{"id":461899,"date":"2026-10-10T05:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/461899\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T05:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:36:13","slug":"best-tv-news-stations-in-texas-according-to-industry-insiders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/461899\/","title":{"rendered":"Best TV news stations in Texas, according to industry insiders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Which TV newsrooms<\/a> stand out most in Texas? More than 270 people working in the industry recently weighed in, and one Dallas station<\/a> came out ahead of the pack.<\/p>\n

WFAA received<\/a> the most votes among Texas stations<\/a> in an informal survey of current TV news professionals conducted by Josh Helmuth, a morning news anchor at KRDO in Colorado Springs, Colo.<\/p>\n

Houston’s\u00a0KPRC 2<\/a> also earned recognition elsewhere in the survey, receiving at least two votes when respondents were asked to name the best TV stations in the country.<\/p>\n

Helmuth published the findings as part of his 2026 State of TV News: What Insiders Really Think<\/a> survey, which asked reporters, anchors, news managers, producers, photographers, web producers and others working in television news about the stations and ownership groups they admire most.<\/p>\n

“I’m not surprised that WFAA had the most votes for top station,” Helmuth told Chron. “It’s a legacy station with a remarkable history.”<\/p>\n

WFAA also had the strongest national showing of any Texas station. It tied Raleigh, N.C.’s\u00a0WRAL for No. 4 in the country with 27 votes. Minneapolis’ KARE 11<\/a> topped the national ranking with 41 votes. KXAN, ABC13 and KPRC did not crack the national top 10, but each received multiple votes.<\/p>\n

Helmuth said he launched the anonymous survey because he wanted a clearer picture of what people working in local TV news<\/a> think of the industry in 2026.<\/p>\n

“I was simply curious about what those in TV news <\/a>thought about the current landscape in 2026,” he said. “If a survey like mine had been done, I hadn’t seen it.”<\/p>\n

He distributed the survey publicly through social media and colleagues’ networks.\u00a0Helmuth cautioned that the results are intended as a pulse check rather than a scientific ranking, and larger companies may have had more employees represented among respondents.<\/p>\n

“It’s not perfect, nor was that the expectation,” Helmuth said. “But it’s a decent sample size.”<\/p>\n

The survey also asked respondents about station ownership. Hearst,\u00a0Chron’s parent company, received 94 votes as the best ownership group to work for.<\/p>\n

The answers shifted sharply when respondents were asked which companies they would caution colleagues about.\u00a0Nexstar received 158 mentions, followed by Sinclair with 120 and Scripps with 55.<\/p>\n

Helmuth said those responses came as local TV news grapples with layoffs<\/a>, consolidation, stagnant salaries, changing viewing habits and new concerns surrounding artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Which TV newsrooms stand out most in Texas? More than 270 people working in the industry recently weighed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[140459,1836,1704,85744,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-461899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-chronmedia","tag-chronnews","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}