Stephanie Simmons is signing off from her anchor chair at KHOU 11 to launch a brand-new newscast at TEGNA’s San Diego station, CBS News 8 KFMB.
Here is what Simmons posted on social media:
I’ve been holding onto this news for a while now and I’m excited to finally share I’ll be staying with our company as I transfer to our sister station in San Diego to anchor a brand-new evening show! It’s not goodbye quite yet Houston.
Longtime readers of this blog will recognize a familiar face at KFMB — veteran anchor Carlo Cecchetto, who has become a fixture at the station. Another San Diego TV news fact: Rekha Muddaraj joined KHOU from KFMB.
Simmons arrived in Houston in late 2018, joining KHOU from KCBS 2 Los Angeles, where she spent six years as a morning traffic anchor and reporter. She initially started at KHOU in the traffic role before moving to the morning anchor desk.
Clearly, Simmons can handle a lot of pressure. She had to hold down the KHOU morning anchor desk through a lot of transitions! From rotating co-anchors to newscast format changes, the old KHOU management threw a lot at Simmons.
In 2025, following the arrival of Ilona Carson as the station’s new morning anchor, Simmons transitioned to leading the noon newscast.
Before her Los Angeles tenure, Simmons hosted Hollywood Dailies on ReelzChannel, co-hosted Great Day St. Louis on KMOV in St. Louis, and reported for both WRTV and WTHR in Indianapolis.
A Ball State University graduate with a degree in telecommunications, Simmons also once cheered on the Indianapolis Colts as a member of the team’s cheerleading squad.
Former Sports Director Joel Villanueva is returning to KRGV 5 Rio Grande Valley in his new role as morning anchor on September 22, 2025.
Morning anchor Javier Guerra will join the evening 5p.m. and 6p.m. newscasts.
Villanueva spent more than a decade at KRGV, starting as a video editor and moving to weekend sports anchor in 2008 before becoming sports director in 2014.
He left in 2020 to pursue opportunities outside of broadcasting, most recently serving as communications manager for Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevada.
A graduate of the University of North Texas, Villanueva also brings recent academic experience, as he is completing a Master of Arts in Strategic Communication & Innovation from Texas Tech University.
Brian Perry, the KPRC 2 Houston Manager of Streaming & Creative Content, has been writing pieces for click2houston.com that are deeply personal to him.
In July 2020, his youngest son, Ethan, 12, was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoblastic Lymphoma. After enduring extensive treatments, he passed away on March 25, 2021, leaving Perry's family devastated.
I recommend you read two articles by Perry, which offer personal insights into his experience with grief after the loss of Ethan.
The first article, "The raw truth about grief," provides guidance on how to support someone who is grieving. Perry advises against using everyday, often unhelpful phrases and instead suggests offering specific, practical assistance and being present with the person, even in difficult moments.
The second article, "Beyond Breakfast Biscuits," is a personal story about his own grieving process. He describes starting a ritual of buying two Chick-fil-A chicken biscuits every Saturday to honor his son. This ritual led to an outpouring of support from the Chick-fil-A community, culminating in a visit to their headquarters, which he found to be a deeply emotional and healing experience.
Together, the articles show a powerful narrative of a father's journey through grief—from his personal coping mechanisms to his public advice on how others can help those who are suffering.
Andy Liscano is leaving KRIS 6/KZTV 10 Corpus Christi on September 24, 2025, after nearly two decades.
He currently serves as co-anchor of Action 10 News at 5:00 p.m. and KRIS 6 10 pm, and is also the Troubleshooter investigative reporter and KZTV’s Kitchen Cops reporter.
Liscano came to KRIS and KZTV in 20077 and within just four months broke the story on the forced resignation of the Director of the city’s Water Department.
He has covered city hall, the courts, police, and spot news, and he has been on the front lines of breaking stories when the community needed answers.
Before making Corpus Christi his home, Liscano spent more than a decade as a sportscaster and sports director across major markets, including KEYE 42 Austin, KOVR 13 Sacramento, and WITI 6 Milwaukee. Along the way, he was recognized by the Texas Associated Press for Best Sports Feature. He was among the first in Austin to pioneer dedicated coverage of high school football recruiting.
According to his bio, Liscano also worked in Los Angeles and Miami, covering some of the world’s biggest sporting events — the Super Bowl, Summer Olympics, World Cup, MLB, NASCAR, PGA, LPGA, NHL, NBA, NCAA’s March Madness, and the Division I Football National Championship. His experience on the national stage helped shape the sharp, seasoned storytelling that later defined his work in Corpus Christi.
Mark Garay guest blogs about TV commercial ad breaks growing longer, longer and longer
BY MARK GARAY
“I’ve got the brains,
You’ve got the looks.
Let’s make lots of money”
Pet Shop Boys 1986
We all recognized the sanctity of Saturday morning. It was part of our weekly existence. An absent-minded ritual that unconsciously felt warm and safe. Maybe mine was like yours. You couldn’t touch the contentment. But it was all around you.
It began shortly after dawn, typically with the smell of bacon wafting through the dimly lit atmosphere. I get my robe and slippers on. Up and out of bed in a brisk, deft leap towards the kitchen. A bowl secured, milk retrieved from the door in the fridge. The cereal to milk ratio had to be perfect, but could be adjusted properly and effectively if performed briskly. We all marveled at how sugar could be any color. Back then, television sets didn’t hang plush to interior walls. No. Ours sat on the orange shag carpet in our den, situated often in room corners at an angle. It extended four feet from the baseboard molding. Once the tv was active, only more cereal or quick bathroom breaks were allowed. I was now immersed for the next three hours. Even phone calls planning football at the park with friends later were accommodated in front of our statically unreliable Zenith.
We all had our favorites. There were the standards: Bugs. Porky. Popeye. Scooby. The lesser worshipped Tennessee Tuxedo. Grape Ape. Fleegle, Drooper, Snorky and Bingo, the dudes known as The Splits. Even “The Monkees”, programming’s original Milli Vanilli.
Upon that ocean of choice, sailed the commercials of the day. An owl who tells us how many licks it takes. Mikey, who surprisingly loves Life. A little Irish dude who shouted “Magically Delicious!” The game that allows the child to outsmart the adult. But unlike today, those commercials were not only part of the entertainment, they were wholly viewed and appreciated. We loved them. At least I did. In fact, I don’t recall ever complaining about commercials. (By the way, how would we classify SchoolhouseRock? Episodes weren’t long enough to be considered programming. But they were way beyond the standard commercial lengths of the day. 🤷 )
I’m going with MTV meets Mr. Rogers.
Anyway, after a recent headline caught my eye, it got me to thinKIN. Because I’ve been wondering for a while now if commercial time on broadcast and cable is getting longer.
I read how NFL Red Zone is adding commercials for the first time. NFL Network, which airs RedZone, was acquired by ESPN last month, along with the network’s accompanying media assets. RedZone has been a Sunday institution, running real-time updates on scores, injuries, and everything else since 2009. RedZone host Scott Hanson will now have to change his show opening announcement: “Seven hours of COMMERCIAL - FREE football starts now!”
I admittedly watch too much TV. But all that viewing has led me to believe commercial breaks aren’t just long. They’re too long, and growing like a virus.
As we all remember from our Broadcast 101 textbooks, for every 30 minutes of tv programming, 8 minutes is dedicated to sponsors. That was the going rate when I was in college. It was what every professor taught, and what every college broadcast text avowed. And that sounded reasonable, to me at least. Not that I had a vote.
But the business of commercial sponsorships is plied and played in a new arena, with fresh technologies and new protocols to figure out. Take YouTube.
Are their ads based on how much I watch personally? Or is it tied to total views and thumbs? What was the methodology and specs on interrupting streaming shows to push self-serving promos and blue pill ads? And are the goods and services offered designed to specifically target me based on what I view? Or is it a hodgepodge of preparatory and softly related elements more randomly distributed?
We all accepted TV ads in the 70s. But by the early 80s, news from somewhere mentioned something called cable. What? No commercials? Foul language? Gratuitous boobies bouncing freely? Sign me up. I’ll pay!
A lot of people said it wouldn’t work. “Who’s gonna pay for something that’s free”? In my household, that’s also what my parents said. But as months passed, after Robert Klein’s standup special on HBO and CNN’s coverage of a little girl stuck in a well, attitudes began to soften. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. No commercials? At least the programming wasn’t suffering.
So, gradually, we softened. And as programming improved, my attitude changed. I wasn’t alone. Cable tv grew, due in large part to the lack of ads. We seemed to get accustomed to it. And in a way, I became entitled.
Over recent years, there’s been so much more to see, and to complain about. I began sensing the TV-broadcast-shift-in-commercials over the last few years. Ad breaks getting longer. So I did my own non-scientific research. I chose 5 programs at random and timed the commercials for 30 minutes. My methodology is probably laughably flawed, unprofessional, and if faced with questions by a 2nd year law student, would fold under questioning. That said, here are the results.
On ESPNs afternoon live show “Pardon The Interruption”, I recorded 2 breaks in what is surely a liquid show. The first was 4:00 minutes and the second 4:40.
8:40 total.
On Nickelodeon, “Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge On The Run” produced 2 commercial breaks during its first 30 minutes, the first 3 minutes and 35 seconds, the second 3 and a half for a total of 7 minutes and 5 seconds.
At the 5:00pm News on Chanel 11, KHOU, 4 breaks appeared, in order: 3:05, 2:30, 2:30, and 3:00, for a total of 11 minutes and 5 seconds.
CNN took 2 commercial breaks from 12:00 to 12:30pm. One break ran 4:35, the other 4:25, for a total of 9 minutes.
And finally, at Catchy Comedy, a half hour produced a “Cheers” rerun and 3 commercial breaks: 4:00, 1:10 and 2:40, with a tally of 7 and 50 seconds.
So what have we learned? Absolutely nothing. But the experts say yes, commercial breaks are getting longer. And they’ve been on the rise for years.
“The average commercial break typically lasts between 2 and 3 minutes, though this can vary based on the network, time of day, and type of programming, with some breaks, especially during special events like sporting matches, lasting longer” according to my AI search.
“TV cable commercials seem long because networks, struggling with decreasing viewership, are adding more ad time to maintain revenue. Longer ads also allow more time to tell a story and deliver a deeper message, which can increase viewer recall and conversions.”
None of that really matters to me. I profess my respect for American nostalgia. Like Tony The Tiger, Pecan Sam and Count Choculah , my comfort zone has had to relocate. Stay tuned for more, after this…
GARANDOM THOUGHTS:
Why do we need shower mats? Seems to me, bathtub and shower makers could simply line the bottoms of their products with a gentle non slip coating. Why not that instead of ME having to devote a Saturday afternoon to shopping for a mat at Bed, Bath and Beyond?
(Former ABC13 Houston KTRK anchor Mark Garay returns to mikemcguff.com as a guest blogger!)
"Sweet Chloe Jane was born on September 10th! She weighs 7lbs. 8 oz. and is 20 inches long.
We are soaking up every second with our sweet angel girl! Baby and momma are doing great! Chloe even got to meet her brother Ryder today and the love each other!
We are beyond blessed and can’t thank The Lord enough for our new titles as mom & dad"
The weekend morning meteorologist announced her pregnancy as a surprise for the FOX 26 Houston KRIV morning anchors back in March.
Peyton Galyean was recently hired to fill in for Gargaro while she is on maternity leave.
Gargaro arrived in Houston in December 2023 to work for FOX 26 from sister station FOX 35 Orlando WOFL, where former KHOU 11 meteorologist Brooks Garner now works.
Novack, who returned to Houston in 2024 from FOX 11 Los Angeles KTTV to become the CW39 chief meteorologist, essentially flipped stations with Adam Krueger.
While in Los Angeles, Novack also worked for the Tennis Channel and ABC7 Los Angeles KABC. Reality TV or unscripted fans might recognize him from his appearances on ABC's The Bachelorette and The Bachelor Pad.
KPRC 2 viewers might recognize him from his time on the channel 2 weekend weather desk.
Before KPRC, he worked at WSVN 7 News Miami as a meteorologist.
The Syracuse University and Mississippi State University’s Broadcast Meteorology Program graduate began his television career with KCBD NewsChannel 11 Lubbock.
Added to the CW39 bios page is reporter Daryl Matthews, who comes from WFTV Channel 9, Orlando, Florida, where he has been since May 2023.
The Temple University previously reported for stations in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Elmira, New York.
Abigail Dye left her position as a FOX 26 Houston KRIV reporter this week (September 10, 2025), choosing not to renew her contract, a station source tells mikemcguff.com.
Dye joined FOX26 in September 2023 from FOX23 News, KOKI, Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she served as the station's Crime and Safety Reporter for two years.
Vania Castillo joined FOX 4 KDFW Dallas-Fort Worth as a reporter in September 2025.
Castillo arrives from her time as an evening anchor/senior reporter for CBS4 and ARC El Paso. Previously, Castillo served as a Morning News Anchor at CBS4.
Her newsroom career began behind the scenes as a video editor before advancing to on-air roles as a multimedia journalist and forecaster for KFOX14/CBS4 and KTSM 9 El Paso.
The Sun City native holds a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Communication and Media from The University of Texas at El Paso and an Associate of Arts in Communication and Media Studies from El Paso Community College.
