Barbara Ann “Bobbie” Battista was a producer, on-air host and primary evening news anchor at WRAL-TV from 1974 to 1981.
Battista graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s degree in radio, television and film production. Not long afterward, she began her broadcast career as a DJ at WAKS Radio – a country music station in Fuquay-Varina. Her on-air name was “Bobbie Ann.”
Battista joined WRAL-TV in 1974 as a secretary, but she quickly convinced station management to put her on the air in 1976. She produced and anchored the WRAL morning news and other special programming until 1977, when she joined Charlie Gaddy on the station’s 6:00 and 11:00 o’clock news. Gaddy and Battista formed the first male-female anchor team in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville television market.
Over the next four years WRAL achieved ratings dominance and in late 1981 Bobbie answered Ted Turner’s call to join a start-up cable network known as CNN. She was hired as one of the original anchors on CNN Headline News, but by 1986 Battista moved to CNN’s flagship cable channel where she became one of the network’s most recognizable stars.
During this time at CNN Battista also anchored a daily program for CNN International, making her the only anchor in CNN history to work at all three CNN networks. In 1998 Battista was chosen to host television’s first daily interactive talk show – Talkback Live.
Battista left CNN after the company merged with America Online in 2001. In 2002 she became a principal in the Atamira Communications firm in Atlanta, where she provided communications consulting for corporate clients.
In 2009, she began making periodic appearances on the Onion News Network (ONN), a satirical news organization. And in early 2014, Battista was named host of Georgia Public Broadcasting’s new nightly news program On the Story.
Among Battista’s many honors is the prestigious George Foster Peabody award for a documentary on juvenile crime.
FOX News Anchor Bret Baier was a General Assignment Reporter for WRAL-TV News from 1996 to 1998.
Baier’s broadcast career started in Beaufort, SC, where he worked for WJWJ-TV, the PBS affiliate. From there he moved to WREX-TV, the NBC affiliate in Rockford, IL. In 1996, Baier came to Raleigh to join the WRAL reporting team.
Bret’s WRAL reporting career got off to a memorable start as he spent his first day on the job covering a tornado that hit parts of Eastern Wake County. Bret’s live reporting topped the Channel 5 newscasts that evening and set the tone for what would be a short, but impressive two-year stint covering news in Central North Carolina.
In 1998 Fox News hired Baier as the first reporter in the network’s new Atlanta Bureau. Ever since, Baier has steadily risen through the ranks, covering Washington as the Fox Pentagon correspondent and later as Chief White House correspondent.
In 2009, Baier was promoted to the position of Chief Political Anchor and anchor of the nightly news program “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
To read Bret’s Fox News biography, click here: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/bret-baier/bio/#s=a-d
Baier grew up in Atlanta and is a graduate of DePauw University, where he earned a BA in Political Science and English.
Bret and his wife Amy have two sons.
Donna Gregory was a weekday news anchor at WRAL-TV from 1988 until 1996.
Gregory grew up in Atlanta and earned her college degree at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She worked as a news anchor-reporter at WMBD-TV in Peoria and KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City before joining the WRAL-TV Action News team in 1988.
Donna co-anchored the 5:30pm and 11:00pm newscasts during much of her WRAL tenure. She also hosted the station’s coverage of the annual Raleigh Christmas Parade and frequently traveled to NCAA Final Four tournaments to co-anchor WRAL sports specials.
Gregory also hosted “Kids Having Kids,” a WRAL-TV news special which examined the issue of teen pregnancy in North Carolina.
In 1996 Gregory was hired to anchor a brand new newscast for six major-market stations affiliated with the UPN network. The job took her to KMSP-TV in Minneapolis, where she anchored the midday newscast until March 1997.
Gregory returned to the Triangle where she was hired by WNCN-TV as a primary weekday anchor. She worked at WNCN until 2001, when she left the station to form her own communications company.
A year later, Donna began working as a correspondent and anchor for NBC News and MSNBC. She held those positions until 2008.
In 2012 Donna founded Coastal Health Innovations and began a new career as a Professional Integrative Health Coach. She works with clients to help them achieve their health, fitness and lifestyle goals.
Herb Marks was a staff announcer at WRAL-TV who gained fame as “Cap’n Five,” the sub-mariner host of the station’s popular cartoon show in the late 1950s.
Marks grew up in Pennsylvania and broke into broadcasting at a station in Tennessee. He was hired as one of WRAL-TV’s original employees, joining Channel 5 shortly before the station signed on the air in December 1956.
Marks handled various announcing duties until 1958 – when WRAL managers decided they needed an entertaining host for the station’s daily cartoon show. Cap’n Five was born and Marks’ career changed almost overnight.
The Cap’n Five show was produced in front of a studio audience of energetic children who would arrive at WRAL each day ready for a voyage into the world of television make-believe. As a longtime student of dramatics, Marks would don his skipper’s cap and perform with a cast of puppets—telling stories and jokes to keep the children entertained and under control.
In its early days the Cap’n Five set featured a huge submarine prop that docked in the TV fantasyland known as “Happy Harbor.” Eventually the submarine prop disappeared and Marks—who was an amateur ventriloquist and master of many voices–became the central feature of the program.
Marks would entertain the kids and then introduce cartoon favorites like Popeye, Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw.
The Cap’n Five Show came to an end in 1961, but not before blazing a trail as one of the first locally-produced children’s shows on Channel 5.
After the show ended its run, Marks stayed on with WRAL-TV as an announcer and employee of the Promotion Department. He left the station in 1967.
CBS Anchor/Correspondent Jim Axelrod was a General Assignment and Political Reporter at WRAL-TV from 1993 to 1996. He covered the NC General Assembly and reported on a broad range of local issues during his tenure in Raleigh.
Prior to WRAL, Axelrod worked at WSTM-TV Syracuse, NY and WUTR-TV Utica, NY. He began his career at WVII-TV Bangor, ME in 1989.
At CBS, Jim is the anchor of the Saturday edition of the “CBS Evening News.” He joined CBS News as a Miami-based correspondent and later worked in the network’s Dallas and New York bureaus. He served as CBS News Chief White House Correspondent from 2006-2009 and was named National Correspondent in 2009.
At CBS News Jim has covered a wide range of stories, most notably as a reporter “embedded” with the military during the war in Iraq. Axelrod was the first to report live from Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport after it fell to U.S. troops in 2003. He was also the last reporter to leave with the military in December 2011.
Axelrod has won several major awards, including the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton for reporting on the recession’s effects on children. He was also honored with a national Emmy Award for coverage of the Washington, D.C. sniper siege.
Axelrod is a native of New Jersey who graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in 1985. He earned an M.A. from Brown University in 1989.
Axelrod is the author of “In The Long Run: A Father, A Son, And Unintentional Lessons In Happiness”, which was published in 2011.
He and his wife, Christina, live in New Jersey with their three children.
