ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - KPLR 11 newscasts at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. now have some rather familiar faces anchoring it.
Many longtime St. Louis residents will know the faces of Andy Banker and Jasmine Huda on KPLR's sister station Fox 2/KTVI.
Now, they are the newest co-anchors of the newscasts at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on sister station KPLR 11, with both make their partnership debut together earlier this past week.
Banker has been a longtime journalist at Fox 2 since July 2002, working in a variety of roles, including hosting a weekly Sunday morning show "Hancock and Kelley" with KMOX's own John Hancock and Michael Kelley at 8:30 a.m.
Huda has been at Fox 2 for almost a decade now and has served a variety of roles, including the Fox 2 newscast at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
"We're really pumping the brand now because it sort of got lost in the mix," said Banker on 'Hancock and Kelley' Friday on KMOX. "2 and 11 are in the same building, two states, same ownership, one newsroom. Doing news on both channels."
Huda says it's 'cool' to have two anchors on newscast who both grew up in St. Louis.
"You've seen St. Louis from that lens growing up and how much it has changed over the years, but you also get that 'so St. Louis' inside stuff too," said Huda.
Huda and Banker both give insight into anchoring a newscast, saying it's not as simple as just showing up and sitting down to anchor a hour-long newscast.
"(Friday), I'll go in and work on our Sunday show," said Banker. "Then we work on other reports. Jasmine just did this (on Thursday), where she had a great feature report that aired on our newscast. She had to put it together over the last couple of days, then you have to anchor the news on top of it."
Banker says since this is the first week they've anchor together, both he and Huda are still 'feeling it out', but viewers should still expect to see both of them all throughout Fox 2/KPLR 11 programming from 4 -8 p.m. on weekdays.
Huda says despite the change, she will still be anchoring on Fox 2 News at 5 p.m. on Fridays, along with serving as a fill-in anchor. Huda will also continue hosting her community affairs show 'The Pulse of St. Louis' but it will move to digital.
"Our web department is going to take that over, but I'll be appearing on that," said Huda. "That's going to continue, but we're really putting an emphasis on digital, social media because a lot of our audience is going to the internet."
Banker notes that with the growing shift to digital and social media, it makes his and Huda's role as anchors and journalists even more important.
"People look for that objective opinion still. When you look at national news, if you are a Trumper, you go to right-wing media. If you are a anti-Trumper, you go to left-wing and you stay in that lane," said Banker.
"Locally, we're what you have and we still do it fair, down the middle, both sides balanced and tell you what you need to know politically and what's happening where you live, in your neighborhood and that's the stuff that never goes away."