Kim Stephens is in between segments on KMPH’s Great Day and is surrounded by morning-show frenzy.

There’s a band playing in the station’s Studio B. The beat leaks through into the newsroom, where a toy racetrack is set up as promo for Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix. Across town, the live crew is doing segments from the Monster Jam arena show.

In the midst of it all, Stephens is fielding questions about her decision to leave Great Day later this fall.

“We have so much fun together,” says Stephens, who came to Fresno in 2003 to co-host the newly-minted morning show alongside Kopi Sotiropulous.

Over the next two decades, the well-known weatherman would play the comic relief to Stephens’ serious tone and years of TV news experience (including Edward R. Murrow and Emmy awards).

Sotiropulous retired in March.

Stephens’ departure will leave the show without its two founding anchors.

“Kopi and I are really proud of what we started,” Stephens says.

“And we’re proud to have it carried on.”

Tenure track at Fresno State

Stephens only recently returned to Great Day after several months filling in for Monty Torres on KMPH’s evening newscast. She broke the news of her departure in a social media post Wednesday, announcing she was stepping away from the show to take a full-time, tenure-track position in Fresno State’s Media, Communications and Journalism Department, where she’s been an adjunct professor since 2015.

“It was a dream for me,” she says of the new position, but also of getting into academics in the first place.

“It was the whole reason I got my master’s degree,” she says.

Even before she started teaching, Stephen was thinking academics. Over the years, she collected files worth of material, examples that she would one day use in class and also as the basis for Broadcast News in the Digital Age, a textbook she wrote with fellow local TV anchor-turned instructor Faith Sidlow.

One payoff, she says, has been sitting as co-anchor across from former students, like Great Day reporter/anchor Karl Cooke, who graduated from Fresno State in 2022. “That is just like, the best,” Stephens says.

Stephens will remain on air for the next few months. Her last “Great Day” (pun intended) is Nov. 25.

Other changes in Fresno’s TV news scene

Stephen’s announcement comes on the heels of massive switch-ups at Fresno’s other TV news stations.

Last week, ABC30 announced Jason Oliveira would be taking some time off before transitioning to the station’s evening newscasts. He will replace Warren Armstrong, who is retiring in November.

Cory James returned to ABC30 to take over Oliveira’s position on the AM Live broadcast. James was at the news station from 2016-2020 before leaving for a job at WCBS, the CBS station in New York.

This came a month after the station lost three on-air personalities — Tiffany Olin, Gabe Ferris and Stephen Hicks. Sydney Berger replaced Hicks as sports director.

KSEE24/CBS47 stations also saw the departure of several on-air personalities, including Ben Morris, Brian Dorman, Briana Byus and Jason Takhtadjian.

Dorman addressed the exodus in a segment last week, after seeing the question repeatedly asked online.

“What is going on at CBS47 Eye Witness News? Nothing, to be honest with you,” Dorman said, address the audience alongside Byus and Lauren Wallace.

“This happens in a lot of newsrooms where contracts come up at the exact same time. We all started around the same time, different year … and then contracts come up and this is what happens.

“There’s going to be a whole bunch of new talented people coming in.”