Jamie Novogrod has been named assistant news director at KNBC-KVEA Los Angeles. He will report to Marina Perelman, VP of news at KNBC, and Mike Gaytán, VP of news at KVEA. He starts March 11. 

KNBC is known as NBC4 and KVEA is Telemundo 52. Both are part of NBCUniversal. 

Novogrod was part of LA Times Studios, the entertainment division of the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw video production, including a daily news magazine show on Spectrum News 1 SoCal. Previously, he was Los Angeles bureau chief for Vice News Tonight on HBO. 

Novgorod spent over 10 years at NBC, including time as a producer for Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent, and as an embed during the 2012 presidential election. 

“Jamie is a dynamic journalist and leader with extensive foreign, national and local reporting experience,” Perelman said. “His track record of producing cutting-edge content and leading editorial teams will build upon our legacy of engaging and impactful storytelling.”

Novogrod will be responsible for managing the day-to-day news coverage, investigative, weather and breaking news across both stations’ platforms. 

“Jamie’s arrival to our news teams marks an exciting chapter for the stations,” said Gaytán. “His dedication, extensive investigative journalism background, and vast experience covering the Southern Border will further strengthen Telemundo 52’s commitment to delivering impactful stories that resonate with our audiences.”

NBCUniversal named Todd Mokhtari president and general manager for KNBC-TV and KVEA-TV, in Los Angeles.

Mokhtari has been general manager of NBCU’s NBC and Telemundo stations in San Diego since 2019. Before that he spent six years as VP of news at KNBC.

He succeeds Steve Carlston, who ran KNBC and Celia Chavez, the GM for Telemundo station KVEA.

Mokhtari will report to Valari Staab, chairman, NBCUniversal Local, and will work closely with Manuel Martinez, president, Telemundo Station Group. 

“Todd is an exceptional general manager for our San Diego NBC & Telemundo stations. He understands both the English and Spanish language television markets and has long been one of our most innovative managers,” said Staab.

“Todd is from L.A. and once led our KNBC newsroom. He understands the power of bringing KVEA and KNBC together to serve the entire Los Angeles area with its large Latino population and ever increasing diversity, in a way no other television operation can,” Staab said. 

Staab praised Carlston for taking KNBC from a place where it was significantly under-resourced and therefore, struggling to compete, to the great station it is today.

“With the demographic makeup of our country rapidly changing, the general market as we once knew it no longer exists. Our markets are not fragmented anymore, they are one, and the Telemundo and NBC stations every day reach English, Spanish and bilingual audiences and multigenerational families through each of their newscasts,” said Telemundo’s Martinez. “Todd knows how powerful our Telemundo station is in Los Angeles and the value our newscasts provide to our communities. I cannot wait to see what Todd and our KVEA and KNBC teams will do to strengthen both stations,” 

Martinez praised Chavez for the 27 years she served at Telemundo. “She put together a great management team and experienced many ratings, revenue and community successes with KVEA,” he said.

At KNSD Mokhtari’s news team changed its late newscast. Instead of a high story count and lots of crime stories, KNSD’s news anchors walk viewers through the big stories of the day, providing context, depth and detail. Spanish-speaking audiences will soon benefit from this new approach to local news when KUAN launches this news format during the late news, NBCU said.  

Before KNBC, Mokhtari was news director for KIRO-TV and KCPQ-TV in Seattle. He launched his career in local broadcasting as an intern at KCRA-TV in Sacramento and held various roles with increasing responsibility including newscast producer. ■

Dirty Dancing was the surprise hit in the movie theaters, while songs from U2’s The Joshua Tree dominated the FM airwaves across the Southland.

The year was 1987 — which marked the last time Telemundo’s Los Angeles O&O, KVEA, defeated its longtime rival, Univision O&O KMEX, with its 11 p.m. newscast.

Until now.

In a historic feat, KVEA’s Noticiero Telemundo 52 was the most-watched local program in the all-important adults 18-49 demographic in the month of September, according to Nielsen. The 30-minute program averaged a 1.4 rating (or 107,000 impressions) in the demo, and averaged a 36% audience share among all other Spanish-language stations in the Los Angeles DMA in the time frame.

That puts KVEA ahead of not only KMEX, but four other Spanish-language TV stations. More notably, KVEA is now attracting more viewers aged 18-49 than the local newscasts of the Big Three’s O&Os  — KABC-TV, KCBS-TV and NBCUniversal sister station KNBC. It’s also beating out programming on Fox O&O KTTV and MyNetwork affiliate KCOP; Tribune Co.-owned The CW affiliate KTLA; and CBS’s news-intensive independent KCAL. 

“Securing the No. 1 spot in our market for this key demographic at 11 p.m., and — regardless of language — for the first time in 27 years, confirms that we are delivering our viewers the local news and information they want,” Celia Chavez, president and general manager of KVEA, said in a statement. “We have a dynamic news team that works passionately to provide our viewers with the information they need, and we will continue to deliver live, local breaking news and aggressive weather coverage for the communities we serve.”

KVEA’s 11 p.m. local newscast is anchored by Ana Patricia Candiani, a veteran reporter who returned to Telemundo in 2011 after an eight-year stint anchoring the network’s national primetime newscast — she stepped away in 2008 — as well as several other Telemundo news programs. Her experience includes roles as a morning news anchor for former Spanish news/talk radio network Radio Unica, as a news anchor for the now-defunct Spanish-language network CBS Telenoticias and as a programming supervisor for 20 radio stations in Mexico owned by Grupo Acir.

Candiani’s co-anchor at 11 p.m. is Edgar Muñoz, who joined KVEA in March after serving as a Mexico-based correspondent for Univision. He anchored Hechos, the primetime local newscast for KAZA, the Azteca América flagship station in Los Angeles, from 2003 to 2005.

KVEA’s ratings triumph is the culmination of a series of enhancements in 2013 and 2014 that included a new studio, a new graphics package and increased investigative reporting on a wide range of news stories. The station also moved its weekend newscast to 5:30 p.m. from 6 p.m., part of a network-wide scheduling mandate.

While Nielsen data is not available for KVEA’s weekend newscasts, indications are they’ve been successful: As of Nov. 3, the 5:30pm newscast will now air seven days a week, the network confirms. It’s part of a rollout of 30-minute local newscasts airing at 5:30pm ET/PT and 4:30pm CT/MT at  Telemundo stations in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, San Francisco and Tucson. Thirty additional staffers were added across 14 stations to boost the telecasts.

“This announcement marks a new era for the Telemundo Station Group and Spanish-language news,” Manuel Martinez, president of Telemundo Station Group, said. “All of our stations have a commitment to deliver the best local breaking news and weather to our viewers and this expansion will help us deliver the type of news coverage our viewers demand and deserve.”

As reported in the August edition of Hispanic Television Update, Telemundo has perhaps been the most aggressive player in news this year. Among the many changes: O&O KSTS in San Francisco now provides the only locally focused Spanish-language newscast airing before noon. In July, Telemundo announced that Las Vegas station KBLR would produce its 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts live and locally. In late August, respected author and journalist Mirta Ojito returned from New York to Miami for the newly created role of director of news standards.

In its most recent moves, Telemundo O&O WSNS in Chicago has paired longtime Univision reporter Anabel Monge with current anchor Alfonso Gutierrez for its weekday 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts. Monge was previously an anchor and general assignment reporter at KWEX in San Antonio, and has worked at Univision stations in Sacramento and Fresno.