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As he has for nearly nine years, Mike Ratte will report the sports news Monday on the 10 p.m. newscast on WLVI-Channel 56 in Boston.
The next day - six days before Christmas - Ratte and more than 100 of his co-workers at the station will lose their jobs. The $114 million sale of WLVI from the Tribune Company of Chicago to Sunbeam Television Corp. of Miami is scheduled to close on Monday, and WHDH- Channel 7, another Sunbeam station, will begin airing a 10 p.m. newscast on WLVI on Tuesday.
Ratte is disappointed about the sale and the loss of his job, but not bitter.
"There's no time or place for that," Ratte said yesterday. "That's going to get you nowhere. I have a family. I need to move forward. I've always been very positive."
Employees of WLVI have known for months that they'd lose their jobs in December. There's been no hint of that knowledge during the newscasts, however.
"I have been so impressed," Ratte said, "by the extraordinary professionalism of every person in that building. People have a lot of things on their mind. `What's next? Where are they going?' But everyone has remained extremely professional. It's an amazingly talented group of people. That's why I'm confident that everyone will eventually be fine in finding something. But it's hard."
Ratte knows of a few WLVI technicians who will be retained...