Beyond the innovations, Ms. Hamlin wanted \u201cto make alternative programming for women,\u201d she told the Globe in January 1975, after announcing that she was leaving WBZ. \u201cI wanted to break through the stereotype of what \u2018the little housewife\u2019 wants out of television.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ms. Hamlin, who went on to host another talk show on WCVB-TV, and then reinvented herself as a high-profile communications consultant to lawyers and business chief executives, died last Monday<\/a>. She was 101 and lived in New York City, where she had grown up and where she returned after her Boston TV career.<\/p>\n \u201cA very strong light went out. Sonya was a real force,\u201d said Jerry Wishnow, a longtime friend who formerly was creative services director at WBZ.<\/p>\n \u201cShe didn\u2019t fake it,\u201d he added. \u201cI was a talk show producer. I watched all kinds of talented people faking it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Hamlin never did, Wishnow said. Before sitting down with guests, \u201cshe read the book, she knew all about the people she interviewed.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that \u201cshe asked thoughtful questions \u2014 she could have been a psychiatrist in a second. There was no equivocation. She went right to the heart of the person she was speaking with.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2009, Ms. Hamlin was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame. At WBZ, before beginning her talk show, she was \u201cthe first cultural reporter on nightly news in the country,\u201d according to her Hall of Fame biography<\/a>.<\/p>\n She was named New England\u2019s broadcasting personality of the year in 1972 and received Emmy nominations \u201cfor TV hosting and for her pioneering documentary \u2018China: A Different Path,\u2019 \u201d the Hall of Fame said.<\/p>\n Ms. Hamlin wanted to be more than a midday talk show host.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to use this powerful medium to make ourselves more apparent to each other \u2014 to really communicate, explain, understand,\u201d she told the Globe in 1975. \u201cI tried never to be judgmental and always tried to think of myself as a person at home watching. What would I really want to know, to learn, from this person\u2019s unique experience?\u201d<\/p>\n She later taught that kind of inquisitiveness to lawyers and business executives in her subsequent career as a communications consultant.<\/p>\n That work had its origin in a chance meeting in 1976, when she traveled to South America before joining WCVB-TV, Channel 5.<\/p>\n In the seat next to her on the plane was a Harvard University professor who was running seminars on trial techniques.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018What do you think of this? Why not teach those lawyers how to better speak before juries, how to organize information and appeal to feelings,\u2019 \u201d Ms. Hamlin recalled in a 1990 Globe interview.<\/p>\n Soon after, she was invited to speak with a Harvard Law School official, who asked her to critique a pair of videotaped opening statements from trials. One of them, she said, was \u201cforbidding, almost elitist.\u201d<\/p>\n A few weeks later, she was giving her first lecture at Harvard. Ms. Hamlin went on to publish books, including \u201cHow to Talk So People Listen: Connecting in Today\u2019s Workplace,\u201d and more than one edition of \u201cWhat Makes Juries Listen.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of her initial consulting was with attorneys, especially when she left her cohosting duties at \u201cSunday Open House,\u201d on WCVB.<\/p>\n \u201cMy teaching was going bananas,\u201d she recalled in 1990. \u201cI was overwhelmed by the law \u2014 they were taking me everywhere. I was teaching, teaching, teaching, because they realized this could help them win cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Chief executives of major businesses also sought her insights. <\/p>\n \u201cI enhance people\u2019s presentations,\u201d she told the Globe.<\/p>\n Sonya Borenstein was born in New York City on Oct. 14, 1923, and grew up in the Bronx, the younger of two sisters.<\/p>\n Her father, Julius Borenstein, was an apartment building landlord in the borough. He and Ms. Hamlin\u2019s mother, Sarah, were activists in New York\u2019s Jewish community and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the brains right alongside him and made everything happen,\u201d said David Hamlin, one of Ms. Hamlin\u2019s sons.<\/p>\n Both of Ms. Hamlin\u2019s parents moved to the United States from Poland in the early 1900s.<\/p>\n