A familiar morning face on KLRT, Fox 16, is taking her talents across the office to sister station KARK as Susanne Brunner becomes a co-anchor of Channel 4’s award-winning morning news program, “KARK 4 Today.”
After two years as anchor of “Good Day” on Channel 16, Brunner is joining Aaron Nolan, D.J. Williams and meteorologists Pat Walker and Natalie Walters with Little Rock’s NBC affiliate. The new job means the San Francisco State University graduate will be setting the alarm a little earlier: “KARK 4 Today” airs from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays. Brunner’s first day on the new job will be July 23.
“I’m beyond excited to join the KARK 4 team and to continue serving our viewers weekday mornings,” Brunner said in a statement. “Arkansas has become such a special place for me to call home the last five years. We have a dedicated team in place that is so unique to Arkansas, and we promise to get your day started on the right foot with news that’s important to you.”
The co-anchor position came open when Mallory Brooks, previously in the job, became anchor of “Arkansas Today” at midday and KARK’s 4 p.m. newscast.
Brunner, who was an anchor for stations in California and Washington before moving to Little Rock, joined KARK and Fox 16 in 2013 as a weekend anchor and reporter. She will continue to report on education and health issues, her previous beat.
“Susanne will be a fantastic fit with KARK’s morning team,” News Director Austin Kellerman said. “She’s about as positive a person as you’ll come across.”
Brunner’s replacement as anchor of Channel 16’s “Good Day,” which airs from 7 to 9 a.m., will be Ashlei King, who starts in that job today. A University of Texas graduate and self-proclaimed “military brat,” King tweeted on Sunday that she is “officially in #Arkansas for good,” and she declared her move from two San Antonio stations, Fox affiliate KABB-TV and NBC station WOAI-TV, as a “homecoming.”
“I’m a military brat, but the King side of my family is originally from southeast Arkansas,” she told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette over the weekend.
In another Little Rock anchoring development, Dorian Craft has joined KTHV-TV, Channel 11, as a sports anchor.
Craft, a Kentucky native who grew up in Pittsburgh, was previously a color commentator with the SEC Network and the University of Kentucky. She has experience as a sports anchor at WLEX in Lexington, Kentucky and as sports director at WHAG in Hagerstown, Maryland.
A former softball standout at Virginia Tech, Craft played on back-to-back Atlantic Coast Conference championship teams and participated in the College World Series in 2008. She later earned a master’s degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Craft joined THV11 anchor Hayden Balgavy this month and will help cover sports across the state.
“I feel fortunate to have found a place that felt like home from the moment I arrived,” she said in a news release. “I look forward to telling stories of Arkansas sports, its traditions and its people.”
KTHV News Director Dave Parker praised Craft’s SEC experience and said “we at THV11 are happy she will be part of the team.”
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