It didn’t work for Telemundo, but Univision is going to give it a shot – eliminating local for regional programming.
Univision cancelled “Primera Edición” in Dallas and Houston. KUVN Univision 23 Dallas and KXLN Univision 45 Houston aired their last local morning newscasts on Friday, March 27 from 4 to 6 am. The company also axed “Vive la Mañana,” the one hour morning magazine that aired on Unimás in both cities from 6 to 7 am.
This week, KUVN and KXLN are filling the 4 to 6 am time slot with a national feed that includes entertainment programming and a repeat of the previous night’s 11:30 pm Univision network newscast. They’ll include local weather and traffic segment cut-ins.
Starting Monday, April 6, the local newscasts will be replaced by “Noticias Texas Primera Edición,” based out of Houston.
Karina Yapor and Rodolfo Sánchez will be the anchors of the regional morning newscast, which will air weekday mornings from 4 to 6 am across Univision stations in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin.
Karina and Rodolfo, anchors of Dallas’ “Primera Edición” until last Friday, are relocating to Houston for their new roles.
The cancellation of “Primera Edición” in Houston pushed that city’s anchor team off the desk. Arnaldo Rojas and Lizzet López will take on other positions within Univision.
Arnaldo will lead KXLN-45’s new investigative unit and Lizzet moves to nights as a general assignment reporter for “Noticias 45 Edición Nocturna.”
The regional newscast will also have reporters in the four Texas cities: Andrea Aguirre Alvarado and Vanessa Abuchaibe in Dallas; Victoria Acosta-Rubio and Laura Sierra in Houston; Alejandra Becerra in San Antonio, and Liliana Soto and David Herrera in Austin.
The Univision stations in San Antonio and Austin didn’t have morning shows.
The move is seen as a way to cut more costs as Univision prepares for an IPO, which could come later this year.
In 2006, Telemundo eliminated local news in San Jose, Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Las Vegas as part of cost-cutting measures. The company established the Telemundo Production Center (TPC) in Dallas, to produce a regional newscast to beam to those cities.
That strategy failed and Telemundo had to rebuild the news departments and relaunch newscasts in those cities. It shut down the TPC in 2013.