SARASOTA (WSNN) – One of SNN’s very own has passed away. Linda DesMarais is a former owner of SNN. And we take you back in time to how she helped start it all.
“Linda was truly a class-act,” the former President Publisher of Herald-Tribune Media Group, Diane McFarlin said.
Linda DesMarais and her husband, Doug Barker formed an investment group and purchased SNN from the New York Times regional newspaper group in early 2009.
McFarlin credits Desmarais for transforming SNN.
“She is single-handedly responsible for raising the bar for SNN and taking it to a level of professionalism,” McFarlin said.
McFarlin and DesMarais created one of the first partnerships between a TV station and a newspaper.
“The Herald Tribune Media Group would share the news with Channel 40 and in exchange, the station would credit the paper on the air,” McFarlin said.
This was unheard of at the time but it would also lay the groundwork for the creation of SNN some five years later.
“I’m certain it could not have been done with anyone other than Linda,” McFarlin said. “She was a wonderful collaborator, she cared so much about the community and she was an innovator. She saw the value in this.”
DesMarais had a lot of friends here on the Suncoast.
“She was a lot of fun, very brilliant, self-made woman,” Coldwell Banker Realty broker, Lynn Robbins said.
“Oh she had the best, sunniest, brightest outlook on life,” an SNN investor, Christine Jennings said. “She laughed easily, and was always there for you. She was in your corner.
“She understood the importance of really being involved in the community and understanding what made the community tick,” McFarlin said. “And I think that’s what made SNN the success that it was.”
Her legacy lives on. Linda DesMarais passed away at age 73 on May 7th, 2021.
SNN was purchased by Citadel Communications, January 1st, 2014 and remains the only, locally-owned TV station in the Tampa Bay region.
