Some of you may remember the New Year's thread when KTLA dumped longtime Rose Parade host Stephanie Edwards out in the rain and gave Michaela Pereira her old seat in the booth beside Bob Eubanks. Fans of Edwards were horrified, Stephanie gets wet became the most-read post here for the month of January, and columnists railed. The Register's Frank Mickadeit returned to the subject today after hearing Edwards speak before an anti-ageism group at the Mission Viejo Country Club.

I learned two critical things Saturday from Stephanie Edwards, the subject of my most controversial column: 1) Applied to the face, Preparation H may help reduce wrinkles. 2) There's virtually no chance she'll be returning to the KTLA booth for the Rose Parade, despite an angry nation that flooded the TV station with phone calls and mail...

The nation tuned into KTLA's Rose Parade coverage the morning of Jan. 2 to find a strange woman in the booth next to Bob Eubanks. Edwards was reporting from the bleachers while being drenched by a rare parade downpour.

I wrote it up. I stopped counting reader responses when they hit about 300.

Edwards, who proudly notes she is "62 and a half," talked candidly Saturday about ways to keep wrinkles at bay, noting that before she recently switched to Oil of Olay, "for about five years I was using Preparation H and doing just fine."

But even that didn't keep KTLA from wanting a younger face in the booth. Edwards saw it purely as a business decision in which one factor might have been that she had to be given a separate contract, while her replacement is already on staff. She does think "programmers are confusing 'tradition' and being 'old-fashioned.'"

She urged the women to pick their battles on the ageism front. Her own loss, she said, is "not going to be the end of the world. War, poverty, famine, flood – that's the end of the world for those who experience that." After you fight the good fight and militancy doesn't work, move on, she advised, because life is too short...

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Afterward, I asked Edwards what her role will be in the 2007 parade telecast. She's signed to two more years of pre-parade reporting, she says, but doesn't know if she'll be used during the parade.

"I have no illusions I'll be going back to the booth. They are not going back. I'd like to be in the stands with a better umbrella."

Previously:
Today in Stephanie
Stephanie clears the air (some)

KTLA screen cap via LATimes.com