Mario Diaz is coming to KPRC as an investigative reporter sources at channel 2 confirm to mikemcguff.com.
No, not Mario C. Diaz, a name Houstonians will be familiar with since he is the Director of Aviation for the Houston Airport System, but Mario Diaz from WPIX 11 New York.
One can assume Diaz is filling the position vacated by Jace Larson.
Diaz looks like he will be able to make his mark on Houston.
He's won so many awards, I could fill this post up with just his honors such as four Edward R. Murrow Awards, eight NATAS Emmys and seven New York Emmy Awards.
And if awards aren't enough, I remember Diaz in the news when Erykah Badu tried to kiss him during a liveshot!
Clearly television news interested Diaz from an early age.
At age 17, he had a TV news internship. By his junior year at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Diaz was a sports anchor for KTNV 13. He even won an NATAS Southwest Emmy for reporting.
At the age of 19, he announced his first world championship boxing match doing the Spanish play-by-play for HBO Boxing Pay-Per-View. He went on to announce ringside 150 championship fights including fights with Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and more.
In 1999, Diaz was included in a New York Times article on sports broadcasting.
"We're like artists in the sense that we have a minute to paint a picture with words," he said in the article. "We have that blank space and we have to fill it with words."
During the summers of 2001-02, Diaz performed host and play-by-play announcer duties for ESPN’s Tuesday Night Fights.
In 2002, Diaz moved to news as a weekday anchor for WTSP 10 Tampa-St. Petersburg.
Politics came calling in 2008 and Diaz went to work for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid.
In 2011 he joined WPIX.
Readers of mikemcguff.com might even recognize Diaz from this very blog. He wrote a guest post for me back in 2014. The subject...an old KPRC clip.
I guess his hiring was meant to be.
Diaz starts at KPRC September 18.
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