After 56 years on air, California TV station abruptly shutters news operations

A local television station based in Salinas abruptly shut down its news operations on Tuesday after 56 years on the air.

KION-TV, which serves Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz regions on California’s Central Coast, announced on its website that it would no longer produce its own local newscasts. Instead, it would partner with Bay Area CBS station KPIX to air its broadcasts, effective 5 p.m. that day.

KION-TV’s news anchors, producers and other employees said they were confused and blindsided by the decision to immediately lay off the more than a dozen employees involved in news operations.

Executives from Missouri-based News-Press & Gazette, which owns the station, joined a regular morning meeting to notify workers that it was their last day on the job. Employees who had shifts later in the day learned the news through calls and text messages from co-workers or from news reports.

“No one knew they were going to kill our news show,” said Victor Guzman, an assistant news director and employee of more than seven years who worked nights daily to write, produce and anchor the morning show. “We are all shocked.”

Telemundo 23, which shared a newsroom with KION-TV, is also ending operations, employees said. The evening Spanish-language show was aired to a large swath of California, including Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura, in addition to Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.

Sandy Santos, who produced Telemundo 23 with part-time help from one bilingual reporter, said the decision removes key Spanish-language news media serving large Latino communities in California’s agricultural heartland.

“It creates a void,” said Santos, who grew up in Salinas after immigrating to the area with her family from Mexico. “People are very concerned about what’s going to happen.”

Sergio Berrueta, a digital content director who would have marked his one-year anniversary at the station this week, said he learned the news from a friend and former co-worker who texted him about the change.

“I was completely left in the dark. No one had reached out,” Berrueta said. “I go to the station and everyone’s packing their stuff. People are crying, saying their goodbyes.”

The station had dealt with short-staffing, budget cuts and hiring freezes, employees said. Its closure of news operations comes at a time of economic pressures on local television, with many stations abandoning local newscasts or selling off assets to larger companies. And it leaves the region with the station’s larger competitor KSBW as the lone local broadcast news station.

KION-TV in its Tuesday statement characterized the changes as positive, saying the partnership with the Bay Area station would bring “expanded news coverage” and “builds on a long history,” with KPIX having originally supplied CBS programming to the Salinas station when it first signed on in 1969.

“Our partnership with KPIX ensures that viewers across the Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz region continue to receive the high-quality local journalism they deserve” and will deliver “a seamless experience for viewers during a time of change,” Rall Bradley, executive vice president of broadcast at News-Press & Gazette Company, said in the statement.

News-Press & Gazette did not respond to questions from The Times about the decision or if there were plans to provide news for the Central Coast’s Spanish-speaking community.

News-Press & Gazette bought KION-TV in December of 2013. It also owns KEYT in Santa Barbara and KESQ in Palm Springs.