“Pretty much everywhere I go I get asked, ‘What’s going on over there?’ ‘Are you alright?’ ‘How are you doing?’”
This is unfamiliar territory for Jim Byrne—unemployed for the first time in his adult life.
The popular TV meteorologist was laid off in early January, along with a dozen fellow KCOY 12 and KKFX 11 colleagues, in a stunning shakeout that left viewers bewildered and many angered, as witnessed by the scores of negative comments on Facebook pages and in newspaper letters to the editor.
On Jan. 13, Byrne, anchor Arturo Santiago, and sportscaster Kevin Roose reluctantly said their on-air goodbyes. The next night, KCOY viewers tuned in to see the same Central Coast News’ backdrop with strangers sitting behind a news desk 158 miles north in Salinas.
“What our corporation has done is a complete disservice for our local community,” Byrne said in his only interview since the layoffs. “And I think they were a little surprised at the backlash, you know, and underestimated what happened. I don’t know if they underestimated how smart the viewers are.”
The corporation that made the sweeping changes is KCOY’s owner since 2008, Cowles California Media Company, based in Salinas. It’s a division of the Cowles Company in Spokane, Wash.
“It’s the ever-changing business of a television station or a newspaper or a radio station,” KCOY General Manager Kevin Harlan said, explaining the lay-offs. “I mean, the operating costs are high, and we have to find a better way to do our business.”
Cowles Media determined the “better way” was to eliminate Byrne’s job, the station’s sportscasters, and most behind-the-scenes news production staff at KCOY and KKFX, including photojournalists and directors, two of whom had worked there for more than 20 years. Cowles executives replaced the local evening news team with anchors at fellow CBS affiliate KION in Monterey County.
The only newscast still broadcasting live from KCOY’s building at the corner of Skyway Drive and McCoy Lane in Santa Maria is the morning news, anchored by Tony Cipolla and Cassandra Jones. A handful of KCOY reporters remain, feeding Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo County news stories up to Salinas, where the newscasts are taped.
“We tape it prior, right before the newscast happens, yeah,” Harlan admitted. “But right before, just so we can take care of the technical issues. … We have the ability to go live with breaking news.”
Many KCOY viewers have raised concerns about losing their voice in the community. Byrne believes the concern is warranted.
“Yes, they’re losing a voice. They lost it. … Are you watching a live local newscast? Are you getting local sports? Are your kids getting covered on sports? Trust me, everybody here in Santa Maria, all the workers at KCOY didn’t want this to happen. … This was forced upon us, and we really feel bad for the viewers at home.”
Harlan insists KCOY will still cover local sports: “We just won’t do a formal sportscast inside the news. We still cover local sports.”
Byrne spent 12 years at KCOY, building a solid reputation with his dependable professionalism and volunteering in this community. He’s only had the stomach to watch his replacements twice since his departure.
“I wanted to see how they covered the last rainfall event we had, because with everything being taped, so I hear, the weather that you’re getting from Salinas is taped apparently a couple hours before,” he said. “You’re not gonna get current conditions. You’re not gonna get up-to-the-minute radar, which shows the rain moving in. That’s the stuff I was kind of watching for, to see how they’d handle that.”
Former KCOY news anchor Katie Marzullo left in September for a dream job at KGO-TV in San Francisco.
“I’m lucky beyond lucky,” she said. “Getting the job was amazing, and then given that my job at KCOY probably doesn’t exist anymore, I mean, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”
Marzullo, who worked at KCOY for seven years, is heartbroken for her friends and colleagues who lost their jobs, and adds that there are still talented people hard at work at Channel 12.
“Everything is due a little earlier, and everybody’s doing a little more,” she said. “Everyone’s one-man-banding, so it’s more to do, in less time, with fewer people.
“Recording the newscast is very disheartening,” she continued. “That’s probably the worst part, because I think that’s a disservice to the viewers.”
Harlan assures the public that his remaining staff is united: “Well, I think morale is pretty good. The people who are here, we’ve banded together and we’re putting together a pretty good newscast.”
KCOY’s former evening anchor Arturo Santiago now anchors two daily webcasts on KCOY.com. Sports director Dave Alley now reports news.
Byrne had nine months left on his contract when he was let go. He wants to put KCOY behind him and focus on his future.
“It’s an ugly, messy situation that was created by someone else, and you know what, they can do what they want with me, but I’ll move on. I’ll be fine. … It was the best job in the world! You can be the butt of a lot of jokes—that just comes with the territory, being a weatherman—but passion shows through work.”
Byrne, who has his degree in meteorology, hopes to stay on the Central Coast and has started looking for work.
Management got an earful from longtime KCOY watchers who miss Byrne and others. On Jan. 14, viewers were somewhat blindsided with Salinas anchors replacing the people they came to trust in Santa Maria; viewers get attached to their favorite TV news personalities.
“I get it! I get it! And you know they do, and that’s difficult. Change is difficult,” Harlan acknowledged. “We have more local content. We have more local reporters on the street. Give us a watch. Take a look and watch … and don’t get me wrong, we’re gonna mispronounce a city name every now and then. That will happen. That will happen with people who’ve grown up here.”
When asked to predict whether KCOY will take a hit in the ratings in February, Harlan said, “I expect the normal ratings that we always get. We compete very well with KSBY and KEYT in local news.”
KSBY’S president and general manager, Kathleen Choal, sees it differently: “I don’t think this move will help [KCOY] in the ratings. I don’t. I think viewers will make choices, and I hope that they would choose us. We’ve always been the dominant station. … Viewers are savvy. I think they’ll make smart choices, and I think they’ll choose a newscast that’s live and local.”
Using a crystal ball
Is consolidation the wave of the future? Will TV groups around the country experiment with a similar format?
“I think there’s a lot of variations on the future of TV news,” KCOY’s Harlan said. “This happens to be one of the variations. But I think there’s going to be a lot of different variations. I think everybody has to figure out a way to do news differently.”
KSBY’s Choal countered: “It’s not good for the broadcast industry as a whole to see stations do something like that, or companies do something like that. I understand the economics that we’re in here, but it’s never a good thing for the industry as a whole to have that happen.”
KCOY’s top competitor, KSBY 6, the Central Coast’s NBC affiliate, is based in San Luis Obispo and has a newsroom in Santa Maria. Industry insiders recognize KSBY’s golden opportunity to widen the gap in the ratings.
And KSBY is taking the proverbial ball and running with it, debuting several new promos during the most-watched show of the year, the Super Bowl.
One promo shows KSBY anchors John Reger and Jeanette Trompeter in Santa Maria saying, “We were the first local newscast to serve Northern Santa Barbara County, and today we’re the only live, local evening newscast, broadcasting from Santa Maria. … KSBY has been here for decades, and we’re not going anywhere.”
But Choal said, “The economics in this market have changed. Revenues are definitely down. The difference I think for KSBY is we have a parent company that’s not traded publicly—we are owned by a family.”
KSBY is owned by Cordillera Communications, which is the broadcasting arm of Evening Post Publishing Co. in Charleston, S.C.
“We have very little debt, and so they’re able to sustain I think at a different level than say other companies,” Choal said.
Longtime Santa Maria broadcaster Bob Morrison is watching closely. He was KCOY’s sports director and news director in the early ’70s, after which he switched to sales, leaving KCOY in 1998.
“The newscast that KCOY is putting out right now really is not a bad newscast at all. … I think all you’re seeing is three different faces,” he said. “… They’ve got these young, fresh faces there, and a very qualified meteorologist, by the way.”
On the other hand, “KSBY has jumped on the bandwagon and has done a very good job with the amount of Santa Maria local coverage they’ve done. They saw this and just jumped on it,” he noted.
Morrison, who began his broadcasting career 53 years ago, has seen it all. Does he think this is the future of TV news?
“Economically it might make sense, but I certainly hope not,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the worry that the stations have got. I think the worry they’ve got is Facebook and Twitter and selling commercials on their own website and streaming stuff today that most people my age have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Spanish-language news
KCOY isn’t the only Santa Maria TV station forced to cut back.
Univision 38, a Spanish-language TV news operation, had layoffs in December 2011.
Univision’s general manager, Gabriel Quiroz, said he cut half of his staff due to the economy, reducing local coverage by 20 percent.
“It’s very difficult to make those decisions because you work with people for years,” Quiroz said. “We’re not closing, we’re just making changes to the structure of our local news.”
Univision still broadcasts local news on weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m.
At KTAS Channel 33, the Telemundo affiliate in Santa Maria, it’s business as usual.
“We’ve been here in this community since 1984, and we’ll be here into the future,” General Manager Sandy Keefer said. “We’re a real station. We really work here. … We are doing fine.”
Her staff of 13 produces a half-hour live, local newscast for the Central Coast’s Spanish-speaking community, Noticiero 33, on weeknights at 6 p.m. It repeats at 11 p.m., unless there’s breaking news.
AM-FM
What’s important to local radio station owners? It depends on who you ask.
Another longtime broadcaster, August Ruiz, worked for Univision for 20 years, managing big-city TV stations.
“I think Santa Maria is no different from what you see is going on in other markets,” he said. “Local news is getting squeezed just because it’s expensive.”
Ruiz owns Emerald Wave Media, operating three radio stations in Santa Maria. One of the stations, KTAP 1600 AM, was the first Spanish-language radio station in the market. Ruiz describes the chatty morning show as “a combination garage sale, Craigslist, coffee klatch,” hosted for 25 years by Jose Zarate. Loyal listeners “go hysterical” when he’s out on vacation.
“The one thing about radio is it is company,” Ruiz said. “We’ve got live people here locally, all day long. People like that. They want to hear that somebody is with them. Satellite radio—you don’t get that.
“There’s so many ways to get news that if you’re not playing music, which is what people want, they’re just going to change the channel,” he added.
Ruiz went so far as to raise this question: “Well, how much local news is there? People say a lot of things, but when you get down to it, you know, they want to watch Happy Days. They want to watch fun.”
Fellow radio station owner Shawn Knight of Knight Broadcasting Inc. thinks his Santa Barbara County listeners want more than fun.
“We try to combine entertainment with information so that we can stay relevant,” Knight said. “To me, the big relevance is on local.
“I can get that information out, and I can get it out immediately. You don’t have to wait for the 5 o’clock news or the newspaper tomorrow,” he said. “Radio just has that ability.”
Knight features longtime local personalities Ben Heighes, Andy Caldwell, and Mike Mesmer on news-talk station KUHL 1440 AM, “The Information Station.”
“It’s easy for broadcasters to cut payroll because it’s a big expense … but you’ve got to remember that it’s the DJs that bring that information, bring that local flavor, that tell you what’s going on at the Elk’s rodeo, at the fairgrounds,” Knight said.
Extra! Extra!
Newspaper owners agree that focusing on local news is the key to survival in the 21st century.
“We use local, very local content. That’s what everybody’s interested in,” said Alex Zuniga, who co-owns and co-publishes the Sun and the San Luis Obispo New Times with Bob Rucker.
Their free alternative weekly papers are entirely supported by advertisers and have a combined circulation of 56,000 papers. Rucker said community papers like his are doing fine, for the most part.
“We are just like any other business, being affected by the economy,” Rucker said. “We’re holding our own. … KCOY’s dumped a bunch of their editorial folks, the Santa Maria Times continues to reduce their editorial staff, the Tribune is giving you less, the Times is giving you less, everybody’s giving you less, yeah, except for us.”
Many daily newspapers are hurting because subscriptions are down and they’re losing ad revenues to the Internet.
“The dailies, at one time, probably 40 to 50 percent of their revenues came from classifieds. Craigslist came around; now they don’t get that,” Rucker explained. “Realtors are finding there are better ways—the web offers so much more information—once the user gets there.”
One local daily has faced tough financial times over the past year. The Santa Maria Times’ parent company, Lee Enterprises, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2011 in an effort to refinance about $1 billion in debt. Lee owns the Santa Maria Times, the Lompoc Record, Santa Ynez Valley News, Nipomo’s Adobe Press, and 45 other daily newspapers across the country.
And last month, Santa Maria Times Executive Editor Tom Bolton was laid off.
The Times’ publisher didn’t respond to multiple interview requests from the Sun for this article.
Expert opinion
So what’s the future of news during this age of media realignment?
An accomplished journalist/author/teacher at the Poynter Institute—a Florida school for professional journalists, promoting excellence and ethics—gave his perspective for this story.
Al Tompkins’ reaction to KCOY/KION’s new model of broadcasting news: “I don’t know of another market that is doing something exactly like that, but the fact of the matter is that an awful lot of TV markets have way too many stations producing TV shows. … In the same way there’s not a position for two or three newspapers in most towns, there’s not a position for eight different grocery store chains or five department stores in a mall. It’s too many.
So, what is the secret to success?
“The worst way to try to make a business is to be less than everybody else and hope that somebody sort of stumbles their way to your channel. What you have to do instead is differentiate yourself in the marketplace and cause people to come to you for a reason,” Tompkins said.
Will webcasts and the Internet replace TV news? “Don’t kid yourself, television is not going away,” Tompkins said. “There’s nobody buying a television set today that’s thinking, ‘Gosh this is gonna be good for two or three more years and then I won’t need it anymore.’ Television is not going away.”
What about newspapers? How long will they be around? “Who knows? I think it will be much more likely that we’ll have some version of electronic paper. Sort of like the tablet we’re seeing.”
Where will our children get their news decades from now? “What will the reading habits be of Gen X and Gen Y? We don’t know, but it most certainly won’t be paper. While that sounds a little shocking, it’s not that far off,” Tompkins predicted. “The old saying is that of the word ‘newspaper,’ the most important part of that word is ‘news,’ not ‘paper.’”
How can media outlets benefit from the Internet? “The Wall Street Journal has increased the amount of pay content they are using, and it’s been very successful. ESPN has a fair number of pay sites and is extraordinarily successful.” Tompkins added that the secret for newspapers online is to “provide content that you just can’t get anywhere else. It has to be unique, enterprised content.”
Tompkins said there is a nationwide trend: “What we’re seeing now is sort of a shakeout of some of the weaker players, and we’ll see if there’s a market opportunity that’s left for others to more robustly serve the local market.”
The last word came from the Sun’s own Rucker: “If everybody looks after their reader, or their viewer, or listener better, we would all be better off.”
Freelance writer Wendy Thies Sell’s career spans the media spectrum. She earned three regional Emmy Awards and the AP Mark Twain Award during her 15 years anchoring local TV news. She was host of a morning radio news program, and now writes the Sun’s weekly food and wine column.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2012.