How to contact WAVY 10: news tips, The Hampton Roads Show and what producers want

By Zach Schleien

The contact routes WAVY 10 lists, which form to use for a news tip, how to apply for The Hampton Roads Show, and how to pitch WAVY producers and reporters.

To contact WAVY 10 with a news tip, use the Report It form on wavy.com or call the station's main line at 757-393-1010. If you want to be a guest, WAVY has a separate "Be On The Hampton Roads Show" form for its hour-long weekday show.

Those two routes do different jobs. The newsroom wants news that matters to people in Hampton Roads today. The show wants people, tips, recipes, events and stories that fill a segment.

I've earned 200+ media placements in 25+ countries, including 18 TV appearances, and I've never hired a PR agency. Here's how I'd use each WAVY route, and how to pitch the people behind them.

Rather skip the pitching? I can get you on WAVY, guaranteed. Book a press call.

Key takeaways

• News tips, photos and video go through WAVY's Report It form. The station's main phone line is 757-393-1010.
• WAVY TV 10 and WVBT FOX43 share one contact page and one address: 300 WAVY Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704.
• The Hampton Roads Show is an hour-long show that airs weekdays at 11 in the morning on WAVY TV 10. It has its own guest form, and every field on it is required.
• The contact page also has forms for 10 On Your Side, Community Affairs, Programming and more. Pick the one that matches what you're sending.
• To find the right reporter, use WAVY's author pages. They show each person's bio, their latest stories and a link to email them.

What WAVY covers, and where a founder or expert fits

WAVY TV 10 is a local TV station in Portsmouth, Virginia. Its About Us page says it covers Hampton Roads, Virginia, and northeastern North Carolina, with news, weather, traffic and sports. The page also says the site is provided by Nexstar Media Group.

For a founder, business owner or expert, there are two ways in:

1. The news side. If something is happening that people in Hampton Roads need to know about, that's a news tip. A reporter or producer decides whether it becomes a story.
2. The Hampton Roads Show. WAVY says the hour-long show airs weekdays at 11 in the morning on WAVY TV 10. Its section page lists recurring segments like In The Kitchen, Pet Pals, Healthy Hampton Roads, Outdoor Living, Live Music Friday and I Am Hampton Roads.

If you have advice people can use, a dish to cook, a local event or a personal story, the show is usually the better fit. If you have news, go to the newsroom.

WAVY contact routes, and what each one is for

These are the routes on WAVY's Contact WAVY page and the pages it links to, checked in November 2026:

1. The Report It form. The contact page sends news tips and stories here. The form takes photos, videos and news tips, and asks for your name, phone number, email and details about anything you attach. Before WAVY can use a photo or video you send, you have to read and accept its content license agreement.
2. The main line: 757-393-1010. This is the station's general number. If you're calling about something happening right now, say what happened, where and when in your first sentence.
3. The "Be On The Hampton Roads Show" form. This is the guest route for the show, and I cover it in its own section below.
4. 10 On Your Side. This form is for consumer complaints, like a car purchase, a repair, a contractor or a utility. It says you'll need to provide documentation if they pursue your case. Don't use it to pitch yourself or your business.
5. Mail: WAVY TV 10, 300 WAVY Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704. It's slow, so skip it for anything time sensitive.

The contact page also links to forms for Community Affairs, Programming, Sports and Weather. Use one only when your message clearly fits its name. Advertise/Sales goes to the ad team, and license@nexstar.tv is for licensing WAVY video, so neither one is a pitch route.

You'll see webdesk@wavy.com in the site footer too. The page doesn't say it's for news tips, so send news through the Report It form.

How to get on The Hampton Roads Show

The show's guest page opens like this: "We love featuring the people of Hampton Roads on the show and providing an opportunity for organizations to inform the community."

The next line says the show also offers businesses "a sales-integrated medium that provides an opportunity to tell people about the business while also providing tips and important information to our viewers." So the show has a sales side for businesses, too. If you want a guest spot because your story or advice helps viewers, make that clear in what you write.

The form asks for your name, address, city, state, ZIP code, email and phone. Then it asks you to pick the reason you want to be on the show. The choices include "I have a business to promote," "I want to appear in the kitchen," "I want to tell my personal story," "I have a community event to promote" and "I have a non-profit fundraiser to promote."

The last box asks you to "BRIEFLY describe your business, event, group, or story" and to include web links if you can. That box is your pitch. Write it like a short note to a producer:

• First sentence: who you are and what you'd show viewers.
• Second sentence: why it matters to people in Hampton Roads this week or this month.
• Third sentence: what you'd do on camera, and how long it takes.
• Last line: when you're free to come in.

A producer reading a stack of these forms should know in ten seconds what your segment would look like.

How to find the right WAVY reporter or producer

For news, the form isn't your only option. WAVY's author pages show a reporter's bio, a list of their latest stories, links to their social accounts and a link to send them an email.

• Start with the stories. Find WAVY stories from the last few months that look like yours, then open the reporter's author page.
• Read what they cover. If their latest stories are all courts and crime, they're the wrong person for a new bakery.
• Use LinkedIn for producers. Search for people who list WAVY and "producer" in their title, including people who work on The Hampton Roads Show.

Don't stop at one name. At a single outlet, there can be up to about 20 reporters who cover your kind of story, so list everyone whose recent work fits. If your story is big, offer it to the best-fit person first as an exclusive, then go wide after it runs. One of Filteroff's biggest press hits was an exclusive I gave to Business Insider.

People move around a lot in local TV. Check that each person is still at WAVY before you send anything.

The same search works for other stations, like Chicago's WGN in WGN news contact: how to reach WGN 9 and get your story on air.

What WAVY producers look for

Local TV producers tend to want four things:

1. A Hampton Roads tie. Your story has to matter to people who live in WAVY's area.
2. A reason to run it now. A holiday, the weather, a deadline, a local event or a story that's already in the news.
3. Something to show. TV needs pictures. A demo, a dish, a product or a person doing something beats someone sitting and talking.
4. An easy yes. You can come to the studio on short notice, and you can make your point in about a minute.

It's the same list I gave for a Los Angeles station in KTLA news tip: how to contact KTLA and get your story on air.

You don't need to be big to get on. Filteroff had around 500 users and a team of two when the BBC featured it, and it took under two weeks to go from pitch to publication.

Here are some example angles written for WAVY's viewers. The businesses in them are made up to show the shape, not real pitches:

• For In The Kitchen. A Virginia Beach restaurant owner cooks one seafood dish live in under five minutes and shows the one step most home cooks skip.
• Before tax season. A Chesapeake bookkeeper shows the three receipts small business owners lose every year and how to keep them in one folder.
• The local side of a national story. When gas prices spiked, one of my real pitches was that high gas prices mean fewer first dates. For WAVY, a made-up version: gas prices jump, and a Suffolk mechanic shows three cheap ways to get better gas mileage.
• A community event. A Hampton nonprofit director invites viewers to a free family day and brings two kids from the program to show what they built.

How to write the pitch

Keep it under 150 words, whether it goes in the form, to a reporter's email or to a producer on LinkedIn. Lead with the hook, not your company history.

Here's a made-up example you can copy:

Subject: Suffolk mechanic on three ways to save on gas, free any morning this week

Hi [first name],

I saw your story on [their recent story]. With gas prices up again, a lot of drivers in Hampton Roads are looking for ways to spend less. I run a repair shop in Suffolk, and I can show three fixes on camera in about two minutes: tire pressure, an air filter and one habit that wastes gas. I can come to the studio any morning this week.

Would you like to have me on?

[Your name, phone number, and one line on any past press]

End with a plain question that's easy to say yes to. "Would you like to interview the founder?" is one sentence that got me booked on live TV.

Write one master pitch, then change only the name and the line about their recent story for each person. It takes me 1 to 2 hours to write a master pitch for a campaign.

Do-it-yourself checklist

• Watch The Hampton Roads Show and WAVY's newscasts for a few days and note the segments that look like yours.
• Write your angle in one sentence: who you are, what's new, and why people in Hampton Roads should care this week.
• Decide if it's news (the Report It form and reporters) or a segment (the show's guest form and producers).
• Find 5 to 20 reporters and producers whose recent work fits, and check that each one still works at WAVY.
• Have a headshot, a one-line bio and a clear plan for what you'll show on camera.
• If you're sending video with a news tip, shoot it sideways. The Report It page asks for horizontal video because vertical video is harder to show on TV.
• Follow up once, a few days later, with something new to add. When a producer replies, answer fast.

Mistakes that get pitches ignored

• A generic press release and nothing else. In my Top Romp days, I sent roughly 20 to 40 generic press releases to company contact pages and got zero replies. My friend Michael knew how to pitch press. I watched how he did it, asked him a ton of questions, and started doing it myself.
• Using the wrong form. 10 On Your Side is for consumer complaints, and Advertise/Sales is the ad team.
• No Hampton Roads tie. If nothing in your pitch is local, it's a hard sell for a local station.
• A pitch that reads like an ad. Producers want news, advice or a demo. Your business is the reason you're the right guest, not the story itself.
• Burying the hook. If it isn't in your first two sentences, a busy producer won't find it.
• Quitting after one try. For my dad's New York Times op-ed, I sent roughly 70 pitches to every Times writer covering that beat. One of them forwarded it to the op-ed editor, and it ran.