Most of those big network TV anchors and correspondents got their start in local TV news. And several of them dropped anchor in Orlando. So the Orlando Sentinel‘s TV critic Hal Boedeker caught up with some of them, including Byron Pitts (now at CBS News), Deborah Roberts (now at ABC News and married to NBC’s Al Roker) and Jessica Yellin (now at CNN.) Trace Gallagher, now at FOX News, then at Channel 6 (then WCPX, now WKMG), talks about his time in Orlando: “Shepard Smith was a huge influence. I got here in August 1993. The overlap was four months. The first time I turned on the TV, he was doing a hurricane prep shot from a Home Depot. I had no idea I was taking that guy’s job.” Here’s Gallagher in all his Orlando glory:
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