Starting this week, there will be fewer sources of local television news in Central California.
On Tuesday, the News-Press & Gazette Company shut down the local news department at its CBS-affiliated station KION (Channel 46) in favor of outsourcing news content to a CBS-owned station in San Francisco.
Moving forward, KION will simulcast local news from KPIX (Channel 5) in the Bay Area, which has committed to producing localized weather reports for Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz and other parts of its neighboring market.
In a press release on Tuesday, CBS and KPIX owner Paramount Global affirmed the station will commit more resources to covering news in Central California, but didn’t say whether the station will establish a news bureau there.
“CBS Bay Area is proud to serve viewers who call the Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz communities home, by telling their stories,” Scott Warren, the President and General Manager of KPIX, said in a statement. “We are also excited for viewers to now see and experience their local weather forecasting in a more dynamic and accessible way through our cutting-edge AR/VR presentation technology.”
KPIX previously supplied news programming to KION through a multi-market partnership in the late 1960s. The arrangement was largely due to KION’s dependency on KPIX’s signal to provide CBS programming to Central California. The arrangement ended a few years later when KION, then broadcasting as KMST, was sold to new owners who made significant capital investments in equipment and personnel.
In addition to CBS programming, KION serves as an affiliate of Fox, which airs on a digital sub-channel. KION’s Fox channel has long offered local news programming from KTVU (Channel 2), the Fox-owned station in Oakland.
KION also produced Spanish-language news broadcasts for its sister-station KCBA (Channel 35), affiliated with Telemundo. Moving forward, Spanish-language broadcasts will end, and KCBA will air Telemundo’s national news programming.
The partnership between KION and KPIX effectively leaves just one station — Hearst-owned KSBW (Channel 8 — as the only local TV station producing news from a studio in Central California. On Tuesday, KSBW said journalists at KION showed up to work expecting to produce daily newscasts, only to learn that their newsroom was shut down.
“No warning, showed up for work and got the news,” one unnamed employee said.
News-Press & Gazette owns around a dozen local TV stations across the country, including outlets in three California markets.
The shuttering of KION’s news department comes at a time when the commercial broadcast TV industry is leveraging local news output to justify tougher regulations on streaming TV services.
Two years ago, several broadcast groups banded together to launch the “Coalition for Local News,” a consortium that is pushing federal regulators to impart carriage fee rules on streaming services like YouTube TV and Fubo that allow broadcasters to charge more for distribution of their local stations. The consortium argues broadcasters need that revenue to nurture and grow their local news operations.
