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Friday, November 28, 2025
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Hunter Sowards joins CBS Los Angeles
Hunter Sowards joined CBS Los Angeles KCBS and KCAL Los Angeles as a reporter in the summer of 2025, after serving as an anchor and reporter at sister station CBS13 Sacramento KOVR.
An award-winning journalist, Sowards joined CBS13 in 2023 after several years anchoring and reporting for KUSI in San Diego.
Before heading west, she was the primary anchor at KTRE 9, the station she grew up watching in her hometown of Nacogdoches, Texas.
Sowards is a 2016 graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University, where she majored in radio and television broadcasting and earned placement on the Dean’s and President’s Lists. As part of her studies, she interned at KTRE and later at KLTV in Tyler.
Her storytelling has earned wide recognition, including multiple first-place awards from the San Diego Press Club, four Emmy nominations, and finalist honors in the 2023 San Diego Union-Tribune Readers Poll for “Best Local News Anchor” and “Best Television Personality.”
Nic Garcia joins FOX 11 Los Angeles
Nic Garcia, an Emmy Award–winning journalist, joined FOX 11 Los Angeles KTTV as a reporter in the summer of 2025 after serving as a weekend anchor and reporter at ABC30 KFSN Fresno, California.
His reporting career has taken him across the West, with previous stops in Fresno, El Paso, and Western Montana.
Garcia is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton, where he earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism with a minor in Political Science. He is also an active member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).
He previously worked for:
ABC30 Fresno (KFSN) — Anchor/Reporter (September 2021–July 2025)
KFOX-TV El Paso — Breaking News Anchor (September 2019–September 2021)
NBC Montana — General Assignment Reporter (July 2018–August 2019)
KNBC Los Angeles — News Intern (January 2017–May 2017)
Titan Communications, CSU Fullerton — Anchor/Reporter (July 2016–May 2017)
"Houston: Remember When" special
"Houston: Remember When" was a 1998 series produced by KUHT 8 that took a nostalgic journey through Houston’s past, with some famous television names hosting.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Brittany Costello joins WFAA
Brittany Costello joined WFAA 8 Dallas-Fort Worth as a reporter in July 2025.
Since I missed this big summer news, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, I am the real turkey here! Those who cover this news days after me will be cranberry sauce then (although I admit I actually like cranberry sauce...I know, one of the few).
Costello joins WFAA from KOB 4 New Mexico, where she was an investigative reporter and had worked since May of 2016.
She started her TV career with Newschannel 6 KAUZ Wichita Falls, where she reported and anchored weekend evenings.
WFAA is a homecoming for Costello since she is from Fort Worth and graduated from the University of North Texas (UNT).
While at KOB, Emmy nominee Costello won the William S. Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award and the New Mexico Broadcasters Association Best Reporter award.
KPRC 2 Houston at-risk videotapes saved by TAMI
The Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) in Austin has completed a major preservation effort funded by a competitive grant from the Texas Historical Foundation (THF), safeguarding 200 at-risk videotapes from KPRC 2 Houston.
The project, awarded in 2024, focused on rescuing deteriorating tapes from KPRC’s extensive news and production library. TAMI announced that all 200 tapes have now been digitized, preserved, and made publicly available, delivering fresh access to key moments in Houston and Texas history.
"We believe the KPRC collection is one of the most complete archives of local news in the U.S., spanning 1961 to 2010," TAMI Managing Director Elizabeth Hansen told mikemcguff.com. "It lets viewers experience Houston—and Texas—history as it happened. Preserving it takes skilled technicians and catalogers, plus funding to maintain aging equipment and cover essential behind-the-scenes costs like servers, offsite backups, streaming infrastructure, and web hosting—keeping this invaluable resource safe, searchable, and accessible for all."
The newly digitized materials include coverage of Houston events, such as:
- Major weather events, including the impact of Hurricane Alicia (1983).
- Footage documenting the local impact of national issues, such as the Gulf Fishing Fight involving Vietnamese immigrants and local fishermen.
- Historic cultural debuts like the Menil Collection, the Wortham Theater Center, and Rendez-vous Houston.
- Key moments in Houston sports history, including the Astros' first NLCS appearance (1980).
- Iconic pop culture, featuring the star-studded premiere of Urban Cowboy.
While the completed project marks a significant step forward, TAMI says the scale of the preservation challenge remains enormous. The organization is working to digitize tens of thousands of KPRC films and videos, part of an archive that began accumulating roughly 700 hours of content per year in the late 1960s and continued at that pace for 40 years. That translates to an estimated 28,000 hours of footage requiring inventory, digitization, and cataloging.
TAMI estimates that Texas’s local TV stations collectively produced more than 3,000 years of content during the pre-digital era. For KPRC-TV alone, approximately 71,000 items remain undigitized — a multi-million-dollar undertaking that could take more than 4 decades to complete. While the film might last 40 years, the videotapes are estimated to have around one to two decades before they are unusable!
To help accelerate the work, TAMI is launching a GivingTuesday fundraising push on December 2, aiming to raise $3,000 for its next round of digitization. An anonymous donor has pledged to match all contributions, doubling the impact of each gift.
TAMI says community support is critical to ensuring that thousands of hours of Texas history don’t remain trapped on aging, fragile tape.
Last year, I covered a TAMI event held at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center, Houston (MATCH), called "Tonight at 7" Houston Television From The Archive, featuring TAMI's extensive KPRC 2 and KHOU 11 collections.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Melanie Lawson announces retirement
Melanie Lawson announced today during the 5pm newscast that she will retire at the end of January 31, 2026, after serving more than four decades as an ABC13 KTRK Houston anchor.
During a station meeting earlier in the day, KTRK president and general manager Mike Carr told employees that January will be full of celebrations for Lawson.
In that meeting, Lawson shared her journalistic wisdom with colleagues.
"Telling the truth is always the best way to go and maintaining your integrity," Lawson said. "Our viewers expect nothing less than that, and ultimately, we're just their eyes and ears. We're not really there for ourselves."
And as someone who regularly worked long hours past her shift, she reminded them to enjoy their personal lives, too.
"Give yourself and your family a break," she added. "What we do is not so important that you don't want to spend time with your kids or your spouse or your dog, whatever it may be. Take it from me, you don't want to look up one day and feel like you've missed everything. I know what I'm saying, I spent way too many late nights here logging and writing and missing out on great parties or quiet conversations, pizza, and Netflix with the people you love."
“For nearly 25 years, Melanie and I worked side-by-side," former ABC13 Live at Five anchor Art Rascon told mikemcguff.com. "She is the most generous, genuine, understanding, and compassionate person I have ever met. It was an absolute joy to work with her and learn from her. I wish her the best in her retirement! She deserves it!”
Known as the calming voice of the iconic Live at 5 newscast and 13 Eyewitness News at 11am, Lawson started at Channel 13 after a totally different career in New York City.
A proud lifelong Houstonian, she first walked through the station’s doors as an intern and became a reporter on September 13, 1982. Journalism was a second career chapter for Lawson, who, after earning a degree in politics from Princeton University and a joint Law and Journalism degree from Columbia University, practiced law in New York at a Wall Street firm for three years.
When Lawson told me she was retiring, she was surprised by my shocked reaction. While everyone deserves the chance to step back from their jobs and relax, as a big fan of Lawson's, it's still unbelievable to me that she is not on Channel 13 anymore.
Lawson is the same warm presence in real life that you see on television. Not every anchor could have that said about them.
As a former KTRK intern myself, someone asked me to make a pot of coffee. Not a coffee drinker, I did not know how (and I am still not a coffee drinker, so probably don't ask me for help today either). In my first interaction with Melanie, she helped me out on the spot and showed me what to do. As a 17-year-old kid, I was shocked that this big-time anchor was so kind to me in that moment.
Her kindness to the many KTRK staffers who have walked through those legendary hallways, and to me, would only continue.
Always a friendly presence in the newsroom, Lawson would be one of those employees who brings the team together. At her desk, usually sipping sparkling water, Lawson is the desk that staffers found themselves drawn to. Those discussions could be fun and friendly, all the way to a mentorship and advice moment that the younger journalist would remember for the rest of their career.
And I will always cherish the times when I would walk through the newsroom and hear her voice yelling Crime Dog at me! As I've written before, when my father died, and I had only worked at KTRK for a short time, Lawson was one of the people who reached out to make sure I was OK.
"I have had the honor and privilege to work with some of Houston's best journalists over my long career," former KTRK news producer Joe Williams told mikemcguff.com. "Melanie is at the top of that list. She is not just a superb journalist, but one of the most approachable and down-to-earth people I have ever met. She is family to me and Houston television news will not be the same without her."
“Wow, what an incredible career! Melanie is a lifelong friend and I wish her the absolute best," Rascon added. "She is one of the hardest working women in television, and it was an absolute joy to spend nearly 25 years sitting side-by-side with her as we anchored the News. Godspeed, Melanie! You are loved and appreciated by all of Houston!”
As an Emmy award-winning journalist who has interviewed everyone from four U.S. Presidents to Beyoncé, I feel Lawson is a documentarian trapped inside an anchor's body. Not content to sit inside a studio all day, Lawson has always pursued reporting on important local issues others might overlook in underserved communities.
What I always admired about Lawson is that she fought to report on the sometimes under-covered Houston arts scene. Not only that, but in her personal life, she supports those institutions such as the Houston Ballet, SHAPE Community Center, Asia Society, The Rothko Chapel, and the Ensemble Theatre. She has been honored by the Community and the Center for Contemporary Craft.
Where does her love for the overall Houston community come from?
Lawson is from here and comes from a family that also cared. Raised in Houston's Third Ward by the Reverend William D. Lawson and her mother, Audrey, her parents founded Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Reverend Lawson, who died in 2024, led the battle to desegregate the city and was a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"For such a long time, I felt as though our stories weren't being told," Lawson told Bishop James Dixon in 2021. "They weren't being properly told in a lot of cases. That it's easy to do a drive by in a neighborhood or, you know, talk to somebody today about, you know, a shooting or a fire or whatever. But there's some neighborhoods where the roots are deep, the stories are strong, and yet they're not being told. So I felt as though my mission was to represent people who grew up in the city, people who love this city, but whose voices were not always heard."
Here are some of my exclusive photos from the big announcement.
Grizzy’s Hood News behind the scenes look
Griselda “Grizzy” Castillo of Grizzy’s Hood News teamed up with KPRC 2 Houston in a "strategic content partnership" earlier this month, and now we are learning more about the woman behind Houston's enormous Facebook news empire of more than 1.3 million followers.
KPRC 2 reporter Gage Goulding hit the streets with Grizzy to find out how the former corporate employee handles 500 to 700 messages a day and covers up to seven crime scenes a night.
Monday, November 24, 2025
Worship 24/7’s “Hope to the Hungry” to Provide 38,006 Thanksgiving Meals
HOUSTON, TX — November 24, 2025 — Hope Media Group (HMG and 89.3 KSBJ parent organization) is celebrating an outpouring of generosity from listeners after its Worship 24/7 stations held the 6th annual Hope to the Hungry event on Thursday, November 6.
Partnering with six Rescue Missions and homeless shelters across the country, the one-day initiative raised $129,442, providing 38,006 Thanksgiving meals for individuals and families facing homelessness and food insecurity—a record for the event.
Throughout the day, Worship 24/7 shared powerful stories of men, women, and children whose lives were transformed by God’s love, starting with the simple gift of a meal. Listeners responded by calling in or giving online, with each donation going directly to the ministry closest to them: Union Gospel Mission Portland; Tacoma Rescue Mission; Blessings & Beyond in Spokane; Shepherd’s House in Bend, Oregon; Faith City Mission in Amarillo; and the Gospel Mission of Sioux City, Iowa.
“We call our initiatives like this ‘Worship in Action’—and that is certainly what happened,” said David Harms, Founder of Worship 24/7. “This event meets a great need at a time of year when we’re focused on Thanksgiving, and it came as the government shutdown caused a record number of people to seek help to put food on the table. As a network, it’s sometimes challenging to be local, but this event allows us to shine a light on a national issue while giving our listeners a chance to make a difference right where they live.”
Hope Media Group continues its commitment to sharing God’s love through community impact, partnerships, and life-changing stories that encourage listeners nationwide to live out their faith.
ESPN 97.5 Houston hacked
ESPN 97.5 + 92.5 Houston KNFC was hacked Sunday afternoon, the station posted at 4:34pm.
"In the past hour, there was audio airing on 97.5 FM signal that didn't come from the radio station. Our signal had been hacked. We are actively trying to rectify the problem. We appreciate the many of you who posted to alert us of the issue."
RadioINSIGHT reports that during the Dallas Cowboys vs the Philadelphia Eagles game, the hacker ran, "a loop of fake EAS tones, a racist Country song, and a promo to follow them on social media."
UPDATE: General Manager Todd Farquharson told the Houston Chronicle's Jason Fochtman that the station switched to backup equipment after a power outage on Saturday. In an investigation, the station found that a bot was hacking the backup equipment. He adds, ESPN 97.5 is taking measures "to prevent this from happening in the future."
Grizzy's Hood News has video of the promo portion of the radio takeover.
In the past hour, there was audio airing on 97.5 FM signal that didn't come from the radio station. Our signal had been hacked. We are actively trying to rectify the problem. We appreciate the many of you who posted to alert us of the issue.
— ESPN 97.5 Houston (@espn975) November 23, 2025
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