WTNH Hires Jim Watkins for Weekend Mornings

WTNH News 8 has hired television news veteran Jim Watkins as the weekend morning anchor to replace Jeff Valin who is now reporting at NBC Connecticut.

 

Jim Watkins was the anchor of the weekend editions of "PIX News at Six" and "PIX News at Ten" on WPIX-TV. He joined the station on October 26, 1998 where he co-anchored the weeknight news at 10 pm with Kaity Tong after three years working at WNBC-TV in New York. While at WNBC, Watkins anchored the weekend editions of NewsChannel 4 at 6 and 11, as well as "Weekend Today in New York". In addition to his anchoring and reporting duties at WNBC, Watkins also hosted a nationally televised cable show, "Great Stuff" on NBC's business cable channel CNBC.

 

Market veterans Tong and Watkins were moved out of the nightly anchor seat after a dramatic shakeup of the 10 p.m. show in October 2010. The move hasn’t paid off in the ratings. During February, ratings for the 10 p.m. news with the target 25- to 54-year-old crowd were less than half of what news rival WNYW FOX 5 earned in the period.