On Monday, KPRC 2 traffic anchor Jennifer Reyna debuted as a news co-anchor on the stations 4:30am newscast along with Owen Conflenti. That show has been solo anchored by Conflenti with meteorologist Anthony Yanez doing the weather since its debut.
The new team didn't waste anytime Monday talking about the new addition and just jumped into the newscast. It appears that traffic is a very small part of Reyna's duties during this show. My favorite part was when Conflenti brought a cardboard cutout of KPRC sports director Randy McIlvoy out during one of Yanez's weather breaks.
So what does this mean for usual morning anchor Lauren Freeman? KPRC viewers hit the station's Facebook page with that question.
"Lauren is still on every weekday from 5-7a," KPRC 2 Vice President/Creative Services Director Mike Guerrieri answered. "Jen's just joining the guys from 4:30-5a."
Reyna's full time anchor gig has happened just as I predicted on 9/15/2009. On that day I blogged that Reyna will follow the path of another former KPRC 2 traffic anchor. You might have heard of this person, it is main Channel 2 anchor Dominique Sachse. It's clear that KPRC management has been giving Reyna time to anchor (the most recent time was filling in for weekend morning anchor Courtney Zavala while she was on maternity leave). Now the bosses are giving Reyna time at anchoring finishing school every weekday morning and letting Conflenti's work rub off on her. As I have mentioned before, Reyna is too popular of a talent, not to promote her to the anchor desk.
The post I mentioned from 2009 was about the new (at the time) @RateReyna Twitter feed. That got me curious, what did the @RateReyna tweet say on the day of her 4:30am anchoring debut:
Dark pink anchor jacket. Eat your heart out Ron Burgundy! Rating: 9.3
Guess that means they liked her anchoring job. Then they can keep watching Reyna on the traffic beat through the morning.
