Here's something I saw on a visit to Chicago today that I can honestly say I have never seen before on the local news here: a South Asian anchor. These are cellphone photos of Ravi Baichwal, a weekend anchor on WLS-7, the ABC station in Chicago, who's been on the job since lessthan an year and is an exciting presence on the air.
Many non-Chicagoans got to meet him at the SAJA Convention in July and he's planning to get even more involved with SAJA in the months ahead. Read an earlier SAJAforum interview, Three Questions for Ravi Baichwal, here. There are only a handful of South Asians who are anchors on LOCAL TV in the U.S., including:
- Asha Blake, CW2 in Denver
- Gurvir Dhindsa, Fox-5 in Washington, D.C.
- Sukanya Krishnan, WPIX-11 in New York City.
- Aditi Roy, NBC-10, Philadelphia.
- Suchita Vadlamalani, host of "Good Day Atlanta" on WAGA-5 in Atlanta.
There are South Asian anchors who work at networks, including Hari Sreenivasan at ABC, Uma Pemmaraju at Fox News Channel, Riz Khan at Al Jazeera International, and several folks at CNN, but if there are folks missing from this list who work on local television, please let us know in the comments section below.
