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Texas six-step: selling new CBS11 A.M. co-anchor Russ McCaskey as a full-fledged homeboy

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
As CBS11 newcomer Russ McCaskey noted in his Monday, June 1st debut, “You know how it is in TV. You move around a lot.”

That’s true more often than not. But any TV station in its right mind will be sure to let viewers know about any pre-existing ties to the latest new homeland.

CBS11 has gone unusually all-in with McCaskey, who’s teaming with incumbent anchor Karen Borta on the weekday 4:30 to 7 a.m. shift. A 30-second spot touting his arrival drops the names of five North Texas cities plus Texas Christian University, the Fort Worth school from which McCaskey graduated before riding out of town and eventually spending 15 years at Tulsa’s KJRH-TV. But hey, he’s really one of us.

Let’s see now, McCaskey was born in Dallas at Baylor Hospital, graduated from Plano Senior High, went to TCU and has kin in McKinney, Coppell and Rockwall. So if he screws up, “there’s a McCaskey out there who’s gonna tell me about it,” he says at the end.

Or maybe a TV critic will, too. Yeah, I’m a Wisconsin Badger by birth but have been in Dallas since late 1979. I’ve also been to Plano, Fort Worth, McKinney, Coppell, Rockwall and even Waxahachie. And my kindly late aunt Lydie, all six feet, four inches of her, heralded from Dime Box, TX before migrating north and marrying one of my dad’s brothers.

That’s it for now. But c’mon, y’all, adopt me as a surrogate son of the Southwest while watching McCaskey in a promo in which he somehow forgets to mention Garland, home of unclebarky.com world headquarters.