TV Talk: New weather, sports personnel arrive at KDKA-TV

New, young faces on local newscasts are common on Pittsburgh TV these days, but it’s unusual to have back-to-back arrivals in weather and sports as viewers have seen in recent weeks at KDKA-TV with the debuts of meteorologist Trey Fulbright and sports anchor/reporter Cassidy Wood.

Trey Fulbright

Fulbright, 24, has a degree in meteorology (and a minor in journalism) from Iowa State University. He’s currently enrolled in the Mississippi State master’s of meteorology distance learning program.

Fulbright works KDKA’s weekend morning shift and whatever else is needed on weekdays, including climate and weather reporting.

He arrived at KDKA after a stint at KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, after growing up in Dallas and Memphis, Tenn.

“I’ve never been to this part of the country and the best way to grow is to throw yourself out there and try something new,” Fulbright said.

He’s getting accustomed to Pittsburgh’s unique topography when it comes to getting around and forecasting.

“I’ve made several wrong turns, gotten lost, my GPS has gotten confused, too,” he said. “Everywhere I’ve lived (before) had a perfect grid system and it’s flat.”

And then there are the pronunciations of local town names.

“I was working with Ray (Petelin) last week and he gave me a quiz to see if I could pronounce the town names and I did pretty good,” Fulbright said.

The hilly terrain of Western Pennsylvania provides a new challenge to Fulbright’s forecasting skills. But the rise in tornado activity in Western Pennsylvania fits Fullbright’s forecasting background given his penchant for storm chasing in the Midwest.

“I’m definitely familiar with tornadoes since we got them in Texas and Iowa quite a bit,” he said. “As our seasons warm up more and more with a changing climate, that might be something we have to deal with more going forward (in Western Pennsylvania).”

Cassidy Wood

Although new KDKA sports anchor/reporter Cassidy Wood was born and raised in San Diego, her grandparents are from Fairmont, W. Va., and later lived in Carnegie, where her father grew up before the family relocated to upstate New York and later California.

“We’re die-hard Pittsburgh sports fans and honestly Pittsburgh, specifically KDKA, was always my end goal,” Wood said, adding that her family’s dog back in San Diego is named Rooney.

Growing up, Wood, 30, played three sports, including lacrosse and field hockey, but at Oregon State University (class of 2017) she was originally a political science major.

“My freshman adviser said, ‘You’re failing all your classes, this is not something you’re clearly passionate about. What do you genuinely like to do?’” Wood recalled. Her answers: Write and play sports.

Wood started writing about sports for OSU’s student newspaper and then got recruited to talk about sports on a campus TV sports show.

“Once I did it, I fell in love with it,” she said, citing the pace. “My mom always told me I lived my life like a roller coaster with so many ups and so many downs and I found an industry where this works.”

Wood’s first TV job was in Beaumont, Texas, where she spent a little more than two years covering everything from the Astros in the World Series to Hurricane Harvey. In December 2019, Wood moved to WOWK-TV in Charleston-Huntington, W.Va., originally as a multimedia journalist and later as the station’s sports director. She even covered two basketball games simultaneously, watching a men’s basketball game live at Marshall University and monitoring Marshall’s women’s basketball team on ESPN+.

“I was live at six from the men’s game while watching the women’s game on my phone,” Wood recalled. “At half-time I listened to the men’s game on the radio while driving back [to the station] with the women’s game muted and by the time I was back to the station it was the women’s post-game, so I hopped on Zoom for their post-game press conference to ask questions and edited highlights of the men’s game.”

At KDKA Wood will fill-in anchor and deliver sports reports; her workdays will depend on the sports season (Wednesday-Sunday this month).

‘Dance Moms’ redux

Evidently the original, filmed-in-Penn Hills “Dance Moms” has done well in reruns on Hulu, hence there’s “Dance Moms: A New Era,” now streaming all 10 episodes on Hulu.

This time it’s set at a dance studio in Ashburn, Va., where the lead instructor, Glo Hampton, insists she’s different from Abby Lee Miller, the original series’ bullying star.

“I can make these kids stars and I can do it without them resenting me in 10 years,” Glo says in the premiere episode’s opening moments.

But within five minutes, some of the children, ages 8-12, are in tears and their moms are in verbal sparring matches with Glo.

“A New Era” doesn’t really try to do anything new. Glo even employs the same pyramid Abby used to show which dancers are better than others.

At least one of the new moms knows what she needs to do to get camera time – create drama – and she goes about achieving that goal with a knowing smirk.

In the premiere’s closing moments as a competition goes sideways, Glo shows some un-Abby-like vulnerability, saying, through tears, “There’s nobody to blame but me, honestly. I’ll take the fall.”

That admission aside, “Dance Moms: A New Era” is more of the same old thing.

Channel surfing

The Emmy-nominated Disney+ documentary about the Muppets creator, “Jim Henson: Idea Man,” will air on ABC at 8:30 p.m. Aug. 11 under the “Wonderful World of Disney” banner. … HBO’s “House of the Dragon” will end with its fourth season; season three will begin filming in early 2025. … “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a stage show prequel to the Netflix series, will open on Broadway in 2025. … Effective Oct. 17, Disney+ with ads will cost $10 per month (up $2), Disney+ with no ads will also cost $2 more per month at $16. Hulu with ads also rises $2 per month to $10 per month and ad-free Hulu will cost $1 more at $19 per month. The Triple Play bundle of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ with ads will cost $2 more per month and without ads will cost $1 more per month.