Audrey Barnes is joining WTTG as a general assignment reporter, the Washington, DC Fox O&O announced today.

The move is a return to WTTG for Barnes, who has contributed to the station on a freelance basis in the past. She has also worked as a morning anchor at WBAL in Baltimore and as a reporter at  WRC and WUSA, both in Washington, DC.

“Her depth of reporting experience and history in the DC market make her amply qualified to bring stories of interest to our viewers,” WTTG VP-GM Duffy Dyer said in a statement.

Barnes, who will report across all the station’s newscasts, will debut on March 26.

In the debut episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” TV news luminary Brian Williams revealed that he owes much of his success to Betty Endicott, who gave him a shot as a reporter with WTTG in the early 80s.

Williams, who worked as a chyron operator for WTTG before being tapped for an on-air job, recalled that Endicott made “what might have been the last gut call in television.”

So who is Betty Endicott?

Endicott began her broadcasting career as a reporter for KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul, before moving on to WRC in Washington, D.C. Read more

Steve Chenevey, who has been WTTG‘s morning anchor since 2003, is joining crosstown rival WJLA.

Chenevey will anchor the ABC-affiliate’s morning and noon newscasts, working alongside Cynne Simpson.

“We have been working to put this team together for quite some time,” WJLA general manager Bill Lord said.  “Steve and Cynne did an exceptional on camera session together, and we believe they will be the team to watch on morning news for years to come.”

Before moving to D.C., Chenevey worked at WPXI in Pittsburgh, his hometown.

Maureen Umeh, an anchor at Fox owned-and-operated WTTG in Washington, DC, said this weekend that the only way for the Redskins to beat the New England Patriots in their Sunday NFL matchup was if Patriots quarterback Tom Brady “fell out dead” (video above).

The comment itself was followed up with a very quick “just kidding” from Umeh, but when sports director Dave Feldman jumped in to clarify, the exchange started to get awkward.

“Wouldn’t it be better if he was just injured, but not dead?” Feldman asked. Read more

Katherine Green, a local news veteran who served as news director of WTTG in Washington, DC and WBAL in Baltimore before joining CNN, has been named senior vice president at HLN.

Since 2008, Green has been based in Atlanta as the senior vice president of programming for CNN International.

She started her television career as a reporter at WTLV in Jacksonville and later moved behind the camera to producing. She’s been an EP at WFLA (NBC) in Tampa and news director at WBAL (NBC) in Baltimore. In 1998, Green made the jump to Fox owned-and-operated WTTG, where she served as news director for 10 years before joining CNN.

Read more at TVNewser

As part of a renewed commitment to investigative reporting, NBC owned-and-operated WRC in Washington, DC, has named Tisha Thompson to their investigative unit.

Thompson joins WRC from rival station WTTG, the Fox O&O in Washington, DC, where she was the lead investigative reporter for four years.

“Tisha has a proven record of success that has exposed corruption, protected taxpayers and generated change,” said Camille Edwards, WRC’s vice president of news.  “She is the perfect person to help us revitalize our investigative unit.”

Although Thompson’s first day at WRC was yesterday, her connection with the station can be traced back to her childhood — her mother, Lea Thompson, spent more than 20 years at WRC as an anchor and investigative reporter before joining NBC’s “Dateline.”

Last week, WTTG‘s Tucker Barnes unintentionally became the star of one of Hurricane Irene’s most famous moments, filing the above report from a boardwalk in Ocean City, MD. Barnes described the material he was standing in as a “sea foam,” but as the video went viral, it was widely reported — everywhere from Fox News Channel to “The Late Show” with David Letterman — that what Barnes was standing in was actually raw sewage. Now city officials in the Maryland town are looking to set the record straight.

“Everyone who called it toxic human waste didn’t know what they were talking about,” Donna Abbott, the city’s communication manager, told The Washington Post. “No one called us to verify a thing. There’s no sewage in our water. We’d never allow anyone in our waters if there was a public-health threat.” Read more

WTTG meteorologist Tucker Barnes, who spent Saturday doing hurricane live shots from the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD, has become an internet celebrity after his Saturday reports filled with a mysterious foam blowing out of the ocean. (Watch the video, above).

The foam — or as Barnes described it, “organic material” — he is standing in, however, is actually raw sewage that collected in the water during Hurricane Irene. WTTG, a Fox owned-and-operated station, was conscious of the viral potential of the video from the get-go: on Saturday at 7:54 p.m., the station reported on Facebook and Twitter that a hashtag had been created based on Barnes’ live shot: #seafoam. Read more

In her first TV appearance since walking out on Piers Morgan earlier this week, Christine O’Donnell sat down with WTTG morning anchor Steve Chenevey on Thursday and complained that the CNN host wouldn’t stop talking about sex.

“Well first of all I want to set the record straight, it wasn’t the question on gay marriage,” O’Donnell told Chenevey. “He had a decidedly inappropriate line of questions leading up to that, that many people– bloggers–are saying was just border-line creepy.”

“I was not there to talk about sex, and he would not stop trying to talk about sex,” she said (video inside). Read more

D.C. Fox O&O WTTG sent local entertainment reporter Kevin McCarthy to the “Crazy Stupid Love” press junket, where he fulfilled what has apparently been a lifelong goal of his: to be slapped by Steve Carrell (video above).