Last summer, this blog was sending out breaking news alerts left and right when news director Dave Strickland resigned, executive producer Jerry Vazquez left for the KTMD news director chair and assistant news director and former reporter Don Kobos retired.
In the last five months, the station took its time re-hiring and also re-thought the job titles.
Digital, digital, digital. That's the buzzword in broadcasting now, and with an eye on the future, KTRK has promoted longtime managing editor Chris Hanson to be the new Assistant News Director of Digital. News director Wendy Granato said in a staff email obtained by mikemcguff.com, Hanson will keep working on the broadcast side, but will mainly oversee the digital operations.
The new Assistant News Director for Broadcast will be Rehan Aslam who recently left Fox owned WFLD Chicago where he served as an executive producer. According to TVSpy, Aslam was originally hired at Fox Chicago as producer of “Good Day Chicago” in 2005. In 2012, he was named EP of the late news. Longtime Houston TV insiders will recognize Aslam's WFLD news director is former KTRK ND Tom Doerr.
The new Nightside Executive Producer is former KTRK producer Rick Bagley. Bagley joins from Fort Smith/Fayetteville, Arkansas' KFSM where he was news director. Before that he was ND at KDBC El Paso.
I'll play TV prognasticator for a minute. My prediciton is after it was announced ABC News anchor David Muir is doing a one-minute Facebook only newscast, KTRK will follow.
And while I'm riffing on the digital future, what will replace the failed Live Well network? The plug is about to be pulled and I haven't seen an announcement on what's coming next.
So speaking of digital, why not put a local 24-hour KTRK news channel on 13.2? That's my vote. Slimmed down TV news staffs across the country are turning out loads of newscasts. I'll pretend I'm from corporate and say why can't they just do a little more? These 24 hour local CNN's might be the future for .2 channels all over! I should be a TV consultant with this stuff. Look at your watch, and I'll tell you what time it is. Now pay me!
If I'm correct on all of these predictions, I'll be linking back to this in a boastful manner, if not, you'll never see this post again!
