Local El Paso TV Station Ending Newscasts - Business, Redundancy, and FitFam El Paso. (2 of 3)

Redundancy: While Exclusive CBS4 Programming is Going Away.... One has to Ask: Was it Ever Exclusive News Programming? A Diagram of a Sunday Night in El Paso News

First off,

Thank you for reading part 1. It was a long read that had a lot of research that went into it, and for the most part, a lot of you understand I am on the side of the reporters and behind the scenes workers that may be impacted by the Sinclair Broadcasting news that KDBC CBS4 is going to end most newscasts really soon.

I DO ALSO WANT TO PUT IT OUT THERE IF YOU WORK FOR ANY OF THE NEWS STATIONS, KFOX, KTSM, KVIA I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE I PROPERLY GET THE BEATS RIGHT OF YOUR INDUSTRY.

YOU WILL HAVE TOTAL ANONYMITY. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE I AM FAIR IN WHAT I HAVE TO SAY. SIGNAL…TELEGRAM…YOU NAME IT, I CAN DO IT. WHY AM I WRITING IN CAPS?

The history of the station is filled with a struggle to find an identity, which is the same problem it has now. While Sinclair Broadcasting is doing something I am not a fan of, I think most normal people kind of understand why it is happening.

But a lot of people want to focus on the politics of the parent company, and while that is fair, let me put it to you this way: Do you think 90% of the people in that newsroom give a shit about that? I don’t think so. I think they want to be the best they can be. They want to learn. They want to grow. If you expect an anchor or an MMJ to be there 40 years at the station, like some Walter Cronkite clone, you are sorely mistaken. Most people in the industry, and most people in El Paso news understand that this market is likely step 1 of many steps to get to the best jobs. Just like any line of work.

At my former bank, they rarely hired branch managers outside the company. They want people who were there, who grew up in the bank’s system and know a lot of roles so they can take that experience with them to the next steps. It’s all businesses, so don’t project that on these workers who kind of know the score when they sign up there, although of course, it hurts when it is time to move on. Why would it not.

Something newsworthy happened since the last time I wrote. Fidel Moreno-Meza, a really good reporter, who ended up being the anchor of the morning and noon newscasts with Vania Castillo, announced he was leaving as of next week, according to his Facebook account.

I am not a morning news person, but when I did watch, he was good, and it shows by the many markets he is jumping up to land in Las Vegas at Channel 3 there, which is also a Sinclair station.

It is bittersweet, but part of the business. But I couldn’t get over what he said on his Facebook post, and it kind of led me to understand why I am even writing about this.

This is a completely personal choice, and I did have the option of staying here in El Paso, but it is time to be closer to family and loved ones. It's an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

The way he has to write that out, almost like if people, viewers, think he is being pushed out and forced to vacate his dream, like he is a damn hostage or collateral damage or something. Um no, this is entirely his decision, and likely was going to happen anyway for further development in his career.

You look at his bio, and you see that he was already in Kansas City before El Paso, and then internships all over the place shows he has a goal, and El Paso was a stop on that goal. If he were here 40 years, you should be like “what happened?”

The option of staying in El Paso was likely (I’m just guessing) as a MMJ for KFOX? Maybe they are going to add a noon newscast? I don’t know, but as he said, “It’s time to be closer to family…an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

As mentioned, KSNV in Vegas is a Sinclair station, but of course, because of its higher market, it is a “better job” than what he has. A lot of people who work for Sinclair, or their competitor Nexstar are cognizant that their performance at their current job is easily noted and reviewed by the “powers that be” that run stations all across the country, which makes it easier, and more of an inside track to get those jobs when they come up. There’s zero chance that Fidel didn’t apply for the job, whoever runs things can easily look up his jacket (I am using police sergeant terms here) and see his skills, talent, and his reel, and say, “You’re hired, kid. Come to Vegas!”

So, again, the fact he had to put it out there that it was his decision and his decision only to leave is almost a nod, either subconsciously or on purpose to the people who want to use him leaving to bash his company, the company he still will work for, for ending the newscasts and seemingly not care about their people.

While I can’t vouch for Sinclair caring for their people, he wouldn’t be getting that job if they didn’t think he was qualified, so good on him!

People used to do that with me all the time. Working at Bank of America, you are constantly told how shitty your company is… “YOU’RE GREAT, JAMES, I LOVE TALKING TO YOU, BUT YOUR COMPANY SUCKS!!!”

It’s a backhanded compliment, because you don’t understand I had goals too and I was trying to meet them there. I had dreams, and while I couldn’t stand the bullshit of BofA, they were allowing me to pay my bills, marry my wife, and become a homeowner, although there was shit in between that.

So if you expect any talent at CBS4 or KFOX to speak out, which would be likely in violation of the social media policy in any company, you are sorely mistaken. Let them be. Support them, but don’t expect them to not care about their careers because one station is going away, when most on-air talent know this is not likely their last stop!

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Redundancy - A Sunday Night in El Paso News, and Understanding Why Sinclair is Doing What They are Doing

I have seen the footprint of weekend news on KFOX and CBS4 for a few years now, at least since COVID subsided, and am aware of how their programming has been with newscasts since then.

The first thing I want to say about it though, is no matter who the anchor was on weekends, it has been good…really good.

From Adriana Candelaria a few years back, who I believe is married to Adrian Ochoa, the KVIA sports guy and is no longer in the media business, Holly Bock, who now works in Phoenix at AZ 3, and Lianna Golden, who left KFOX/CBS4 to take a job at WJLA in Washington DC, one of the biggest markets out there, closer to home and the next stop after El Paso, and now Ariana Parra, a NM State grad who does the weekend newscasts now for both 4 and 14, the newscast, which is as bare bones as you can get, does its job well.

You got to understand the hurdles of the weekend broadcast. Football preempts or truncates the 5:30 KDBC newscast often for 40% of the year, whether it would be college or NFL football. On Sundays, 60 Minutes starts at 6pm, so a 30-minute newscast might by 8 minutes depending on the games running long.

Springtime, you have golf and other sports possibly running long. You have likely less reporters and less staff at your disposal than on weekdays (I’m assuming) and then guess what? You have to do it again at 9pm on KFOX and then on Sundays, the newscast airs until 10pm, when you also have a newscast at 10pm ON KDBC.

It’s a lot, and it’s a lot that is handled admirably by the current staff and the previous staff there.

I made it a point to watch both the 9pm KFOX newscast and the 10pm CBS4 Newscast in a row last Sunday because I knew I wanted to write this after the FitFam post and comments in that thread (Can’t wait to write about that next column) and how delicate the balance is wanting to feel bad that something was ending to outright using it as a tool to say the company that owns it sucks, so the people must suck too. No. That’s not right.

Ironically, I decided to do this on a day where major breaking news happened. The 21st was the announcement that President Biden was going to step away from the 2024 Presidential race. It’s one of those moments that if you follow the media, you are always interested in who is covering the story. If the national outlets bring out their weekday anchors to cover this event on a Sunday afternoon.

Local news was no different. KTSM had Andy Morgan and Monica Cortez with weekend anchor Oriana Bottaro serving as a reporter on a newscast which she normally anchors.

KVIA had weekday anchors Paul Cicala and Stephanie Valle handling the huge news, with weekend anchor Jason McNabb serving as a reporter and interviewer of a guest on the 10pm show.

I am fine with this, because yes, it is a big story, and you want to convey the gravity of it by having who are in essence your chief storytellers on the newscast.

At the same time, I have some gripes with this as you are not giving young reporters that experience of handling a big news story to learn, to find their voice and honestly, if they left the business in 5 years, they could say, “My most memorable moment was covering the day Biden quit. It was huge!”

KDBC and KFOX didn’t bring out Robert Holguin and/or Liz Dueweke to cover the Biden news. Oh, no…not at all. Were they unavailable?

But here’s the thing, as mentioned before, the weekend crew at KFOX and KDBC have been more than capable in being able to handle the coverage. So on that Sunday night, I watched both newscasts that Ariana Parra anchored, and it was good. No, it was better than good. It was great. Her being there to tell us what happened earlier in the day would not have had any more weight with the weekday crew telling it.

I have no critique except for one, and it is something not her fault, but something that Sinclair has been doing for years, and that’s basically having the same stories, local or otherwise be told exactly the same way on the two different stations.

Here is a report from reporter Julia Spencer on KFOX at 9pm which had man on the street interviews of people who had opinions on Biden leaving the race:

I always love man on the street interviews, because they are so delightfully awkward. You can tell who is comfy on camera and who is not, and a lot of the times, the words the people say are pure gibberish. All-in-all a good story, and what I want from a local newscast. If I wanted a national perspective, I would watch CNN or a national channel.

Funny enough on the 9pm KFOX newscast, she ended it by saying “Julia Spencer, CBS4 News at 10” which of course was wrong. The clip shows her catching herself making the error as she was saying it.

Cut to 10pm on KDBC, Ariana is anchoring on the other set, and she throws it to Julia Spencer who presents her report….the exact same report that she told an hour ago on another channel with the same man on the street interviews.

Again, the story is fine, and the newscast is fine, but you aren’t seeing anything different from one station to another. It was the same story.

So what does it matter? Well, look at it from the perspective of Ariana, Julia, Brad Montgomery, who was doing the weather that night… It was the same performance, just on two different sets, times, and station call letters.

Last article I mentioned how a Sinclair spokesman a decade ago said that they didn’t want KDBC to be a carbon copy of KFOX. Well, on this day, a momentous day, it was exactly a carbon copy.

So, this is where I feel that what Sinclair wants to do with KDBC newscasts, if anything, streamlines some of the extra work those on the weekends have to do, because if you just run a 30-minute version of KFOX at 9pm at 10pm, with the exception of news that breaks between 9pm and 10:30pm, you won’t know the difference. The time on the bug on the screen is the only thing alerting people of the time, so don’t emphasize the time.

I can’t speak for the on-air talent or the behind the scenes folks, but I think not having to do the 10pm newscast and running a re-air of KFOX means less work, am I right? It seems like it anyway.

There was literally no report on either newscast that was exclusive to that station’s newscast. It wasn’t a carbon copy, because one is an hour long, and the other was thirty minutes, but it always felt at times Sinclair is making cookies and using different cookie cutters to cut the cookies into shapes, but also expecting each cookie to taste different. I think even Sinclair realized that, no, they won’t taste different if they are different shapes. That’s why this move is happening.

But nonetheless, I feel like they made lemonade out of lemons that night.

One of the more interesting parts was the sports segment, which was read by Ariana on both stations. Both were near 100% similar, right down to the mispronouncing of Xander Schauffle’s name, who won the British Open that day. I am not upset at that. It’s a tough name… ZAN-DER SHAW-FLEA.

But the most unique part of the segment was the end, where she discusses a cereal being created with the branding of the Kelce brothers, Former Eagles Center Jason, and Taylor Swift love interest Travis.

Their Kelce mix cereal is interesting to say the least, and it is one of those things that generates a discussion like… “What’s your favorite cereal?”

The end of the KFOX sports segment which referenced the cereal has a long ad-lib about what both Ariana and Brad’s “mix cereal” would be.

There was a lot of time to stretch, but it was not an awkward conversation. It was genuine and real, and honestly, it made me think about my favorite cereal.

Then at 10pm, which is a shorter newscast, the sports segment ends with the same story and a new version of the ad-lib about cereal and this story with Ariana and Brad.

Now, that was the most original thing in the whole newscast, and it didn’t feel forced. I loved it. They have good rapport. Two unique discussions about cereal over two newscasts and if you missed one, you didn’t feel like you missed out.

That takes skill. In banking, they give you scripting for sales, but also tell you not to use scripting all the time, because it feels less real. This was real.

Now, the banter was great, but as mentioned, that was the only variance in how the news was structured. What made the CBS4 newscast that night special was the one thing that wasn’t scripted.

It kind of reinforced two separate things at once. First off, the vibe of the KFOX/KDBC newscasts is much better than KTSM or KVIA that night. The giant story of the day was covered, but not overcovered like in the other two places, and there was still time for a quick hit of sports, and even some fun, comfortable banter.

It also told me that it didn’t need to be done twice.
But I can’t say enough about the on-air talents efforts. The last handful of people who do weekends for Sinclair have done well given the circumstances.

Plus, with no sports anchor on a day where major sports events happen is a no-win situation, but they make do with what they have. Montgomery and Forecaster Nasya Mancini seem to work A LOT as well to do the weather for both.

The thing with great workers is they know how to adapt to a bad situation. Don’t think I am giving Sinclair grace here, nope. The on-air talent has succeeded DESPITE all the cutbacks Sinclair has done to both stations, and with KDBC ending newscasts, even more are coming.

At my old BofA branch, a multi-billion dollar company told us regularly that we had $500 month to buy supplies for the branch, including paper and ink.. you know, stuff you need in a bank. If we ran out, which we could in the cost of doing business FOR THEM, we had to pay out of pocket for supplies. OFTEN!

We had to make that money stretch. We shook the shit out of toner cartridges to get one more set of docs printed, and an old coworker used to take the empty toner cartridges to Staples for store credit so we can buy pens and other supplies, because customers took all our pens, and a lot of the time, employees were paying for pens out of pocket…All because a bank with $1 Trillion in assets would chew us out for overspending when we wanted a $3 box of pens.

But, no matter how much stuff like that sucked, we still did our job, and did it well. That’s why I have empathy towards the staff of both stations.

It’s no big secret when your parent company/big bosses are finding ways to cut back, limit things, and make your job a lot harder, even though they never have done your job one day in their lives. The workers at the Sinclair-owned stations are likely not oblivious to what’s going on. You can tell in Fidel’s goodbye. He feels that people will think there’s some sort of bloodletting going on.

So here’s the crazy thing: I really believe the ending of “most” CBS4 newscasts will not be detrimental to local reporting of local stories from the Sinclair stations, which allegedly will primarily be on KFOX for the foreseeable future. People like to use an easy headline that a station is getting rid of news to tee off on a company they had an issue with before.

They defend journalism by mentioning that the voices of reporters are being limited, when you can pick up any one of 100 Gannett owned newspapers, including the El Paso Times and Las Cruces Sun-News, and read the exact same damn national stories in almost every state in the union, because the stories are not written locally. They are either written by a national reporter with USA Today, which is under their umbrella, or they are from a wire service, although AP no longer has a relationship with them. If the Las Cruces newspaper would go away, there would not be any more of a dearth in reporting than what they have now.

They have one reporter, and have not covered local sports in a year, high school or college, their are less and less stories about the crime in Las Cruces, but tons of guest columns to fill their pages just to make enough pages to make space for advertisers, which are almost always national, and have no local flavor at all.

Sinclair is like that too. Their national reporting aside from the prompter read from local on-air talent which leads into a story from someone else in Sinclair does not make me feel like this station is “local” like they claim to be. That part is true. I don’t like the national stories from them.. I don’t know…something about it.

But detractors of Sinclair, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t call Sinclair evil for getting rid of the newscasts and seemingly jeopardizing jobs, and then complain at the same time you can’t watch the anchors/reporters on the newscasts for some reason not having to do with the quality of the news, but more the political stuff behind the scenes, which I can care less about.

Basically some people say all of Sinclair is slanted. Well, if that’s what you believe, how can you then care about the supposed propagandists as you think they are spewing the company line, and not defending journalism like you think they aren’t?

That’s what asinine about the whole thing, and the phony outrage people who likely have never watched a newscast from them is ridiculous.

One of the unique things about KFOX and KDBC, and I am sure all Sinclair stations, is the amount of freaking advertising they have on their newscasts. Every segment has a sponsor. Every camera pointed outside has a sponsor. They know how to make money, and the only thing that I am not seeing is that if they get rid of one station’s “unique” news content with all these sponsorships integrated in the newscast. Are they really going to throw money away by not having those same promotional considerations on the other station?

Look at the end of the KFOX newscast. Pages of sponsors. Unlike anything I have ever seen with any other local stations, who normally just plug the place where the anchor does her hair or gets her outfit.

KDBC has something similar. My wonder is that they are leaving a lot of money on the table by not having a second station where they can solicit advertisers for a lot more money.

While some may bemoan the “commercialization” of local news, I counter with, “Imagine if they didn’t sell that many ads? How much more loss would we have seen?” Plus those same people seem to neglect the 2-3 mins of actual commercials between blocks of a newscast. That’s ok because a logo isn’t on the precious newscast? Come on…

Not having newscasts may eat into that promotional consideration revenue, and that’s honestly what worries me more about the long-term future of this arrangement, because it means even less money coming in.

News on a local station is there to make money. It always has been and always will be. It’s the vehicle for the product to sell to consumers…those things in between segments called commercials.

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Oklahoma

A lot of people are referencing Sinclair’s announcement in El Paso to something much more disgusting that parent company Sinclair did in another market. In Tulsa, OK, KTUL, The ABC affiliate’s employees got some crazy news in November 2023. They were told that the Tulsa station’s operations would be would down in Tulsa, and moved over 100 miles away to Oklahoma City.

Their statement was garbage:

We are making changes to the way we produce news in Tulsa and refocusing our resources, establishing a regional content center to super serve the Tulsa and Oklahoma City television markets. This will allow hyperlocal news and weather content from both markets, as well as regional content, to be included in every newscast. News airing on KTUL will now be produced out of our Oklahoma City content center, and will include live, local content with local reporters from Tulsa, paired with the resources of our content center at KOKH/KOCB. We’ve made significant improvements and investments to our broadcast capabilities and technologies, including adding a new antenna ensuring better coverage in the Tulsa market.

Sinclair is, and remains, committed to local journalism and the communities which we serve. The refocusing of resources in Tulsa will allow us to ensure the long-term success of the station and continue to bring the top local, regional and national news to the Tulsa market

It was met with a lot of disdain, because how can you get the local feel of a city if you aren’t even headquartered there. I am not an Oklahoman, but have talked to enough people to know OKC and Tulsa are not apples and oranges, they are apples and cheez-its. When so many people were let go, jobs eliminated, one-on-ones were had to identify who is worth keeping and who is worth jettisoning, that’s when it gets grim.

From Reddit:

Now, that is truly terrible. Gives me PTSD from how my bank tenure ended.

So, if Sinclair were shutting down KDBC and saying that the news ops are going to Albuquerque, 4 hours away from El Paso, and a world away to me, I would be pissed. I am in Las Cruces, NM, which is basically a suburb of El Paso, TX, and I am more aligned with them than Albuquerque, despite ABQ being in the same state.

That’s how KTUL from Tulsa feels like being in Oklahoma City. I watched a newscast, and I swear to you, they are pretending like they are still in Tulsa, which is weird. The weather guy mentioned “here in green country” which is a reference to living in Tulsa, even though he isn’t there! What the hell? He literally said that as if he was in the place Sinclair so publicly moved out of.

While the news flowed fine, I knew that they weren’t in Tulsa and for them to allude to it being a Tulsa station knowing they were far away from that city was weird. This is the worst of Sinclair.

This is not what is happening in El Paso. Are people going to lose their jobs?

Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s not remotely close. One was a gutting of a town’s station and putting its zombie on air from 100 miles and another market away. The other is kind of realizing that running two separate news ops while most of your content is eerily similar is not a long-term success.

Sinclair will still have a local news operation in El Paso with KFOX. When that gets trimmed or moved or eliminated…then we should worry.

But ironically when it comes to long-distance newscasting, a local El Paso station owned by another big-time company pretended to be in the RGV for many years, while the anchor and weatherman were here in El Paso hundreds of miles away.

KVEO out of Brownsville, TX ended its local newscasts from that area in 2010.

They then entered into an agreement with KTSM, then owned by another company other than Nexstar and an arrangement was made to have KTSM personalities in El Paso produce a newscast for KVEO from hundreds of miles away.

Still as of a few years ago, the Brownsville TX market was serviced by the KTSM studio, where anchor Brenda Medina, who later ended up working for El Paso KTSM and didn’t have to leave the building, was anchoring for Brownsville. All they did was change the background in the studio to one of the waters off of South Padre Island, TX

Robert Bettes who is the main meteorologist in El Paso now, was also the head of KVEO even though he also was living in El Paso.

To the untrained eye, you wouldn’t think that a newscast about your town was 800 miles away. But to someone like me, I just think, “How can you speak to my local area if you can’t even have your studio there?”

Brenda Medina and Robert Bettes did well for them.

Thankfully, it is now operated a little differently today

But just a few years ago, people who weren’t from there were doing the news there, and while it doesn’t speak to the quality of their work, because they are great, it speaks to how some entities claim to be local and part of the community and not even be close.

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This is NOT a new thing that is happening. Industry has to adapt to survive. I know tons of people who don’t have cable and don’t have an antenna to watch local shit. It’s Roku all the time.

Bemoaning Sinclair is fine, people, but I just know a lot of people complaining NEVER tuned in. Period. But to tie all this back to Sinclair in El Paso, there is still a belief that the reporters will remain with the company and the newscasts will actually be more robust. But I guess that remains to be seen, but these two examples are two examples of what is NOT happening with KDBC/KFOX in my opinion. It’s totally different than Oklahoma and South Texas stations.

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Finally…

I think there’s a lot of moving parts with Sinclair in El Paso. I do think they got in over their head a bit with all the investment and hopes and dreams that they had to turn this city on its head with quality news programming. But then you realize how expensive it is to run.

Will KDBC ever get back what they are going to lose? I don’t know, because the only way I see it is if Sinclair sells off the station. Even then, unless it is one of the other media companies that owns stations in El Paso, it would require a new company to build a studio, rehire a lot of talent, both in front of and behind the camera, and put in another 8-figures of investment into a station that at best won’t see 10,000 viewers for their newscast, which is something KTSM, the Nexstar station doesn’t even see.

I doubt that would happen. That’s a lot to hope for, so yes, it does kind of sting a bit. But think of the on-air talent that has had to do double duty for years. They did it admirably, and even if they complained about how much it sucks privately, they still did it. We never hear people who are chiding this decision ever mention how well the staffs are doing despite the obvious hurdles. It’s always about how much those people hate the company and that’s it.

So, as long as job losses are minimal, I am fine with this move, as long as it means that KFOX is strengthened by attrition. Loss leaders can be fine for the people who aren’t losing the money themselves.

But I didn’t want to write this without praising the work of KFOX/KDBC, because I have been watching a lot more in 2024 than the last couple of years, and it is worthy of my time. I like seeing young reporters find their voice and show their capabilities. El Paso, DMA 95 is like the minor leagues of baseball. Stars are developed here, and yes, there are some that may never make it out of this market, but are still playing there to serve as opponents, as “practice” for those who will be in bigger markets, in a national stage years from now.

There’s a ton of NMSU talent at KFOX/KDBC, a lot of local people, which is the backbone of local news. So while the parent company is homogenized national stuff, the heart and soul are people from here.

While there will be a subtraction in the El Paso market in terms of number of newscasts, it is not the nuclear option. Sinclair will still have news in this town. Yes, they will put some of their national stuff on the stations, which I personally don’t like, but local news at 5pm, 9pm, and supposedly more time slots according to them tell me that we will still get local interest stuff, and it won’t be redundant, because it was.

Hats off to the people who do double duty because of Sinclair at those stations. Someone who spent 15 years overworked at a big company understands your plight, and all I can say is Thank You for your hard work, and hope the next step in your careers are fruitful.

To those who use this news as a lazy reason to just be negative as shit about a company you don’t like because of political reasons or reasons that are even beyond me…Did you watch? I bet no.

My last part has to do with FitFam El Paso. FitFam shared the news of KDBC ending newscasts last week, and what happened was a lot of honesty from people in Instagram’s Demographic that they didn’t watch the news, and they got a lot of their news from FitFam. There were a lot of journalists with hurt feelings in the comments, but some of the comments in my opinion were totally out of bounds, and disrespectful to their customers, i.e. the viewers.

I’m going to write about the positive influence of FitFam (yes, I believe there is a positive there), how the things that FitFam gets criticized on are hypocritical statements by people, and how the trust of an El Paso fan base allows them to share content that news stations themselves source from this seemingly evil Instagram account that if anything connects to its fanbase in a way local media could never do.

While FitFam is rooted in chisme and everyone trying to outsmartass each other, it ended up being just as big of an influence as any local news station could ever dream to be. That is the truth. I will show you why. I promise

It takes a former troll from 20 years ago in me to be able to tell that story, and I am going to sure as hell try, because the KDBC story and the comments from some media members told me one thing: Some people just can’t handle criticism and real opinions in this world anymore. There were some fair ones that I saw, and I will expand on them

Thanks for surviving this thinkpiece

James