One of WKTV's best known alumni is Melissa Long, currently working at CNN. She anchors CNN.com Live, the network's live, multi-stream video service and is based out of CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Melissa Long served as co-anchor of NEWSChannel 2 Daybreak and Sunrise alongside Dick Lawler from June of 1997 to August of 1999.  They were the first co-anchor team for NEWSChannel 2 at Daybreak and Sunrise.  

She joined CNN in 2005 and since has anchored coverage of major stories including the Middle East conflict, the deaths of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech.  She also serves as a substitute anchor for CNN and Headline News.

Before her tenure at CNN, Melissa Long worked as an anchor and reporter for Rochester's CBS Affiliate, WROC. Also during her time in Western New York, Long was an adjunct communications professor at St. John Fisher College and authored a financial column in the Rochester Insider. She went to Rochester after working in the Syracuse market.