A small market television station along the Central Coast that has provided local news coverage for more than five decades is shutting down its newsroom and outsourcing its daily newscasts.
KION-TV, located in Salinas, no longer has a working news department or regularly scheduled newscasts as of 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The station, which is owned by News-Press & Gazette, will instead get its daily newscasts from KPIX CBS Bay Area. The station previously provided CBS programming to the region until 1969.
“KION is entering a new chapter in local news by partnering with KPIX CBS San Francisco to bring expanded news coverage to viewers across the Central Coast,” an article on the KION website reads.
A local Telemundo station which shares the newsroom with KION will also be affected by the shutdown, according to the station’s market competitor KSBW in Monterey.
Anonymous employees told KSBW they were surprised by the announcement, learning of their layoffs through their competitor’s coverage of events. Layoffs could affect more than 20 employees both on-air and online.
The closure comes at a time in which the future of local television’s viability is more uncertain than ever, with many smaller station operators folding or selling off their assets to larger companies.
News-Press & Gazette owns several small market television stations with news operations across the western part of the country, including KEYT in Santa Barbara and KESQ in Palm Springs. The fate of the company’s remaining news departments is unclear.
KPIX is owned and operated by CBS News and Stations, which also owns CBS Los Angeles and KCAL.
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