InvestigateTV

InvestigateTV is the national investigative journalism unit of Gray Media, the Atlanta-based television broadcaster. Launched in 2018, it operates a dedicated team of investigative journalists and producers whose in-depth reporting airs across Gray's local television stations, on the InvestigateTV.com digital platform, and on streaming services including Roku and Amazon Fire. The unit produces the weekday news magazine InvestigateTV+, hosted by Lee Zurik and Tisha Powell, which reaches more than seventy-two percent of United States television households and drew nearly thirteen million adult viewers during the 2025–26 season. Its work has earned some of American journalism's highest honors, including a National Edward R. Murrow Award and a duPont-Columbia Award.

Gray's National Investigative Unit

Gray Media — the company known until recently as Gray Television, Inc., traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GTN — is the nation's largest owner of top-rated local television stations, serving more than one hundred television markets and reaching approximately thirty-six percent of United States television households. Within that vast local footprint, InvestigateTV functions as the company's centralized investigative arm: a national unit that produces original, in-depth journalism and distributes it across the station group and beyond.

The unit draws on two reporting pools: a dedicated team of investigators and producers, and scores of journalists working in Gray's local markets at the company's leading local news stations. That structure allows InvestigateTV to combine the resources of a national investigative team with the local knowledge and access of reporters embedded in communities across the country.

The 2018 Launch

InvestigateTV launched in 2018, building on an investigative reporting unit that had been forming within Gray since 2017. From the start, the operation was conceived as both a broadcast and digital venture: it produced dozens of in-depth pieces airing across Gray's stations and on an over-the-top streaming channel dedicated to its work. Early partnerships included collaborations with ProPublica, News21 at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and NerdWallet, bringing outside investigative capacity together with Gray's distribution.

One of the unit's early signature projects was the 2018 documentary Licence to Pill, a forty-six-minute investigation into the doctors writing exorbitant numbers of opioid prescriptions during what one expert called the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history. The documentary required combing through millions of records and exemplified the unit's approach: data-intensive, solutions-oriented investigative reporting aimed at producing tangible impact.

Lee Zurik and the Leadership Team

InvestigateTV is led by Lee Zurik, Gray's vice president of investigations and the unit's director of investigations. Zurik works primarily out of Gray's New Orleans Fox affiliate, WVUE, where he is also an anchor and chief investigative reporter. His personal awards include two George Foster Peabody Awards and twelve National Edward R. Murrow Awards, and he has built a reputation as one of local television's most decorated investigative journalists.

Zurik has described investigative reporting as a commitment — one he says he is thankful Gray Television has made — and has articulated the unit's mission in civic terms: journalists are most vital to the public when those in power must be checked and when people need to be informed during emergencies. Under his leadership, the unit has grown from its 2018 origins into one of the largest collections of investigative journalists in American local television.

The Weekend Show and InvestigateTV+

In September 2021, InvestigateTV launched a weekly program, also titled InvestigateTV, featuring watchdog reports on government corruption, consumer alerts, and health care issues. The show premiered on Gray Television's stations in 102 television markets on September 18–19, 2021. Consumer investigators Rachel DePompa and Sandra Jones reported on scams, bad business practices, and recalls, while news teams from across Gray's footprint contributed local investigative pieces with national significance. The weekend program drew an average of 1.3 million households.

Building on that response, Gray launched the daily news magazine InvestigateTV+ on September 11, 2023, extending the franchise to weekdays. Hosted by Lee Zurik and Tisha Powell — Powell is an anchor at WAFB in Baton Rouge whose interviewing career has included conversations with figures such as Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Dr. Jill Biden — the weekday program leverages the investigative capacity of all of Gray's newsrooms to provide investigations that not only uncover problems but reveal and often lead to solutions. In September 2026, InvestigateTV+ returned for its fourth season, continuing its mission of delivering solutions-oriented, in-depth investigative journalism.

InvestigateTV+ en Español

In February 2024, Gray launched InvestigateTV+ en Español, a Spanish-language version of the weekday newsmagazine airing Monday through Friday in twenty-six of Gray's Telemundo markets. Hosted by Luis Carlos Mendoza, an award-winning longtime news anchor, and executive-produced by Juan Toro, the program extended Gray's investigative journalism to Hispanic audiences — a community the company noted was underserved by premium in-depth investigations and reports. The launch reflected Gray's stated goal that everyone, whether they speak Spanish or English, should have the opportunity to see, learn from, and react to its investigative reporting.

Star Addition: Anna Werner

In July 2025, Gray Media announced that award-winning investigative reporter and national correspondent Anna Werner would join InvestigateTV effective August 18, 2025. Werner brought more than twenty-five years of investigative experience, most recently as national senior consumer investigative correspondent at CBS News in New York, where she led hard-hitting investigations including the nationally acclaimed "Medical Price Roulette" series exposing the opaque American health care payment system.

Werner's investigations have produced extraordinary real-world results: the nation's largest tire recall, the shutting down of a major transplant program, sweeping reforms of a metropolitan crime lab, and the end of sales of a medical device causing thousands of injuries. Her work has received dozens of awards, including thirty-three Emmy Awards, six RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Awards, four Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Awards, three Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, and two duPont-Columbia Awards. Gray's leadership called her the perfect addition to the InvestigateTV team's core strength of solutions-based journalism that makes a tangible difference in viewers' lives.

Partnerships and Distribution

InvestigateTV's distribution extends well beyond Gray's owned stations. The unit's content is available on Roku and Amazon Fire, at InvestigateTV.com, and across Gray's broadcast and digital media properties. The weekday InvestigateTV+ program airs across Gray's markets as well as several non-Gray markets through agreements with broadcasters including CBS News & Stations and TEGNA, allowing the show to clear in over seventy-two percent of the United States. Segments from the program are also available on YouTube.

The unit's partnerships with organizations such as ProPublica and News21 have allowed it to collaborate with top-tier national investigative outlets, combining Gray's local reporting muscle with the specialized capacity of nonprofit and academic journalism institutions.

Awards and Recognition

InvestigateTV's work has been recognized with many of American journalism's most prestigious honors. The InvestigateTV team was recently honored with a National Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in journalism, and the unit received a duPont-Columbia Award in January 2024. Its leader, Lee Zurik, holds two Peabody Awards and twelve national Murrow Awards, while team member Anna Werner's personal honors include two Peabodys and two duPont-Columbias of her own.

The awards reflect the unit's consistent production of high-impact investigative work — the kind of resource-intensive reporting that has become increasingly rare in local television, and that Gray has chosen to fund as a central element of its corporate journalism strategy.

Notable Investigations

Across its years of operation, InvestigateTV's reporting teams have taken on subjects including car crash tests failing to equally incorporate women, COVID-19 assistance and other subsidies flowing to unintended recipients, health care disparities in rural America, and the opioid epidemic's pill-mill doctors. The unit's stated mission is to expose issues viewers may never have known about but that impact their lives — and to pair exposure with solutions, a solutions-journalism orientation that distinguishes its editorial approach.

The consumer investigations led by reporters such as Rachel DePompa and Sandra Jones have focused on scams, bad business practices, and product recalls — practical watchdog reporting with direct relevance to viewers' wallets and safety.

Reaching Seventy-Two Percent of the Country

During the 2025–26 season, InvestigateTV+ reached nearly thirteen million adults eighteen and older, according to Nielsen — a measure of the program's strong performance that Gray has cited as evidence that viewers remain hungry for impactful investigative stories that uncover critical issues and provide communities with real-world solutions. With clearance in over seventy-two percent of United States television households, the program has achieved a national footprint unusual for a show rooted in local-station investigative journalism.

From its 2018 launch as an over-the-top experiment to its current position as a weekday fixture in most American television markets, InvestigateTV has demonstrated that a station group can build a national investigative brand on the foundation of local reporting — and that audiences will watch hard-hitting, solutions-oriented journalism when it is given the resources and the airtime.