Good Company: WFAA Celebrating the Love on National Adoption Day 

For more than 40 years, WFAA has aired a special called Wednesday’s Child, which showcases children in the care of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services due to abuse and neglect in the hopes of finding them an adoptive forever family. Hosted by WFAA Anchor Cynthia Izaguirre since 2011, the program helps make dreams come true for many children who want nothing more than to be adopted.

“Wednesday’s Child is probably the most important thing that we do at this television station,” says Izaguirre. “If I am ever anywhere in the community, people of all ages, sizes, and colors, always walk up to me and say, thank you for doing Wednesday’s Child.”

Izaguirre adds, “We all have a responsibility to help children who don’t have a voice, and I can’t think of a more noble cause than to help an orphan.” 

Building on that program’s success, WFAA will air Celebrate the Love, a new hour-long special for National Adoption Day, November 20th, featuring several inspiring adoption stories, including the incredible story of a young man, who after aging out of the foster care system was adopted at the age of 21. He’s now in his third year of law school at Texas Tech and already has a job secured upon graduation. 

“Each family has their own special adoption journey. In ‘Celebrate the Love’, we’re highlighting these impactful stories and sharing them with our viewers – something I think TEGNA stations do very well,” says Alan Rose, Community Marketing Specialist at WFAA.

“We are fortunate that our audience trusts us to deliver authentic, quality content. With ‘Celebrate the Love’, our goal is to share stories potentially otherwise unseen,” Rose adds. “We hope this special builds new perspectives, awareness, and continues to normalize adoption all while celebrating the most common family theme – love.”

Celebrate the Love also includes a special webpage (wfaa.com/adoption), and an informational phone bank with experts from Gladney Center For Adoption and Hope Cottage available to answer any questions. To top it all off, the downtown Dallas skyline will light up the night sky with white lights, the official color for adoption awareness. 

The highlight of Celebrate the Love, however, will be a roundtable featuring Izaguirre, WFAA Anchor Chris Lawrence, reporter Jobin Panicker, meteorologist Kalee Dionne, and Good Morning Texas’ Paige McCoy Smith – who all have ties to adoption.

“WFAA has a rich history of raising awareness around adoption. ‘Celebrate the Love’ is a natural extension of this work and furthers TEGNA’s mission of serving the greater good of our community,” says Rose. “So many of us at WFAA have personal connections to adoption. In fact, almost everyone involved in this special has a close tie to adoption – myself included.”

What does this mean for your brand?

 “Creating positive change and improving lives for the better is part of our purpose here at TEGNA. When we do that in partnership with our clients and advertisers, it’s a win all the way around,” says Meredith Conte, VP of Marketing at TEGNA.

“For our partners, initiatives like ‘Wednesday’s Child’ and ‘Celebrate the Love’ connect them to original, brand-safe, and uplifting content that humanizes their brand and endears audiences to their message,” says Conte. “We’ve seen it prove out year after year thanks to the thousands of community initiatives we’ve led and the incredible feedback our clients have shared.”

One multi-year sponsor of Wednesday’s Child shared how much the program meant personally. 

“We went to a sponsoring dealership to shoot a commercial,” Izaguirre shares. “The General Manager’s wife gave me a big hug and said, ‘thank you for doing this. As a mother, I want to help foster children, and this is the best way that I feel I can help.’”

Sound Good?

Thinking of how you might amplify your brand’s community efforts or looking to join our affiliates in their efforts to serve the greater good of our communities? Let’s get in touch.