A neighborhood tv station based mostly in Salinas abruptly shut down its information operations on Tuesday after 56 years on the air.
KION-TV, which serves Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz areas on California’s Central Coast, introduced on its web site that it might now not produce its personal native newscasts. As an alternative, it might associate with Bay Space CBS station KPIX to air its broadcasts, efficient 5 p.m. that day.
KION-TV’s information anchors, producers and different staff stated they have been confused and blindsided by the choice to instantly lay off the greater than a dozen staff concerned in information operations.
Executives from Missouri-based Information-Press & Gazette, which owns the station, joined a daily morning assembly to inform staff that it was their final day on the job. Workers who had shifts later within the day discovered the information by calls and textual content messages from co-workers or from information experiences.
“Nobody knew they have been going to kill our information present,” stated Victor Guzman, an assistant information director and worker of greater than seven years who labored nights day by day to jot down, produce and anchor the morning present. “We’re all shocked.”
Telemundo 23, which shared a newsroom with KION-TV, can be ending operations, staff stated. The night Spanish-language present was aired to a big swath of California, together with Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura, along with Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.
Sandy Santos, who produced Telemundo 23 with part-time assist from one bilingual reporter, stated the choice removes key Spanish-language information media serving giant Latino communities in California’s agricultural heartland.
“It creates a void,” stated Santos, who grew up in Salinas after immigrating to the realm along with her household from Mexico. “Individuals are very involved about what’s going to occur.”
Sergio Berrueta, a digital content material director who would have marked his one-year anniversary on the station this week, stated he discovered the information from a buddy and former co-worker who texted him in regards to the change.
“I used to be fully left at the hours of darkness. Nobody had reached out,” Berrueta stated. “I’m going to the station and everybody’s packing their stuff. Individuals are crying, saying their goodbyes.”
The station had handled short-staffing, funds cuts and hiring freezes, staff stated. Its closure of reports operations comes at a time of financial pressures on native tv, with many stations abandoning native newscasts or promoting off belongings to bigger firms. And it leaves the area with the station’s bigger competitor KSBW because the lone native broadcast information station.
KION-TV in its Tuesday assertion characterised the modifications as optimistic, saying the partnership with the Bay Space station would carry “expanded information protection” and “builds on a protracted historical past,” with KPIX having initially provided CBS programming to the Salinas station when it first signed on in 1969.
“Our partnership with KPIX ensures that viewers throughout the Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz area proceed to obtain the high-quality native journalism they deserve” and can ship “a seamless expertise for viewers throughout a time of change,” Rall Bradley, government vp of broadcast at Information-Press & Gazette Firm, stated within the assertion.
Information-Press & Gazette didn’t reply to questions from The Occasions in regards to the choice or if there have been plans to supply information for the Central Coast’s Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Information-Press & Gazette purchased KION-TV in December of 2013. It additionally owns KEYT in Santa Barbara and KESQ in Palm Springs.
