New, young faces on local newscasts are not uncommon on Pittsburgh television these days, but having new additions to the weather and sports departments back to back is unusual, as viewers have seen in recent weeks on KDKA-TV with the debuts of meteorologist Trey Fulbright and sports anchor/reporter Cassidy Wood.

Trey Fulbright

Fulbright, 24, has a degree in meteorology (and a minor in journalism) from Iowa State University. He is currently enrolled in Mississippi State’s distance learning meteorology program.

Fulbright works the weekend morning shift at KDKA and handles all other weekday duties, including climate and weather reports.

He came to KDKA after working for a time at KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, after growing up in Dallas and Memphis, Tennessee.

“I’ve never been to this part of the country before, and the best way to grow is to venture out there and try something new,” Fulbright said.

He gets used to Pittsburgh’s unique topography when it comes to getting around And Forecasts.

“I made several wrong turns, got lost, even my GPS confused me,” he said. “Everywhere I lived (before) there was a perfect grid and everything is flat.”

And then there is the pronunciation of local place names.

“I worked with Ray (Petelin) last week and he gave me a test to see if I could pronounce the place names and I did pretty well,” Fulbright said.

The hilly terrain of western Pennsylvania presents a new challenge to Fulbright’s forecasting skills. But the increase in tornado activity in western Pennsylvania fits with Fullbright’s forecasting background, which includes a penchant for storm chasing in the Midwest.

“I definitely know about tornadoes, as we have them quite often in Texas and Iowa,” he said. “As our seasons get warmer due to climate change, we may have to deal with them more in the future (in Western Pennsylvania).”

Cassidy Wood

Although new KDKA sports anchor/reporter Cassidy Wood was born and raised in San Diego, her grandparents are from Fairmont, West Virginia, and later lived in Carnegie, where her father grew up before the family moved to upstate New York and later California.

“We are diehard Pittsburgh sports fans and honestly Pittsburgh, especially KDKA, was always my end goal,” Wood said, adding that her family’s dog in San Diego is named Rooney.

In her youth, 30-year-old Wood played three sports, including lacrosse and field hockey, but she originally studied political science at Oregon State University (class of 2017).

“My academic advisor said, ‘You’re failing all your classes, this isn’t something you’re really passionate about. What do you really like to do?'” Wood recalled. Her answers: writing and playing sports.

Wood began writing about sports for OSU’s student newspaper and was then recruited to talk about sports on a sports show on campus television.

“Once I did it, I fell in love with it,” she said, referring to the pace. “My mom always told me my life was like a roller coaster with so many ups and downs, and I found an industry that made that work.”

Wood’s first television job was in Beaumont, Texas, where she spent just over two years covering everything from the Astros in the World Series to Hurricane Harvey. In December 2019, Wood joined WOWK-TV in Charleston-Huntington, West Virginia, first as a multimedia journalist and later as the station’s sports director. She even covered two basketball games at once, watching a men’s basketball game live at Marshall University and following the Marshall women’s basketball team on ESPN+.

“I was watching the men’s game live at 6 and was watching the women’s game on my phone at the same time,” Wood recalled. “At halftime, I was listening to the men’s game on the radio while driving back (to the station) with the women’s game muted, and when I got back to the station, the women’s postgame coverage was on, so I Zoomed into their postgame press conference to ask questions and watch highlights of the men’s game.”

At KDKA, Wood will fill in as anchor and provide sports coverage, with her work days aligning with the sports season (Wednesday through Sunday this month).

New edition of “Dance Moms”

Apparently the original Penn Hills-filmed series “Dance Moms” was a success in reruns on Hulu, and now there is also “Dance Moms: A New Era,” all 10 episodes of which can be streamed on Hulu.

This time it’s set in a dance studio in Ashburn, Virginia, where the head teacher, Glo Hampton, insists she’s different from Abby Lee Miller, the bully star of the original series.

“I can make these kids stars and I can do it without them resenting me in ten years,” Glo says in the opening moments of the premiere episode.

But within five minutes, some of the children, ages 8 to 12, are in tears and their mothers are engaging in verbal altercations with Glo.

“A New Era” doesn’t really try to do anything new. Glo even uses the same pyramid that Abby used to show which dancers are better than others.

At least one of the new moms knows what she has to do to be on camera – create drama – and she approaches achieving that goal with a knowing grin.

In the final moments of the premiere, when a competition goes awry, Glo shows a vulnerability uncharacteristically for Abby, tearfully saying, “Honestly, I have no one to blame but myself. I take the blame.”

Aside from that admission, “Dance Moms: A New Era” is more of the same.

Zapping

The Emmy-nominated Disney+ documentary about the Muppets creator, “Jim Henson: Idea Man,” will air on ABC on August 11 at 8:30 p.m. under the banner “Wonderful World of Disney.” … HBO’s “House of the Dragon” will end its fourth season; filming for season three will begin in early 2025. … “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a stage show prequel to the Netflix series, will premiere on Broadway in 2025. … Starting October 17, Disney+ with ads will cost $10 per month (plus $2), Disney+ without ads will also cost $2 more per month, for $16. Hulu with ads will also increase by $2 per month, to $10 per month, and Hulu without ads will cost $1 more, for $19 per month. The triple-play package of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ will cost $2 more per month with ads and $1 more per month without ads.