desks on the set, as they contributed to the fray and chatted with Wright and Williams. The format soared in the ratings, a true accomplishment long labored by NETV. Ultimately, the news program's producers started feuding, and Wright, who felt caught in the middle, resigned from WNEV in May 1988. Just prior to Wright's departure, Jeff Rosser had left the station at the close of his contract, and arriving in his place was former WCVB news director Jim Thistle. By September 1988, the Live at Five format was dropped (as it remained the intellectual property of ATV), and the 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. block was restructured as a more conventional newscast, anchored by Williams and Lester Strong. After Williams departed for WABC-TV in 1990 (where she remains to this day), Strong anchored with new arrival Edye Tarbox in the 5:00 p.m. hour. Besides the locally prominent journalists who attempted to leverage WNEV's news, a few future national talents had brief stints at the station in the 1980s. Bill O'Reilly, long before his national exposure on Inside Edition and Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, co-anchored NEWSE7EN Weekend in 1982–83. Soon after, O'Reilly also became the host of the station's weekday afternoon talk/lifestyle program, New England Afternoon (which replaced the ill-fated two-hour magazine show Look, canceled after its first season). His successor on the weekend newscast was Paula Zahn, since a newswoman of many television networks, who co-anchored with Lester Strong from 1983 to 1985. Rehema Ellis, who joined the station in 1985 as a general assignment reporter, eventually left to become an NBC News national correspondent in 1994. From May to November 1988, future Today host Matt Lauer hosted WNEV's mid-morning talk show Talk of the Town. Two more WNEV/WHDH alumni would then hit the big time: reporter Miles O'Brien, a 1987 arrival to the station, left to join CNN in 1989. Edye Tarbox, now E.D. Hill, who was an anchor/reporter at WHDH from 1990 to 1992, later worked at Fox News Channel from 1999 to 2008. Tom Ellis, who had been dethroned of the male lead anchor position at the station in 1986, came full circle when Inside Edition Extra, a companion series to the syndicated program Inside Edition, appeared on WHDH's fall 1992 daytime schedule. Ellis had been named the host of IE Extra, which was a co-production of WHDH-TV and King World Productions; Ellis, thus, was