KADY-TV Pulls Plug on County News Network

The dream of a countywide television news network faded to black Monday as Oxnard-based KADY-TV aired its final news program almost exactly three years after the broadcast was launched.

The family-owned station put its last half-hour newscast on the air at 6 p.m., reporting on the events of the day and culminating with a message to viewers that KADY was pulling the plug on the Ventura County News Network--a victim of low ratings in a competitive and cutthroat media market.

About 10 of the station’s 16 reporters, camera operators and technical personnel will lose their jobs. The rest will take other jobs with the station, which will continue its daily lineup of cartoons, talk shows and situation comedies.

John Huddy, who launched the telecast with the avowed vision of producing the best local news show in America, said he is proud of the job his crew had done delivering regional news to county residents.

“It’s a painful day,” said Huddy, who bought the station in 1991. “I think VCNN distinguished itself, especially in times of crisis. I will always be proud of the work we did here.”

Indeed, as the county’s only locally produced news show, VCNN reaped a harvest of breaking news stories when it arrived on the scene three years ago.

The news program beamed live pictures of floods, fires and earthquakes to thousands of households in the county. At its peak, Huddy said, the newscast drew as many as 70,000 viewers.

But no matter how hard it tried, Huddy said, the news program could not overcome a ratings dilemma inherent in Ventura County. The ratings book, used to attract advertising dollars, does not measure Ventura County viewership on its own. Instead, those numbers are combined with the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara viewers.

And while the station broadcasts to Santa Barbara and up the central coast, there was little interest in those areas for a news program that focused primarily on Ventura County.

“The viewing level of VCNN has been very good, and sometimes tremendous, in Ventura County,” Huddy said. “But no one was watching us in Cambria or Morro Bay.”

There were other considerations as well.

Huddy, who suffered a heart attack earlier this year, said much of his energy in recent months has been consumed fending off various legal challenges. Those included a legal tangle in March in which KADY’s former owner won the right to foreclose on the station to collect back rent and property taxes. The station is currently for sale, Huddy said.

Finally, Huddy said, producing the half-hour newscast five nights a week--and rebroadcasting it at midnight--cost more than airing all of the station’s other programming put together.

With the end in sight, Huddy said he started taking employees aside two weeks ago to tell them that the news operation would be dismantled. Huddy said he plans to use his contacts to help as many workers as possible find jobs. And he said he will allow workers to continue to use the phones and editing equipment at the station to aid their job searches.

“These people have seen some of their colleagues . . . go on to bigger and better things, and I think they have faith in themselves and what they have learned here,” Huddy said.

With its closure, VCNN goes the route of two previous local news programs, one that ran a few years ago on a previous incarnation of KADY.

Huddy says new owners could come in and start a program of their own, a possibility that pleased County Supervisor John K. Flynn.

“I really feel badly that they are going off the air,” Flynn said. “It was an excellent service and they had a good audience. I just hope someone comes along and takes over from that.”

With the telecast about to end Monday evening, anchorman Joe Buttitta told viewers that VCNN was broadcasting its final program. He talked about how VCNN’s mission--to produce a newscast with a strong Ventura County flavor--didn’t go over well in Santa Barbara.

“From all of us here at VCNN, we are sad to have to say goodbye,” he said. “Folks, we’ll miss you, and I hope you’ll miss us a little bit too.”