Former Atlanta CBS affil scores massive haul, WSB second
by Brian Allen
Newly independent Atlanta News First had a great year and they have the local Emmy nominations to prove it.
The nominations were announced this afternoon on the Southeastern Emmys website. These awards are given every year to the best performers in local television (and in some cases, non-TV) journalism. Stations across the Southeast were nominated, but because this is an Atlanta media blog, I’m only focusing on Atlanta nominations.
WANF scored (give or take a few*) 51 nominations, far and away the most nominations of any local Atlanta TV station. Those noms include Overall Excellence (along with Georgia Public Broadcasting and WSB), Morning newscast (also with WSB). Both stations were also nominated for best Daytime/Evening newscasts.
WSB, which leads the market in the ratings (and has since TV was invented), comes in second with 27 nominations. Fox 5 got 16, 11 Alive got 15, and GPB got 8. Local spanish language stations Univision 34 got 12 nominations, Telemundo 47 landed 7.
Last year’s shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got 6 combined nominations, with WSB getting half of those. It was the single most nominated news event this year.
The local sports teams made their mark this year as the got deeper into multimedia journalism. The Atlanta Falcons, The Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta United and the soon to dissapear FanDuel Sports Network got nominations for their respective sports productions.
Only one local anchor got nods in news (Jorge Estevez, WSB), weather (Alex Forbes, WAGA) and sports (Reginald Chatman, Jr, WXIA/WATL).
Among the most nominated individual talents this year are Fred Blankenship (WSB), Brendan Keefe (WANF), Kaitlyn Ross (WXIA/WATL), Ella Dorsey (WANF) and Baillie Burmaster (WANF).
The list was selected based on an eligibility period from January 2, 2025 to November 30,th 2025. The official ceremony is scheduled for May 16, 2026.
A full list of this year’s nominees are listed here.
Good luck to all of this year’s nominees.
*Some nominated talent was not listed because there was only one nominee in that category (which makes no sense. Does that mean only one person, who wasn’t listed, did a good job in that category and everyone else sucked?) So the actual number of nominations is approximate.
Image credit: Public Domain Pictures
Originally posted 4/8/26
