Profile: Kathryn Stroomer's Video Career

Kathryn Stroomer is something of an anomaly among television producers. While others may fondly recall thousands of hours spent before that glowing box during their formative years, Stroomer readily admits to a long-term aversion to television.

"When you grow up in a house with four older brothers," she says, "what ends up being on TV is sports, which bored me to tears back then. So I just never watched television. I was the only person I knew who still had a black-and-white set in 1985. I was probably the only person in America who had never seen even one episode of MASH, Cheers, or The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Today, Stroomer ("Pronounce the o's like Roosevelt") is spending more time making television than she ever did watching it. The twice-monthly live call-in show she currently co-produces and directs, Let's Talk About Jobs, has been gaining in popularity since it first aired last summer on CTV, the New Haven, Connecticut, public access channel. Though she is phasing out her own taped public access show, Career Talk, to make time for the live show, she still finds time to tape special events for a local church, work on an anti-crime show for kids, tape state labor commission conferences, and plan future projects with her former teac…