“I know I’m going to love it there!”
That was Rosey Edeh’s initial reaction to moving to Ottawa from Toronto after she was offered the co-hosting job on CTV Morning Live, recently rebranded CTV Your Morning Ottawa.
“I was an art history major and am an avid reader,” the vivacious 59-year-old explains. “I knew Ottawa was full of museums and had a great library system.”
Plus, there was the show, the best opportunity yet, after stints in Canada at CFCF and in the U.S. at MSNBC and CNN, to bring her unwavering dedication, irrepressible intelligence, and unbridled joie de vivre to television.
“I was in a restaurant having dinner with my daughter, talking about how much I was looking forward to contributing to the show,” she recounts, “when the waitress suddenly said to us, ‘Eat up—we’re shutting down!’”
The culprit behind that bum’s rush was, of course, COVID. Suddenly, the world in Rosey’s sights, the one she couldn’t wait to be a part of, would have to hold its horses for a while (a looooong while, it turned out) before benefiting from her vivacious vibe and varied skills.
“I wasn’t allowed to stay home,” she details. “I had to go to the studio, I had to establish myself. But while I couldn’t show Ottawa my true colours yet, I realized that I was offering something even more important: information people needed to stay safe.”
In time, the crisis lifted, and so, consequently, did the Rosey-coloured curtain. Almost six years later, Rosey is a much-appreciated fixture on CTV Your Morning Ottawa, a high-
spirited mainstay on which viewers can rely. In the company of current colleagues Melissa Lamb and Will Aiello, she’s the proud, dependable purveyor of a winning blend of breaking news, up-to-the-minute weather, and stories of local interest.
Whatever she’s covering, Rosey’s enthusiasm is always in evidence. By her own admission, she’s particularly passionate about stories, events, and personalities with regional roots, which is why she’s such a cheerleader for the program’s recent makeover.
“The Your Morning brand has been around for ten years. As the name suggests, it’s personalized TV. Today, there are so many ways to get the big information: online platforms, apps, AI…Bringing us into the Your Morning fold shows an organizational commitment to the best kind of local coverage, the kind you’re not going to get the same way from other sources.”
Network television may be struggling, but a popular argument has it, this kind of programming, along with live sports, is helping it enjoy continued relevancy. By restamping the show to promote a consistent look across its A.M. programming line, CTV is constructively creating a nationally recognizable format, making it easier to lure national advertisers. The bigger the brands and the greater the volume, the more an embedded variety of regional coverage can be made available.
Rosey is also a fan of another new convention: the format’s faster pace. “I’m an athlete,” she reminds those of us who’ve gotten so accustomed to her as an on-air personality, we’ve forgotten her Track and Field triumphs at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games in the 1990s. “I have the instincts of a cat. I can’t sit behind a desk for very long. If I go on vacation, you won’t find me sitting on a beach, relaxing. I can’t do that. I have to move. This new format has me on my feet all the time, crisscrossing the studio or out in the field. It’s perfect for me.”
Desk duties will be left to Melissa and Will, whose contrasting qualities bring much, Rosey cites, to the show. “They each bring something different, allowing us to represent a wide swath of the population. Melissa, as a devoted mother, is all about family. Will, being so young, is into the things that that demographic is all about.” While she doesn’t weigh in on herself, Rosey, as any faithful viewer can tell you, is distinguished by the mature perspective she provides; her energy may be admirably adolescent, but there’s an unmistakable groundedness beneath, a residual of lived experience that breaks through the surface of her stories and peppers her perspectives.
As for her relationship with Ottawa, nothing—not COVID, not our anything-goes winters, not having to work hard to keep accommodating the local audience—has come along to dim her initial enthusiasm.
“I wake up every morning, I look at where I am and at what’s going on in my life, and I say, ‘Let’s do it!’”