{"id":178262,"date":"2025-09-24T09:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T09:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178262\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T09:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T09:41:10","slug":"kion-and-telemundo-23-shut-down-with-no-warning-employees-blindsided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178262\/","title":{"rendered":"KION and Telemundo 23 shut down with &#8216;no warning;&#8217; employees blindsided"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAfter 56 years on air, KION-TV will shut down its local news operations beginning Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter have confirmed to KSBW 8.KION-TV, which airs on channel 46 and is owned by News-Press &amp; Gazette (NPG). NPG bought the station in December of 2013.Employees expressed their shock at the sudden announcement. &#8220;I did not see this coming. I was out heading out to do a story about affordable housing in Santa Cruz and got a call to come back, and it just hit me out of nowhere,&#8221; said one reporter. Sandy Santos, a Spanish language reporter and anchor for Telemundo 23, shared, &#8220;We&#8217;re coming into work just a regular day, you know. But eventually we had our meeting, morning meeting, and that&#8217;s when we find out about the transition.&#8221; Telemundo 23 also shares a newsroom with KION, and there is no plan for a Spanish newscast on the Central Coast.Hispanics make up 60% of the population in Monterey County, according to Data USA. Leaving the Central Coast without a Spanish newscast.Employees said corporate leaders came to town Tuesday with little explanation as to why they were ending news operations, effective immediately. &#8220;It was some corporate people from NPG that I hadn&#8217;t met before, and they said, you must be Ata, &#8216;We&#8217;re never doing live news again,'&#8221; said KION reporter Ata.Santos reflected on the impact of the decision, saying, &#8220;I know some of them didn&#8217;t take it well. I know some of them. You know, it&#8217;s a passion. It&#8217;s not just a job. It&#8217;s something that we do for the passion and for the area. We do want to be out there and communicate to everyone what&#8217;s going on.&#8221;KION news slots will now be filled by Bay Area station KPIX, a CBS affiliate. Mayor Dennis Donohue commented on the situation, saying, &#8220;It certainly speaks to a very changing media landscape, how people are going to get their information. And, you know, and from my perspective, I like folks to have as much local news as possible. And certainly that becomes a you know, they&#8217;ll they&#8217;ll be less of that in their near term.&#8221;Attempts to reach out to News-Press &amp; Gazette for comment have been unsuccessful.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tSALINAS, Calif. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>After 56 years on air, KION-TV will shut down its local news operations beginning Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter have confirmed to KSBW 8.<\/p>\n<p>KION-TV, which airs on channel 46 and is owned by News-Press &amp; Gazette (NPG). NPG bought the station in December of 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Employees expressed their shock at the sudden announcement. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I did not see this coming. I was out heading out to do a story about affordable housing in Santa Cruz and got a call to come back, and it just hit me out of nowhere,&#8221; said one reporter. <\/p>\n<p>Sandy Santos, a Spanish language reporter and anchor for Telemundo 23, shared, &#8220;We&#8217;re coming into work just a regular day, you know. But eventually we had our meeting, morning meeting, and that&#8217;s when we find out about the transition.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Telemundo 23 also shares a newsroom with KION, and there is no plan for a Spanish newscast on the Central Coast.<\/p>\n<p>Hispanics make up 60% of the population in Monterey County, according to Data USA. Leaving the Central Coast without a Spanish newscast.<\/p>\n<p>Employees said corporate leaders came to town Tuesday with little explanation as to why they were ending news operations, effective immediately. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was some corporate people from NPG that I hadn&#8217;t met before, and they said, you must be Ata, &#8216;We&#8217;re never doing live news again,'&#8221; said KION reporter Ata.<\/p>\n<p>Santos reflected on the impact of the decision, saying, &#8220;I know some of them didn&#8217;t take it well. I know some of them. You know, it&#8217;s a passion. It&#8217;s not just a job. It&#8217;s something that we do for the passion and for the area. We do want to be out there and communicate to everyone what&#8217;s going on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>KION news slots will now be filled by Bay Area station KPIX, a CBS affiliate. <\/p>\n<p>Mayor Dennis Donohue commented on the situation, saying, &#8220;It certainly speaks to a very changing media landscape, how people are going to get their information. And, you know, and from my perspective, I like folks to have as much local news as possible. And certainly that becomes a you know, they&#8217;ll they&#8217;ll be less of that in their near term.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Attempts to reach out to News-Press &amp; Gazette for comment have been unsuccessful.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 56 years on air, KION-TV will shut down its local news operations beginning Tuesday, two sources familiar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[37478,105917,3901,88,105470,105461,105468,105916,16459,105474,105467,105915,105914,105913,11484,92,4398],"class_list":["post-178262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-central-coast","tag-corporate-people","tag-employee","tag-entertainment","tag-gazette","tag-kion","tag-kion-tv","tag-local-news-operation","tag-meeting","tag-news-press","tag-npg","tag-sandy-santos","tag-spanish-newscast","tag-telemundo","tag-tuesday","tag-tv","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}