Tom Koch & Melanie Lawson hit 30 years at KTRK

It's the year of 30 in the Houston television market. First we had KHOU 11's Ron Trevino and KTRK 13's Don Kobos hit the big 3-0 at their respective stations.

Now a reader points out that KTRK anchors Tom Koch and Melanie Lawson both hit their 30th anniversaries with the ABC owned station in the past two weeks will hit their 30th anniversaries with the ABC owned station.

Koch's anniversary was August 10th, Lawson's August 14th. CORRECTION: Turns out neither anchor has hit the actual anniversary date yet, in fact, both started on the same day. I couldn't find any information about the anniversaries on abc13's website, but did find mentions on its Facebook account. The station posted on the above crossed out dates that the anchors celebrated their 30th anniversaries, but that must have been the day they received their Disney 30th swag. The actual start date for both Koch and Lawson was September 13, 1982.

According to his bio, Koch joined KTRK in 1982 as a reporter for 13 Eyewitness News. In 1987, in addition to his reporting duties, he became the morning anchor for 13 Eyewitness News at 7am which has obviously expanded over the years and been very dominant in the ratings.

According to her bio, Lawson first started as a full-time general assignments reporter and later became the co-anchor of Live at 5 and Channel 13's midday show. She also hosts a weekly Community Affairs program called Crossroads.

Many Houston TV stations have newsrooms that have as much employee foot traffic heading out the door as exits at Minute Maid Park right now (well maybe the ball park doesn't have that many people coming back in so it is a bad analogy this season).

Considering in the past two months we have three people at KTRK arriving at 30 years says something about why that station does so well in the ratings.

Congrats to Tom and Melanie, two great anchors who are just as nice off the air as they are everyday behind the anchor desks. CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here