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Tuesday, September 08, 2020

KVEO Brownsville debuts first-ever Latina anchor team

KVEO Rio Grande Valley debuts brand new newscasts, and a historic news team

Evenings team is (left to right) Isaac Williams, Clara Benitez, and Sydney Hernandez.

KVEO Brownsville, TX has been rapidly expanding in 2020 and has just debuted what they think in the first in the country.

News director Amy Sullivan says she thinks the Nexstar Media Group now has the first all Latina main anchor pairing in the country.

"Excited for two amazing Latinas who have proven they are two of the best journalists here in the [Rio Grande Valley]," Sullivan tweeted ahead of the new newscast launches.

CBS 4 weekend anchor Clara Benitez and KVEO reporter Sydney Hernández make up that new evening news team.

They both come from KVEO's Local 23 and CBS 4 two stations under one roof (more on that in a minute).

"We're able to provide coverage from morning until night for the first time," Sullivan told mikemcguff.com. "This is a hand-picked group of journalists who want to provide the best coverage for the community."

RELATED
- Faith Woodard joins CBS 4 KVEO Brownsville
- Isaac Williams joins Local 23 KVEO Brownsville
- Sydney Hernández joins Local 23 KVEO as evening anchor

Mornings team is Meteorologist Freddy Vela, Sydney Gray and Brenda Matute.

Until recently, KVEO only had local news programming at 5pm and 10pm. Now it has added RGV newscasts to mornings, 11am, 4pm and 6:30pm.

KMTV Omaha, Nebraska morning reporter Sydney Gray and KRIS Corpus Christi reporter Brenda Matute have been hired for the new Local 23 morning newscast along with meteorologist Freddy Vela.

But wait, that's not the only new show. Starting September 13th, KVEO reporter Jeremiah Wilcox starts anchoring weekends with meteorologist Chris Ramirez who was recently hired from sister-station KSAN San Angelo.

To replace the newly promoted Benitez on CBS 4 weekends, KVEO reporter Karina Vargas gets bumped up to anchor. Andrew Shipley was hired to be the weekend meteorologist for the CBS 4 Valley Storm Team.

Houston TV viewers might recognize Ramirez and Shipley who both helped out new Nexstar sister-station CW39 KIAH during Hurricane Laura television coverage.

So why have all these massive changes happened in the Rio Grande Valley television market? Let me set this all up for those not tuning into the South Texas TV airwaves.

The anchor changes come after Nexstar Media Group took over KGBT from the Sinclair Broadcast Group as part of a lawsuit settlement. Sinclair retained the KGBT call letters.

Now Nexstar runs two stations under KVEO.

Local 23 remains on the main channel while the the former KGBT CBS 4 (the CBS 4 branding remains) lives on at 23.2.

Both staffs were combined into the former studios of KGBT and are now working together on two stations.



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