WBTV hires meteorologist from Roanoke

Lyndsay Tapases

WBTV (Channel 3) has hired Lyndsay Tapases for one of its forecasting openings. Tapases, who was at the ABC affiliate in Roanoke, Va., for four years, grew up in Westfield, Mass., and graduated from Penn State. 


At WBTV, she'll work with fellow Penn State alum Eric Thomas, Channel 3's chief meteorologist. Tapases will start the last week of December at WBTV, which recently lost Kelly Franson to the CBS affiliate in Seattle and Ashley Batey to the CBS affiliate in Tampa, Fla. 

Meanwhile, WJZY (Channel 46) has named Karen Koutsky news director beginning in January. Koutsky succeeds Geoff Roth, who returned to Fox’s Houston station in September after launching the news department at the Fox-owned station last January. 

Koutsky has been the news director at WGHP (Channel 8), the Fox affiliate in High Point and has worked as a TV news executive in Indianapolis, Toledo and Atlanta. In High Point, she worked under Karen Adams, who is now the general manager of WJZY.

"She’s a successful news manager in broadcast and digital media and the ideal person to lead our solid coverage of the Charlotte region,” Adams said in a statement.

"We have created strong news teams together in the past and we are both passionate about creating a news product with integrity and high journalism standards," Koutsky said in statement.

A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, Koutsky will be responsible for taking the station's new news division to a higher level on its morning, evening and 10 p.m. newscasts. WJZY currently is running last in all time periods and the 10 p.m. news has lost more than 40 percent of its audience from year-ago levels when the station broadcast a newscast created by Channel 3.