Kristi Leigh is going to work for Toledo, Ohio CBS affiliate WTOL.
The Toledo Blade reports the moves takes place “only weeks before she was likely to lose her job at WNWO-TV, Channel 24, as an evening anchor and reporter.”
WNWO is outsourcing its news production to its Sinclair sister station in South Bend.
Leigh, 34, departs WNWO sometime in mid-February, and beginning in early March joins WTOL as the replacement for Emilie Voss, who left the TV news industry late last month in a relocation to Washington, D.C., to co-anchor the evening news with longtime Toledo journalist Jerry Anderson.
Leigh’s move to the CBS affiliate will make the area native and Bowling Green State University graduate perhaps the first broadcast journalist to deliver news on all four local newscasts, including WTVG-TV, Channel 13, and WUPW-TV, Channel 36.
WTOL interviewed approximately 60 candidates for the job, some from within the station, some from outside of Ohio, said Channel 11’s vice president and general manager Brian Lorenzen. It was Leigh’s ties to the area that helped make her job application stand out, even late in the hiring process, when she applied in January.
Leigh told TVSpy her daughter appeared in the station’s Weather Kid segment and may have gotten a bit too comfortable on camera and let everyone know about Leigh’s upcoming layoff. Check it out in the video below: