Spanish-Language KVEA Moves to Bulk Up Newscasts

The news is all about math these days at KVEA-TV, the local affiliate of the Spanish-language television network Telemundo.

In order to broadcast twice the number of live newscasts, the network doubled its budget, doubled the size of its newsroom, doubled its fleet of satellite trucks from two to four and raided a number of industry veterans from other news stations around town.

The only remaining question has to do with ratings. Will the station--whose numbers are among the lowest of those in the Los Angeles area--draw enough viewers to justify the investment when it doubles its local newscasts on Jan. 15?

Among Spanish-language competitors, KVEA is up against KWHY-TV, an independent station, and KMEX-TV, which has been the most-watched early evening newscast in any language in L.A. since 1993. KMEX is backed by Univision, the country’s largest Spanish-language television network.

This year Telemundo decided to pour money into an overhaul of KVEA’s news operation, a move that would establish an identity for a station not known for its local news. Along with the beefed-up newscast schedule, KVEA plans to launch an investigative team and perform an advocacy role for its audience of newly arrived Spanish-speaking immigrants.

“Before, we just did straight news. Just news. But now, we’re not afraid to say we’re defending our community,” said the station’s new general manager, Fernando Lopez, who joined KVEA in July after leaving his post as assistant news director at KCBS-TV. “We need to tell them who to call if their building is overcrowded. Our audience is afraid to call someone because they’re afraid to get asked about their immigration papers. We tell them . . . it’s illegal for someone to ask them about their immigration status.”

KVEA will expand on its 6 and 11 p.m. weekday newscasts with new half-hour newscasts at 6 and 11:30 a.m. News director Victor Abalos emphasized that the early morning news won’t be just a rehash of the previous day’s late-night news.

On Jan. 20, KVEA will also launch weekend newscasts at 6 and 11 p.m. Abalos knows he’s got his work cut out for him. Hired away from a position working on investigative stories at local independent KCAL-TV in August, Abalos says he simply has nothing to lose by trying to overhaul KVEA.

Abalos has produced segments for PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on labor issues, the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico and immigration between U.S. and Mexico. In 1986, he covered the strife in El Salvador.

Abalos hopes KVEA can become known for hammering local stories after the English-language stations and even KMEX have lost interest. He uses the recent building collapse in Echo Park that killed one person as an example.

“That story has legs because we will follow it through to look at rent gouging among immigrants and overcrowding [of Latino families],” Abalos said.

Lopez said other cultural issues deserve KVEA’s attention as well. With an audience that has been wary of putting its money in a bank, the station aims to do a series of features on the benefits of taking cash out of the mattress and putting it in an account. (The stories might even help attract banks as commercial sponsors, Lopez added.)

Although KVEA received a windfall of money to start its new venture, there are dark clouds on the horizon. Days after Telemundo entered the final stage of talks to acquire KWHY this month--a move that would have given the network this country’s first Spanish-language duopoly, meaning a single entity controls two stations in the same city, sharing resources--that news was dwarfed by the announcement that Univision had acquired USA Networks Inc.’s group of more than a dozen stations across the country.

If approved, the deal would give the monstrous network a duopoly in several large markets, including Los Angeles.