By focusing on constantly connecting with news viewers in Dallas-Fort Worth, WFAA executive news director Carolyn Mungo has rebuilt the station's early morning newscast, improved its ratings and sent its digital and social media visits soaring.
Mungo, who has been at WFAA since 2012, spent the past year and a half taking a hard look at the Tegna-owned ABC affiliate's 4:30 to 7 a.m. news block, Daybreak, and reinvigorating it.
Those changes began and ended with the talent, who Mungo felt needed to be able connect authentically to each other and the audience. Those skills aren't necessarily easy to identify in interviews alone, and Mungo and her team needed to look at many people before coming up with the current cast of anchors Ron Corning and Kara Sewell; traffic reporter Demetria Obilor, who came to the station in 2017 from Las Vegas; and meteorologist Greg Fields, who has been with WFAA for 20 years.
We knew what we had in Greg, but we kept on looking for people who were not afraid to get out of the box, to let the audience in and be expressive, Mungo said. But we also didn't want to wait to change and transform the show until we got the right people. Over time, we have acquired and recruited talent who would best fit in with the ensemble we were building.
Instead of going from segment to segment with the team staying behind their respective desks and talking only about their assigned topics, each team member has the freedom to chat with one another about the news of the day, giving their takes on different topics.
In my opinion, winning viewers' loyalty today means pulling back the curtain, Mungo said. Our journalists are also members of our community.
Morning Lift
Whatever that secret sauce may be, the changes have paid off. The station's early morning news block has improved by 200% among adults 18-49, Mungo said, good for second place in the Dallas-Fort Worth market the country's fifth-largest designated market area, according to Nielsen up from a years-long run in third.
That success also has taken root on the station's digital and social platforms. Visits are up every month in 2018 and the show averages more than 1 million social interactions per month. Video plays are up nearly 400% from January to September 2018, while YouTube video plays have increased more than 200% since the start of the year, surpassing 2.5 million as of September.
All good TV stations go far beyond their air to serve their communities, and in September 2017, WFAA lent its help to sister station KHOU Houston after it was thrown off the air by Hurricane Harvey when flood waters destroyed the station's building and equipment.
During the hurricane, WFAA took over coverage, posting stories to KHOU's Facebook page via Facebook Live with anchor David Schechter and Fields coming to the station on a Sunday to provide coverage.
When we saw what was happening in Houston that night, we immediately jumped into action, Mungo said. Many of us had lived there; that was our station too. I was really proud of our staff that night.
Just one year later, WFAA had the chance to unite Texas again. During this year's contentious and closely watched midterm elections, Texas was the home of one of the country's most-watched Senate races. Upstart Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke challenged incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, giving Cruz a run for his money in red Texas.
As soon as the primaries were concluded in March, Mungo and WFAA jumped into action, pitching both campaigns on a statewide debate.
Open to Debates
The day after the primaries were over, I presented formal proposals to both campaigns, Mungo said. One of the benefits of having the debate at a Tegna station in Texas is that's the only option the candidates had if they wanted to offer a live debate to viewers in every part of the state.
There are 10 Tegna-owned stations in Texas that cover 88% of the state. On Oct. 16, WFAA produced a statewide live debate between the two candidates from Tegna's KENS San Antonio before a live studio audience of about 120.
The debate was broadcast live in Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, College Station, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and several other markets, with C-SPAN picking it up for national broadcast. Afterwards, WFAA produced a 30-minute show on Facebook Live, and created a social media listening team that followed and reported on viewer reaction across social media.
WFAA also provided feeds to non-Tegna-owned stations across the state as well as live streams on digital and social media platforms. That experience changed the way WFAA's team covered the midterm elections. On Election Day, Nov. 6, the team went live with three hours of coverage and incorporated much more social media into the broadcast.
The news team worked to keep its coverage of the night much more fluid, frequently going live to reporters and experts on scene and staying in the field instead of focusing on the anchor desk, said Mungo.
I feel like we really informed our audience, she said. We're going to do more of that in 2019. Our viewers loved it.
In the end, having the right people in place is key, Mungo said.
I have spent more time on recruitment in the past five years than I ever have. Recruitment is so important, and to find great people who fit your brand you have to be recruiting all of the time.
By focusing on constantly connecting with news viewers in Dallas-Fort Worth, WFAA executive news director Carolyn Mungo has rebuilt the station's early morning newscast, improved its ratings and sent its digital and social media visits soaring.Subscribe for full article
Member Exclusive
Get Access to Our Exclusive Content
Learn MoreAlready subscribed? Log In
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
By focusing on constantly connecting with news viewers in Dallas-Fort Worth, WFAA executive news director Carolyn Mungo has rebuilt the station's early morning newscast, improved its ratings and sent its digital and social media visits soaring.
