The Central Coast is home to more than 750,000 people and, according to Nielsen, more than 600,000 aged 12 and over.
And since September, they have had only one outlet for locally-produced TV news: KSBW in Salinas. That, after CBS affiliate KION abruptly shut down its newsroom after 56 years.
The upheaval is part of a nationwide trend in a medium that was once the dominant source of local information in communities across the country.
“You and I are living through a generational change in how news is consumed and how it's produced and how it’s distributed and how it’s paid for,” said Tim Franklin, Chair of the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
“I think it’s awful,” said longtime Central Coast meteorologist Lee Solomon, who believes local coverage will suffer with just one station covering such a large and diverse area.
“If you have four reporters, and you have an event that happens in Santa Cruz, and your news department is in Salinas, and you have another event that’s down in Big Sur and one in Soledad, you have to make a decision. So, you just are not gonna get the types of coverage, whether it’s weather, whether it’s news, whether it’s a charity, whether it’s something great, something terrible.”
Local news shakeup
"You just are not gonna get the types of coverage, whether it's weather, whether it's news, whether it's a charity, whether it's something great, something terrible."Lee Solomon, former KSBW and KION Chief Meteorologist
Solomon, 56, is the highest-profile victim in the area’s local news shakeup that began one year ago, when he left his longtime TV home at KSBW after 22 years. He says he needed a break. Then, in August, he showed up at the competition, KION.
“He’s back, and KION’s got him,” the station’s promotional announcements proclaimed.
But it did not last long.
On September 23, with no warning to Solomon or anyone else, the station’s owner, St. Joseph, Missouri-based News Press and Gazette Company, said it was shutting down the news operation, effective immediately. Managers from corporate headquarters came to Salinas to deliver the news.
But many employees, including Solomon, first learned about the shutdown from friends at KSBW, which that morning broke the story of its competitor’s demise.
“It was sad,” Solomon said. “There were a lot of young people employed there, some of them in their first or second position, and they were devastated.”
More than a dozen people lost their jobs, including managing editor Jeanette Bent, who had been with KION for a year and a half. She said that the station, which had long been a laggard in the local market behind KSBW, was just starting to hit its stride with the hiring of Solomon, and a team of young and eager journalists. And she said it was starting to show in the ratings.
“We know they were ticking upwards. We saw that pattern,” she said. “We had such a good team that were so talented and energetic, enthusiastic, just creative, and it just stopped.”
Also let go was Sandy Santos, who reported and anchored the market’s only locally- produced Spanish language newscast on KION’s sister station, Telemundo 23.
“The shock for me and for everyone else was what's gonna happen? Where are we gonna get our news?” she said.
News Press and Gazette Company, which bills itself on its web site as “family owned” and “employee focused,” did not respond to multiple emails. The company, which owns TV stations in 10 markets along with its flagship Missouri newspaper, the St. Joseph News-Press, has not publicly given a reason for its action at KION, nor did it provide any explanation to the staff, according to Solomon.
“Yeah, that was disappointing,” he said.
The station now airs newscasts from KPIX, the CBS-owned station in San Francisco, in what both stations have described as a “partnership,” though it is unclear what KION is providing besides the air time.
KPIX did hire former KION news director Scott Rates to cover the Central Coast, but Bent said that is not the same as a full local news team.
“They’re gonna do their best, but they’re not down here,” she said.
Only game in town
It leaves KSBW, which is owned by New York-based Hearst Corporation, as the only locally-produced news outlet in the nation’s 128th largest TV market. KSBW simulcasts its news programs on its NBC-affiliated broadcast station, and on two digital channels—one carrying ABC programming, and a Spanish language channel where the newscasts include Spanish captioning. The station declined to comment for this story.
Northwestern University’s Tim Franklin said the concerns about lapses in news coverage when one TV station has a monopoly in the medium are well founded, based on experiences across the country.
“It means less local coverage for communities. It means fewer voices on broadcast news. It means less diversity in coverage communities,” he said. “And it's really unfortunate.”
Northwestern’s Local News Initiative, launched in 2016, has been tracking what it calls a deepening crisis in local coverage. In its most recent report, researchers identified 213 so-called “news deserts”—counties with no local news outlets—up from 206 a year ago. While none of the counties in the Monterey Bay area fits that definition, Franklin said the loss of KION’s news operation follows a national trend in local TV news that mirrors the accelerating decline of local newspapers.
“Local TV news ratings are slipping. Advertising dollars are under pressure. And, as a result of that, the TV news companies are looking to cut costs and to economize,” he said.
He said that the reason, according to the research, is that people’s pattern of news consumption has drastically changed.
“It was, for many decades, that the television set was the device of choice, and that local TV news was the primary news source,” he said. “Now, smartphones are the device of choice, and people are going to social media platforms, YouTube, searching AI platforms to get local news and information. And this is all having a profound impact on the business model.”
“It was, for many decades, that the television set was the device of choice, and that local TV news was the primary news source. Now, smartphones are the device of choice."Tim Franklin, Medill Local News Initiative, Northwestern University
Charting the future
Some of the laid off KION staffers are trying to embrace that change.
Former managing editor Jeanette Bent is part of a team that has launched a digital channel called The 831, providing articles, interviews and video on the independent publishing platform Substack.
“Maybe this is the buddings of a new era of journalism that’s not strict and linear to broadcast journalism, strict and linear to radio, strict and linear to print or even digital,” she said. “It’s for the people where they are, what they’re interested in.”
Lee Solomon will provide weather for the new venture. But he said he is also developing a new streaming service that he hopes to launch in the next two years. He said he is working with a nationwide network of developers, some of whom are former TV meteorologists like him.
“I can tell you that the technology has been or is being developed to get weather out on a local basis, having your local trusted meteorologist to all the people in your community, streaming at your fingertips, on your phone, on your tablet, on your computer, on your TV, however you stream,” he said. “I’m planning on bringing us into the future, literally.”
Some other former staffers have found TV jobs in other cities, while others are still plotting their next steps.
Sandy Santos, the former Telemundo anchor, said she has family ties in the area and plans to stay. But with few outlets for Spanish-language news, she is not sure if she will be able to stay in journalism.
She said she is worried about the impact of the dwindling options for local news coverage, particularly when it comes to the region’s large Hispanic community, and beyond.
“I had a mission. I knew I had to do something to portray those communities, to make sure those stories were told,” she said. “Now, with what happened, they don't have that resource. So, they have to go and look for it themselves, or now they have to go to social media and believe whatever they see.”
