‘SURVIVOR 2″ star Alicia Calaway may be headed to Ch. 5 as a health/fitness reporter.
Calaway, a personal trainer who lives in Manhattan, was seen last week shadowing Ch. 5 reporter Dick Brennan while he made his reporting rounds – sparking talk she may join the station.
“Alicia and I have had a couple of great meetings,” says Ch. 5 news director Neil Goldstein. “I have a lot of respect for her ability as a fitness professional – and she also sparks really well on camera.”
Insiders say Calaway’s agent contacted Ch. 5 several weeks ago about arranging a meeting.
Ch. 5 then agreed to let Calaway follow Brennan, who reports for the station’s 10 p.m. newscast.
“She has no reporting background, but she was kind of intrigued,” says one source. “Ch. 5 has been chit-chatting back and forth with her agent. They’ve left the door open for something to happen.”
Calaway, 33, was a contestant on CBS’s “Survivor 2,” which took place in the Australian Outback. A member of the Barramundi tribe, she was the eighth person voted off the Outback (out of 16 contestants).
A Connecticut native, she is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and has worked as a computer graphic artist and an aerobics instructor.
In 1994, Calaway won the Ms. Connecticut Amateur Natural Bodybuilding Competition.
If Calaway is indeed hired by Ch. 5 she wouldn’t be the first “Survivor” contestant to working regularly as a TV reporter.
Original “Survivor” contestant Sean Kenniff, a neurologist from Long Island, was a correspondent for the entertainment show “Extra” before being hired as the medical reporter for WFOR, the CBS-owned station in Miami.