Anchors
Kent Shocknek
Kent Shocknek is L.A's first and longest-running morning anchor. He also is responsbile for bringing a list of other significant "firsts" to Southern California news audiences, as well. In addition to anchoring the Emmy Award-winning newscasts CBS2 News 5-7 a.m. and CBS2 News at 11 a.m., Shocknek helped pioneer the station's growth online at CBS2.com, anchoring L.A. television's first-ever live webcasts. Also, he is the first Los Angeles TV reporter to write a daily online blog.
On radio, Shocknek hosts the nationally syndicated weekly program Premiere Magazine Live!; plus the daily essay, Just A Minute with Kent Shocknek on CBS all-news station KNX-1070 A.M. He is a contributing editor at Road&Track magazine, and can be seen in feature film- and TV- roles, as a newscaster.
He has met with presidents, astronauts, and Hollywood superstars. He has reported from war zones, royal palaces, third-world villages, and underwater, swimming with sharks.
Shocknek has given Southern California viewers their first looks at all the biggest stories, live: Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, the very first minutes of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, and the loss of Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger.
Shocknek is known for his marathon live anchoring and reporting on such major events as California's ruinous wildfires, earthquakes, and storms. He covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the L.A. Democratic National Convention, daily; the deadly North Hollywood bank shoot-out, the L.A. riots, and the 1984 Olympics, in their entirety.
Kent Shocknek joined CBS2 in 2001, after starting morning news in Los Angeles as the original anchor of the region's first morning newscast, Today in L.A. His experience and Southern California savvy have earned him eight Emmy Awards, and more than a dozen Emmy nominations. He has won two Los Angeles Press Club awards; Golden Mic. Awards for best daytime newscast; the Associated Press Award for best radio feature; and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation Award for Investigative Reporting.
Named a distinguished alumnus, Shocknek was graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from the University of Southern California. He earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, with a minor in environmental social sciences. He also has taught upper-level reporting courses at his alma mater.
Shocknek is a California native and is very active in the community. He is an advisor to the national nonprofit organization, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and he speaks just enough Spanish, German, Russian and Armenian to confuse listeners in each language.