KMEX-TV’s News Director Resigns

News director Sandra Thomas Esquivel resigned Friday from Spanish-language station KMEX, continuing a shake-up in the news division of the Los Angeles television station.

Last week, veteran Latino newsman Sergio Munoz quietly resigned as chief correspondent from the Univision station, which came under new ownership in October. Munoz had left his position as executive editor of La Opinion newspaper in 1991 to become executive news director at KMEX.

Munoz was also a commentator on the TV news magazine show “Portada,” one of the shows recently canceled by Univision.

In another move, evening co-anchor Teresa Quevedo has left KMEX for its competitor, KVEA-TV.

Overall, there have been more than 20 layoffs in KMEX’s news division in the last three months.

Miguel Banojian, a former producer with KVEA-TV Channel 52 in Los Angeles and now news director at the New York Univision affiliate, will take over as news director for KMEX on Monday, a station spokeswoman said.

Sources in the newsroom contended that Thomas Esquivel was pressured out of her post by Carlos Barba, the new president of Univision. Two dozen Latino groups fiercely protested last year’s sale of Univision to a company owned by Hollywood investor A. Jerrold Perenchio, Mexican media baron Emilio Azcarraga and Venevision, a Venezuela-based communications concern.

Now, newsroom sources fear that Barba, former president of a Venevision subsidiary, is calling the shots at Univision affiliates across the country, including KMEX. “There is no more sensitivity to the Mexican-American community that we serve here in Los Angeles,” said one source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Munoz and Thomas Esquivel are Mexican-born but have worked in this country’s media for many years.