Kent Shocknek

Kent Shocknek is L.A’s first and longest-running morning anchor. He brings a significant list of other “firsts” to Southern California news audiences, as well. In addition to anchoring the Emmy Award-winning newscasts CBS 2 News 4:30-7 a.m. and CBS 2 News at 11 a.m., Shocknek helped pioneer the station’s growth online at CBSLA.com, anchoring L.A. television’s first-ever live webcasts, during Hurricane Katrina. Also, he is the first Los Angeles TV reporter to write a daily blog, CBSLA.com/kent.

On radio, Shocknek has hosted 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.

Named one of L.A.’s Top Ten anchors by L.A. Confidential magazine, Shocknek has anchored historic events as they’ve unfolded, taking Southern California viewers live through Presidential inaugurations, the very first minutes of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the loss of Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger, and the beginning and end of the Gulf War I and the war in Iraq, as they happened.

He is known for his marathon live anchoring and reporting on such events as California’s ruinous wildfires, earthquakes, storms, and hi-speed chases. He covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the L.A. Democratic National Convention, and the 1984 Olympics –daily– from beginning to end. Also, the revenge-killings manhunt for ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner,  the Michael Jackson memorial, the deadly North Hollywood bank shoot-out, and the L.A. riots, in their entirety. Shocknek led TV watchers nearly every step of Space Shuttle Discovery‘s retirement move to Exposition Park.

Kent Shocknek joined CBS 2 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 newscasts; 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 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Southern California. 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 has acted as an advisor to the national nonprofit organization, Reading Ally, formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Also, before he gave up, he used to speak just enough Spanish, German, Russian and Armenian to confuse listeners in each language.

» Read Kent’s Blog