Good News for Spanish Station KMEX

There was a time when no news was good news for the news staff at KMEX-TV.

Well, perhaps “staff” isn’t the right term. In those days 20 years ago, the news staff wasn’t big enough to field a relay team and they could have held their Christmas party in a Volkswagen.

Today the newsroom is so full, even news director Jairo Marin isn’t exactly sure how many people he has in his charge. Plus he’s got a helicopter, mobile units with microwave transmitters and the backing of Univision, the nation’s fifth-largest television network, at his disposal.

And starting Jan. 4, Marin will add the most valuable resource any news director could have--more air time--when KMEX debuts an hourlong weekday morning newscast. “Noticias 34: Primera Edicion” (Noticias 34: First Edition), hosted by former weekend anchors Antonio Valverde and Nancy Agosto, will begin at 6 a.m. and serve as a local lead-in to the already popular “Despierta America” (“Wake Up America”), a three-hour news and entertainment program broadcast nationally by Univision.

This latest step is an important one for both the station and its network bosses. Not only will it give KMEX the nation’s only live Spanish-language morning newscast but, if it succeeds, it could provide a model for corporate parent Univision to duplicate in key markets around the country.

The expanded newscast and the infusion of people, capital and equipment is just the latest in a long series of improvements that has seen the Spanish-language station grow from a fuzzy UHF outlet best known for coverage of bullfights in Mexico to, demographically speaking, Southern California’s top-ranked news station and the only Spanish-language broadcaster to win the Edward R. Murrow prize, awarded to the nation’s best newscast.

Twenty-one months ago, Univision made its first serious foray into original morning programming, replacing reruns of a decades-old Mexican comedy series with “Despierta America,” which is modeled after English-language network morning shows such as ABC’s “Good Morning America,” though brighter, more family oriented and faster paced. Almost immediately, Univision’s ratings for the 7-10 a.m. slot improved 46%, with audience sizes doubling in cities such as New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

But even that growth failed to meet the network’s expectations, so in an effort to make the show--which is taped live in Miami and broadcast on a delayed basis in much of the country--more relevant in markets such as Texas and Los Angeles, Univision began planning regular cut-ins, during which local stations could report breaking news or give weather updates.

“Before ‘Despierta America,’ the morning was a territory that hadn’t been explored in Spanish-language TV,” says KMEX’s Marin. “With the arrival of ‘Despierta America,’ we started to see that there were people there that were depending on this information.”

By pairing “Noticias 34: Primera Edicion” with “Despierta America,” the station will have the ability to provide virtually round-the-clock updates on breaking news. In a market where many of KMEX’s English-language competitors have not only morning newscasts, but midday programs as well, Marin says expanding the news to other times of day is critical.

“As this community evolves, we have to provide for them,” he said. “There are new needs. This is the time to respond to those needs.”

Moving Valverde and Agosto from the weekend anchor spots forced a number of other changes within the newsroom. For example, Jesus Javier, the longtime anchor of KMEX’s 11 p.m. newscast, was moved to the weekends where he will eventually be teamed with Teresa Quevedo, who once anchored the nightly newscasts for KMEX’s chief Spanish-language rival, KVEA-TV. Javier will also host the Saturday morning public-affairs show “Sexto Dia,” displacing Rosa Maria Villalpando.

Andrea Kutyas and Eduardo Quezada, the senior member of the news team with 23 years at KMEX, will anchor both the 6 and 11 p.m. news weeknights.

The moves have caused some unhappiness among the staff, according to one member of the news team. Javier, however, disputes that.

“I am extremely happy about moving over,” says Javier. “I was one of the co-founders of the weekend newscast, so I’m coming back. . . . We have to fortify our position [on the weekends] and my presence in that sense is going to be a positive influence. This is something that I have asked for for a good while.”

This is the second reorganization of KMEX’s news operation since September, when Marin added weather reporter Francisco Javier Quiroz and entertainment reporter Blanca Garza. At the same time, Marin increased the number of stories each half-hour by more than a third by limiting the length of some reports and wrapping others into roundups. The additions quickly changed the serious tone of the station’s no-nonsense newscasts, and though they haven’t fallen into the “happy talk” format prevalent in English-language, the new format was a welcome--and needed--change, says Quezada.

The newscast “is much faster, but it’s more attractive, more friendly,” he says. “We can add a little bit more, we can improvise a little bit more. It’s more relaxed. I think that’s why I’m enjoying it more.”

And the additions paid immediate dividends when Hurricane Georges, and later Hurricane Mitch, ripped through the Caribbean and Central America. The weather was the top story for weeks and KMEX had a trained meteorologist in Quiroz to explain it.

“We realized that the weather is more than saying, ‘There is no change in the weather,’ ” says Marin. “El Nino showed us that.”

Weather will be a key segment of the morning program--as will traffic reports and updates on developing stories. In many ways “Noticias 34: Primera Edicion” will be just like KNBC-TV’s “Today in L.A.”--which leads into the network’s national “Today” show--or KTTV’s “Good Day L.A.”

There will be some differences, however, since KMEX’s target audience of younger, Spanish-speaking viewers is different than KNBC’s viewership. “Noticias 34: Primera Edicion” will carry daily currency exchanges for selected Latin American countries, for example, and its traffic reports will include updates on public-transportation systems, which KMEX says many of its viewers use.

“This is a format that nobody invented,” says Marin. “It’s absolutely natural. What is going to be very interesting is finding the personality of the show. We can design formats, but we can’t design the personality of the show.”

* On Jan. 4 “Noticias 34: Primera Edicion” will begin airing at 6 a.m., Monday through Friday on KMEX.