Maggie Rodriguez named co-host of WFLA’s ‘Daytime’

TAMPA — In November, as a guest on the WFLA News Channel 8 show Daytime, Maggie Rodriguez detailed why she gave up a job on national network news to raise her children full time.

A few weeks ago, she joined Daytime host Danny New as a guest co-host.

Rodriguez will be back on Daytime on Feb. 22, but this time she’s sticking around.

WFLA announced that Rodriguez is the new co-host of Daytime, which broadcasts at 10 a.m. weekdays.

“We’ve fallen in love with Tampa Bay,” Rodriguez, who has lived in Tampa for nearly four years, said in a prepared statement. “Getting to do this job in the place where we want to raise our children and live long-term is a dream.”

According to the WFLA media release, Rodriguez began her journalism career as a reporter on Spanish-language network Univision before moving on to KABC in Los Angeles to co-host a lifestyle program. Rodriguez was also the primary anchor on the CBS station in Miami.

She is best known for her time as co-anchor with Harry Smith of the CBS network’s national morning program The Early Show from 2008-2010.

“I always say it was my dream job,” Rodriguez said on Daytime in November.

That changed when her 4-year-old daughter asked “Mom, why can’t you be my nanny,” Rodriguez continued, “because to her the nanny was one who gave you the love and took you everywhere and kind of raised you. So, I started to think, ‘At this moment, am I doing this parenting thing all wrong?’”

After her son was born a year later, she told Daytime, CBS changed the morning team but offered her the opportunity to stay with the network in other ways, including weekend duties.

She instead decided to become a full-time mother.

“Now that they’re older, they don’t need me around as much, so it’s the right time to go back to work,” Rodriguez said in the statement. “Hosting a lifestyle show like Daytime is the ideal role with my background as a journalist and my family experience as a full-time mom.”