Co-anchors Taheshah Moise and Jasmin Caldwell along with meteorologist Ashley Carter made history on May 2, 2022 when they debuted as the Texas “station’s – and probably the nation’s first ever all-Black, all-female news anchor team.”
Their show, Texas Today, airs on weekdays in the mornings from 4:30am to 7:30am, serving “the central area of The Lone Star state, including Temple, Waco, [and] Killeen…and it runs on KCEN, an NBC affiliate.”
Caldwell posted on Twitter sharing the exciting news about her promotion and the significance of the occasion.
This remarkable moment almost never occurred, because Caldwell was contemplating parting ways with KCEN once her weekend anchor contract expired before a serendipitous turn of events occurred. She learned that Chris Rogers, Moise’s co-anchor for the show would be “leaving for KCEN sister-station WTSP in Tampa, Florida…[and] her boss asked if she was interested.” Caldwell was surprised because she had never thought that she would even be considered with Moise, “another Black woman on the news desk,” who was already co-anchoring.
“When I first came to KCEN in 2017, we did not have any African American anchors. It was completely different,” said Caldwell. “Growing up, I always saw all-white news anchors…I didn’t think that there would ever be Black newscasts. I knew there was always room for one, but I didn’t think that I would see three African Americans — male or female — permanently, all at one time. No way,” Caldwell added.
Moise reflected, “I just think back to when I was a young girl and I used to watch the news with my parents and I never saw anyone who looked like me…If I did, they were outside reporting in the cold.”
“It didn’t hit me then that nobody really looked like me, like the people I was watching growing up…But then as I started to do it people started to point it out, how there was not a lot of women who are black and do the weather. It kind of added on the responsibility of ok I didn’t get to see it growing up, and now little girls in this area are going to see me when they wake up and now it can become a reality,” stated Carter.
All three have worked exceptionally hard to get to this point of their careers and are excited to be on this journey with each other.
While this is Black Girl Magic personified, Carter has expressed some anxieties saying, “I think the thing that I was most fearful of is people downplaying our talents to try and say this team was put together so this station could look more diverse…I think it is important to know when people watch us every morning, they will be able to see that each and every one of us earned our position on this team. I don’t think our news director intentionally did it. I think he just realized they are all women, and they are all black, but hey they are the best for this show, and this is what we’re going to do.”