Spanish news review

I really should be doing this more often, but I decided to sample both the KTVW and KTAZ 5pm newscasts today. I flipped back and forth and caught most of each newscast.

Some observations I had about the newscasts:

• The KTVW newscast didn't have as much Mexican news as I'd thought it would. It had just a short "Desde México" roundup segment which was conducted around 18 to 20 minutes into the newscast. (I didn't see any Mexico or Latin America news in the KTAZ newscast, though I might have missed it while watching KTVW.) There was also a good focus on soccer news items in sports, though the Diamondbacks featured in both reports and Miles Plumlee's selection to Team USA for the FIBA World Cup of basketball was mentioned in the KTVW segment.
• Both stations covered a good range of local news—certainly comparable to any of the English stations. One of them flubbed a report on a naked man at ASU by showing lots of file footage of the wrong building at another campus though the mistake is understandable. KTVW had part of a special report series, Detrás de la Placa (Behind the Badge) featuring a Mesa police officer, as well as a health report (under the brand-new Univisión Salud brand) on pool safety.
• KTAZ had the longer weather report, though as today was the hottest day of the year both stations covered weather a little more than usual. Weather is produced locally as it is at most Telemundo outlets now. (Until this month Phoenix also produced the Telemundo Las Vegas local newscasts.)
• I wanted to see specifically how both stations integrated Tucson news, since these newscasts are statewide productions. Both stations had news from Tucson mixed into their newscasts—KTAZ even had a live remote and reporter from Tucson for a story, which really impressed me—as well as extended forecasts for both cities. Certainly there were more Phoenix stories but that's the bigger market.

Overall, both newscasts were solid and featured a lot of different news stories. KTAZ went to live shots three times within the half hour while KTVW had more in-depth and special reports (particularly the police series and the health story). KTAZ has the newer set which looks a lot like other Telemundo local sets.

There's certainly a lot of room for more Spanish local news here. KPDF had until fairly recently an Azteca newscast where only the A block was customized local news; this seems to have been replaced by a regional "West Coast" program. KMOH/KEJR has local news on its website but it's quite clearly nowhere near its own local news operation—not to mention that their Cox cable signal is SD only and in a jerky framerate. KVPA isn't on cable nor does it have any non-network news presence. For now KPHE seems content to be the only American affiliate of a Mexican state network, though when I bumped into it on Cox it was running a local promo with its "SiTV" name and then went out and back to the Telemax program it was running — Plaza Sésamo.

EDIT: KEJR does seem to produce a 30-minute morning show at 5:30am on weekdays, "Buenos Días Phoenix". That's it.

I didn't say it then but I figured the "no weekends" thing was going to be ending soon at KTAZ given the news expansions elsewhere in Telemundo.

It's already over; weekend shows at 4:30 and 10 begin this weekend. More staffers, a new set (which I think has already debuted) and new live remote equipment (which probably explains the Tucson remote) are also on tap.

I decided to watch just the KTAZ news today since it's the one I'm more interested in.

The set (can't find any good images, but this shows the anchor spot) went red for a breaking news story at the top of the news, and some of the A block stories revealed that the station has a content sharing partnership with the La Voz newspaper. Two live shots from Phoenix led the A block.

A different weather presenter, Magali Rivera, had the weather report, which was in the C block (the B block had just one national story from Washington). It was followed by a live report from Tucson about a border security story. A reporter presented a national story from a green screen (possibly pre-taped?). It turns out that the reporter, Julio Cisneros, is also the station's ND.

The C block lasted ten minutes. Sports anchor Diego Santiago had his report, which had stories on soccer and local boxing. The final story in the newscast was one that wouldn't make the cut on any English-language news program, taken from the program Al Rojo Vivo: a Peruvian fruit that promises to give women more, uh, curves (and had some fitting B-roll of women's busts and attractive women at beauty pageants).