An area tv station primarily based 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 a substitute, 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 mentioned they had 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 an everyday 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 way of calls and textual content messages from co-workers or from information reviews.
“Nobody knew they had been going to kill our information present,” mentioned Victor Guzman, an assistant information director and worker of greater than seven years who labored nights day by day to write 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 mentioned. 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, mentioned the choice removes key Spanish-language information media serving massive Latino communities in California’s agricultural heartland.
“It creates a void,” mentioned 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, mentioned he discovered the information from a good friend and former co-worker who texted him in regards to the change.
“I used to be fully left at midnight. Nobody had reached out,” Berrueta mentioned. “I’m going to the station and everybody’s packing their stuff. Individuals are crying, saying their goodbyes.”
The station had handled short-staffing, price range cuts and hiring freezes, staff mentioned. Its closure of stories operations comes at a time of financial pressures on native tv, with many stations abandoning native newscasts or promoting off property 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 adjustments as optimistic, saying the partnership with the Bay Space station would convey “expanded information protection” and “builds on an extended 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, mentioned within the assertion.
Information-Press & Gazette didn’t reply to questions from The Instances in regards to the determination or if there have been plans to offer 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.
