Managing Editor
If you tune into WOKV 690 AM or 106.5 FM on any given weekday morning, you likely hear the voice of Roxy Tyler, co-anchor of “Jacksonville’s Morning News.”
The 22-year Jacksonville broadcasting veteran reports and announces the news during drive-time 5-9 a.m. Monday-Friday and hosts the “Jax Journal” public affairs show that airs at 11 p.m. Saturdays. She also anchors newscasts throughout the day.
For 15 years, Tyler - real name, Paula Scherer - has been arising at 2:30 a.m. on weekdays. She arrives at the suburban Belfort Parkway studios, which house Cox Radio Inc.’s five stations, at 4 a.m.
At 5 a.m., it’s showtime for Tyler and her co-workers, including News Director and Morning News host Rich Jones, reporter and weekend host Jared Halpern, producer and weekend host Adam Kirk, morning anchor and weekend host Jeremy Ratliff and morning producer and sports anchor Jay Gray.
Soon after the show began on a recent morning, Jones said it’s a daily “four-hour race.”
Tyler is from Louisville, Ky., and followed her high-school best friend to Jacksonville, where he landed a job at Winn-Dixie after his family relocation. The two will have been married 29 years on Sept. 4. She said their daughter, Brittney, will graduate from the University of North Florida as a registered nurse July 31, 2011.
Tyler found her calling soon after moving to Jacksonville and joining Winn-Dixie as a cashier then the deli-bakery, where she announced daily specials over the store’s public address system. Customers told her she “should do that for a living.”
That was all it took.
Urged by those who insisted she had a voice for the business, she attended a broadcasting school, filled in on the air for a traffic reporter and received two phone calls that day to do radio.
She has been recruited to every radio job she’s had since, although she spent three years as a television producer before returning.
“TV wasn’t my bag,” she said. “I like the personal one-on-one conversation you can have on the radio. It is more of an intimate type of medium than TV.”
Early on, Tyler changed her radio name because she said she “popped her Ps,” so “Paula” wasn’t the easiest on-air choice for her. Her husband liked “Roxy,” she liked “Tyler,” and that was that.
Her husband, Jeff Scherer, is the produce manager at Winn-Dixie in Neptune Beach.
Tyler said she can go out in public without being recognized, until she speaks. People often recognize her voice.
She’s an anchor not only in the job-description sense but in the community, whose listeners have come to rely on her authoritative, friendly delivery.
“I have survived six owners here and a lot of news hosts have come and gone,” she said.
On a recent morning, Tyler arrived as usual at 4 a.m., joined co-workers to write and produce the morning news, moving swiftly from microphone to computer screen to printer to coffee supply.
The business is challenging, she said. “Especially in today’s world in media. You hit a button and it’s something new. The Internet, social networking, we are always checking sites. It is difficult to keep track of everything.”
That’s fun, though.
“The reason I love my job is every day, I learn something new,” she said.
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