Lauren Scala is a TV host based in New York City. She began her hosting career at Time Out New York On Demand, where she also worked as an associate producer on several hundred New York City based lifestyle video segments before the channel concluded. She was the female co-host of NYC-TV's entertainment news roundup "City Scoop", hosting 110 episodes from 2008 to 2009. In April of 2009 Scala hosted the official broadcast of the "52nd Annual New York Emmy Awards" and has hosted pieces for Yahoo! and BestBuy.com in addition to appearing in several television commercials. Currently, she is WNBCs 4NewYork Trivia host, a live interactive game that airs on Weekend Today in NY every Saturday morning and also hosts a half hour show out on the town called "Dont Miss This" with Time Out New York for WNBC and their cable channel NY Nonstop. Lauren will be filling in for Megan Meany as WNBC's traffic reporter on Today in New York beginning in September 2010. Scala is also the female spokesperson for Diamondshark.com where she gets to exercise a different side of her personality.
THE BACKSTORY
From a young age Scala had television aspirations. She got her first video camera at the age of 12 and immediately starting making video packages for her classes instead of writing papers like her classmates. When she entered high school, she enrolled in TV and video production classes. Shortly after she began anchoring The Mustang Report, her Long Island high school's daily morning news program that was broadcast to all homeroom classes. In her senior year she collaborated with a good friend to write, produce, and shoot an emotional short film called "Wasted" about the potential consequences of underage drinking and the power of what one decision can hold. "Wasted" went on to win a Long Island-wide High School Video contest hosted by CW Post that year.
With her hopes high, Scala enrolled at Fordham University in the Fall of 2000. After a short stint working at the University's TV studio, the realities began to set in. Even though it was just 25 miles away from her small town glory, things were much harder. In the Winter of 2001, she was offered an internship at Clive Davis' J-Records in publicity. She took it. This internship was the beginning of her foray into the real working world of entertainment. By that summer, at the tender age of 20, she was filling in as an assistant in Marketing at the label. While enjoying her time in publicity and marketing, TV was still constantly on her mind. In the Spring of 2002, she landed a production internship at NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly. She was awarded the internship duty of bringing the note cards with Daly's questions down to his dressing room before the show. On days where she found herself alone in the elevator ride down to the studio she would practice reading the hosts questions as if she were the one asking, then eagerly sit in the rear of the audience studying his execution and delivery. Yet still unsure of how to start her on-air career Scala went back to publicity where she landed a year-long internship at DreamWorks Pictures NYC office her senior year at Fordham.
She was hired in August of 2004 at DreamWorks, but after a two and a half year run her time was up after a major studio merger. In April of 2006, she was hired by City on Demand, a production company that was creating content for a new On-Demand channel for Time Out New York Magazine. Although hired to do publicity for the channel, about a year after she came onboard, as chance would have it, she was asked to fill in for one of the channels hosts to cover a big event. Three hours and 50+ interviews later, Scala stepped foot on the path to the place she's always wanted to go.
