Donna Deegan - Name Changes

Name Changes

When Donna first joined WTLV in the late 1980s, her on-air name was Donna Clewis. After marrying WTLV's sports director Dan Hicken in 1990, she became known as Donna Hicken. After her marriage to WTLV chief meteorologist Tim Deegan, Donna retained her last name of "Hicken" on the air. However, on October 29, 2007, Donna officially changed her name on newscasts to Donna Deegan. This also coincided with a complete change of the First Coast News graphics package.

In a 'Donna's Journal' entry on the First Coast News website dated November 12, 2007 Mrs. Deegan went on to explain the change:

Hello Folks, Donna Deegan here. For those of you who haven't been watching this past week, where've you been? Seriously, if you haven't had the time to tune in, I have changed my name to, well, my name. So many of you have e-mailed to say "Hey Donna, it's about time!" Well, fortunately the station thought so too. Tim and I have been married for more than five years, and I have been Deegan everywhere but on the air since then. So why now? Well, there is no great strategy here. For some time now the station has been putting together a new look for our news opens, graphics etc. That's a big deal and very expensive so it's not done very often. While making those plans they very graciously asked if I would like to change my on-air name. I talked it over with my kids and with Tim and everyone said "go for it" so I did. That simple. The decision had nothing to do with my recent recurrence. It will be fun to see if I can actually call myself the correct name every day. Between chemo and my normal space cadet nature, I think the betting pool is in full swing.