite down on my leg.”  Thankfully, she said, she was still young enough to jump that fast and the bear bite didn’t break the skin, though it did leave it dented and bruised for a time. “Now I wouldn’t have taken my eyes off that bear. Forty years later I’m much smarter,” she quipped. That doesn’t mean animal encounters are no longer a challenge. It’s still messy when frightened four-legged guests share their bodily functions with the host and her audience and when they otherwise behave like, well, animals. In fact, moments before the Nov. 29 broadcast, PSL’s animal guest – a beautiful, four-month-old orange tabby named “Grinch” –  managed to squeeze through a tiny crack in his cage and zoom down the steps near the studio and into a dark basement. Before Grinch could find a good hiding place and just in time to star in the show, a fast-acting Patti McRae of the Quad City Animal Welfare Center chased down the frightened feline.  His escape proved, however, that anything can happen on live TV and usually does, Ms. Sands said.  Indeed, two-legged guests can be equally challenging when they, say, lose their train of thought or go mute with fear. “I’ve talked to people on air so scared they couldn’t open their mouths,” said Ms. Sands, who has a knack for distracting them and drawing them out.  “It’s all live and if you ever had to do it again, it would never ever be the same. That’s what I love about live TV,” she added. “Sometimes that spontaneity just sparkles and it’s magic, golden moments and some days it’s a bunch of clunkers and I don’t mean the people, I mean the moments just aren’t jelling,” Ms. Sands said. In those cases it’s good to remember, she said, that “every show is a good show for somebody,” for example, the people whose stories that day’s broadcast shares with PSL viewers. So why is she leaving behind what she loves? In addition to turning 65 last February, Ms. Sands said, after four decades at KQWC and 30 years with PSL “I just felt it was time.” She’s also looking forward to figuring out what comes next. “When I gave my announcement right here on this set about my retirement, I called it a graduation because I prefer to think of it that way,” she said. “Retirement sounds like the end of something.” 

Not an end, a beginning

“That’s what you do when you graduate from school, right? You might be kind of sad about what you’re leaving behind but you know that there is something new and fresh. Not that I really know what that is, but I’m looking forward to the time and freedom to figure that out.” As she looks for that next “cool thing,” Ms. Sands remains grateful for the opportunity to work at KWQC and live in the Quad Cities. “My experience has been so positive. This is my hometown. I grew up in Moline and I loved it. My husband grew up in East Moline,” she said. “We’re both Quad Cities kids and we stayed here and loved it, raised our family here and it’s been home and will remain home.” Ms. Sands’ biggest hope for her replacement, she said, is that she will love the job as much as she did.  

At a Glance: Paula Sands

Born: Moline. First job: WQUA radio station, Moline. Education: Moline High School, 1977 graduate; and Academy of Radio and Television, Bettendorf. Pioneering: Joined WOC (now KWQC) in 1982 as the nation’s youngest PM Magazine co-host and anchored the 6 p.m. Mentors: KWQC anchors Charles King, Don Ryne. PSL: Hosted her signature Paula Sands Live program for 30 years. Its final episodes will air Wednesday-Friday, Dec. 27-29 at 3 p.m. on KWQC. Awards include: A regional Emmy in 2015; inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle. Family: Married to David Sands. They have two daughters and five granddaughters. Favorite vacations: The Sandses love to travel, especially to Arizona where they often run into Quad Citians. The couple also has hosted more than a dozen KWQC Holiday Vacation tours.