Nerissa Knight heading West after leaving CW33's Eye Opener
06/02/14 01:53 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Nerissa Knight’s nearly seven-year tenure in the D-FW market ended last week when she left as anchor of the “Need to Know” segments on CW33’s early morning Eye Opener program.
Knight confirmed her departure Monday, but declined to comment on her future plans. But several sources close to the situation said her next move is to KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, which like CW33 is owned by Tribune Broadcasting. So it’s a transfer within the corporation, with Knight scheduled to join KTLA in mid-June as a reporter.
Knight, who earlier anchored and reported for CBS11, also will be joining another former D-FW morning personality, Megan Henderson, at KTLA. She left Fox4’s Good Day in early 2009 and now is an established co-anchor of KTLA’s waker-upper newscasts.
After earlier working at L.A.’s KNBC-TV, Knight joined CBS11 in fall 2007 from Beaumont’s KBTV-TV, where she had anchored that station’s 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts.
Knight left CBS11 in December 2010 after the two sides couldn’t agree on a new contract. She became a full-time anchor on Eye Opener in April 2012 after earlier freelancing for CW33 for a year prior to that.
A replacement for Knight on Eye Opener hasn’t been named yet.
As previously posted, Eye Opener has been making some ratings inroads in the early morning, particularly during its 5 a.m. hour among 25-to-54-year-olds (the main advertiser target audience for news programming). On Thursday, for instance, it outdrew WFAA8 in this key demographic from 5 to 5:30 a.m. and tied that station for fourth place from 5:30 to 6 a.m behind Fox4, NBC5 and CBS11.
Eye Opener tends to fare even better among 18-to-49-year-olds, the key target audience for entertainment programming. On Thursday in this measurement, it beat both WFAA8 and CBS11 for the full 5 to 6 a.m. hour.
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