After a 3 year trial of producing regionalized news for several top 10 Hispanic market stations via the Telemundo Production Center in Dallas, the network is reverting to producing local news. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix and San Jose will once again have locally produced news.
TPC staffers were notified they would be out of a job in a little over 60 days during a meeting last Friday. All reporters and videographers will have to reapply for VJ positions for the local newscasts. They were told they will receive training as an option to reapply. Some of the positions were eliminated. The “new” hires will be in place by January.
February 1st is the target date for the launch of the local newscasts, according to what TPC employees were told. There will be no local news directors. Instead, José Flores, currently TPC news director, will stay on in that role, supervising all local newscasts from Dallas. Each market will have an executive producer.
Telemundo network officials will not admit failure of their TPC project, but that’s what it was for some of the markets where local news was eliminated.