June 24th, 2002

NEW SECOND IN COMMAND: Chris Myers is the new assistant news director at KNBC/Los Angeles. Myers had been a special projects producer at WMAQ/Chicago.

June 17, 2002
UNI-PURCHASE: Univision is getting into the radio business in a big way. The Spanish-language television broadcaster is buying Hispanic Broadcasting's 55 radio stations for $3.5 billion dollars worth of Univision stock. It's Univision's first move into radio, and will give the broadcaster some major new cross-promotion opportunities. With NBC recently completing its purchase of rival network Telemundo, things could be interesting for Spanish-language broadcasting during the next few years.

WHAT'S NEXT? Lots of speculation, but little news is coming out about exactly how the KCBS-KCAL television merger in Los Angeles will work out. There are different stories floating around about where the joint operation will be based, Columbia Square or the Paramount lot where KCAL is now located. Plans call for the combined operation to be up and running by the start of the fall television season.

HI HO, VEGAS: Greg Ricks is half of the new morning anchor team at KVVU/Las Vegas. Greg was morning anchor at OCN in Orange County, California for seven years, and did cut-ins for KCBS/Los Angeles. Ricks recently reported and anchored at KOCE-TV/Huntington Beach-Orange County.

MOVING NORTH: Chris Licht is the new nightside EP at KNTV/San Jose, He previously worked as an EP at KNBC-TV/Los Angeles.

ROLLING THE DICE IN VEGAS: Dick Tuininga is now Managing Editor for Las Vegas One, the local news channel run by KLAS/Las Vegas. Tuniniga has been a news director in San Diego, and has also been a ND in Los Angeles, Cleveland and Detroit, among others.

June 3rd, 2002

TALK ABOUT DUOPOLY: Viacom is continuing its consolidation of its two Los Angeles television stations. First, KCAL general manager Don Corsini was named as topper of both Channel 9 and KCBS, Channel 2. Now, KCAL News Director Nancy Bauer Gonzales has been named as n.d. for both stations. The move stunned some people, because Princell Hair had only been running the show in the KCBS newsroom for about six months, and had been hand picked by top Viacom executives. However, Bauer Gonzales is an L.A. news veteran, with ratings up at KCAL, and more than a decade in the newsroom at cross town KNBC.

HOME AGAIN: Marc Bailey returns home to anchoring mornings at XETV/San Diego, after a stint at WAGA/Atlanta.

DOUBLE DUTY: Shaun Robinson re-upped at NBC's "Access Hollywood", and is adding some special assignment duties at KNBC/Los Angeles to her schedule in Burbank.

L.A. BOUND: Joel Connable joins KCAL/Los Angeles as a reporter from WLTX/Columbia, South Carolina. HE REPORTS, HE COACHES, AND HE TEACHERS: "California Connected" television reporter Jon Beaupré is also firming up his teaching gig. Beaupré just received his permanent appointment to the Cal State Los Angeles Department of Communications Studies. Beaupré is also an AP and RTNA awared winning radio journalist.

May 27th, 2002

A LEGEND IS GONE: "From the desert, to the sea, to all of Southern California". If you grew up in Southern California, you grew up with those words. He was a broadcasting icon...probably the closest thing Southern California had to a Walter Cronkite. KCAL-TV/Los Angeles anchor Jerry Dunphy passed away last week, several days after suffering a heart attack. As anchor of "The Big News", CBS's pioneer hour long local newscast on KNXT (now KCBS-TV) in Los Angeles, he helped make TV history. The newscast dominated the local news scene for more than a decade... regularly getting a 25 share of the viewers. Dunphy later moved to KABC-TV, and then was one of the cornerstones of KCAL's three-hour prime time newsblock. He won virtually every honor in Southern California broadcast journalism over the years. Dunphy was 80 years old.
KCAL's website is hosting a special documentary on the life and career of Jerry Dunphy...click here to see it.

KCOP CHANGES: UPN/13 in Los Angeles is making changes to its newscast. The Fox-owned station is thinning the herd in the 10 p.m. newscast race, by cutting back to a half-hour, and moving to 11. As of June 3, the station will run the syndicated "Seinfeld" followed by "Frazier" in the 10 p.m. news slot. The change still leaves three hour long newscasts going head to head in the crowded 10 p.m. slot.

MOVING UP IN SAN DIEGO: Dan Shadwell moves into an evening anchor slot at KFMB/San Diego.

May 20th, 2002
CAN YOU SAY Y'ALL? Scott Diener is the new n.d. at WHAS TV/Louisville. He had been VP/News at KNTV/San Jose before its sale to NBC.

GETTING UP EARLY: Evan Michael is the new morning anchor at KOAA/Pueblo, Colorado...moving from KNVN/Chico-Redding.

GETTING DUE CREDIT? Many of America's Spanish language broadcasters have long argued that the current television ratings system hasn't accurately measured their audiences. Now, Telemundo and Univision say that Nielsen Media Research is getting ready to start a new way of tracking TV viewing in Spanish-speaking households. If the system gets approval for use, it will be tested for a year. The new system would eventually integrate the two sets of numbers now released by Nielsen for English and Spanish language networks into one standard.

May 13th, 2002
IT''S OFFICIAL: Viacom's purchase of KCAL-TV/Los Angeles was approved by the FCC this week, creating a KCBS/KCAL duopoly. Approval of the deal means Viacom will also have to sell one of its seven Los Angles radio stations in the next six months. How the competition of the deal affects news operations is still a question mark, although with the May sweeps underway, it's probably business as usual for the next few weeks. But, if the FOX/Chris Craft deal is any indication, look for merging of many front-office functions. One big change that occurred this week: David Woodcock has left the general manager's slot at KCBS, with KCAL's Don Corsini poised to run both stations.

TREJOS GOES NETWORK: Claudia Trejos is now the main sports anchor for "Al Rojo Vivo", Telemundo's Florida-based national daily news magazine. She was most recently at KVEA/Los Angeles, and her stops before that include KTLA/Los Angeles, KWHY/Los Angeles, and KLCS/Los Angeles. She'll join Maria Celeste Arraras on the show, who was hired from the Univision network.

DIANE DIAZ RETIRES: KNBC/Los Angeles weekend anchor Diane Diaz has left the station after 12 years, saying she wants to spend more time with her kids.

NEW MANAGING EDITOR: Annette Smith is the new newsroom guru at KCRA/Sacramento, filling the long-vacant slot created by the departure of John Carr. Smith had been at WFAA/Dallas.

MORE WORK FOR SCHWAID: Steve Schwaid has been rewarded for his help as head of NBC's transition team at KNTV/San Jose. The formerWCAU/Philadelphia news director is now VP/News Programming for the NBC-owned stations.

May 6, 2002
IT'S OFFICIAL: KNTV/San Jose is now officially the NBC owned and operated television station for the San Francisco Bay Area. The deal for the network to buy Channel 11 from Granite Broadcasting got final FCC approval April 30. As we told you last week, the network is bringing in Linda Sullivan, from WRC/Washington, D.C. as general manager.

MOVING HOME: Joe Gomez is leaving his n.d. slot at KERO/Bakersfield to return home to his native Texas, and KABB/San Antonio, where he'll be an executive producer.

BIG DEAL TIME: The San Francisco Chronicle reports Gary Radnich signed a whopper of a deal to stay at KRON/San Francisco. Details haven't been released, but the agreement calls for him to stay on as main sportscaster at the station for seven more years.

HIGH DEFINITION BOOST: Wonder why the engineers at your station have been taking forever to fix that broken wireless mike? It might be because they were racing to meet a May 1 deadline to start broadcasting in digital. A good chunk of stations didn't meet the deadline. That has some members of Congress angry, because they feel that some important spectrum is sitting unnecessarily idle right now. HDTV did get one boost this week...the country's 10 largest cable operators agreed to add five broadcasters, or cable networks to their lineups January 1 which offer significant amounts of high-def programming.