KENS - News Operation

News Operation

KENS broadcasts a total of 30 hours of local news per week (with 5 hours on weekdays, 3 hours on Saturdays and two hours on Sundays).

Former news director Bob Rogers was and remains KENS' most successful and longest-running news director. Under Rogers, KENS shot to first place, a rank it holds today. He was also responsible for hiring, coaching and helping the careers of many local and national news anchors, reporters and correspondents; he retired from the station in the late 1990s.

The station also produces a local morning talk show titled Great Day SA, airing weekdays at 9 a.m.; the program debuted on September 8, 2003 and features local and national music artists, celebrities, and local human interest stories. Formerly hosted by 1994 Miss USA Lu Parker and later Kristina Guererro (who later was a reporter at Inside Edition, and is currently an entertainment reporter for E!), Great Day SA is currently hosted by reporter Bridget Smith, along with GDSA reporter Eileen Teves, morning meteorologist Paul Mireles, and "Traffic Watch" reporter Kellie Patterson.

When The Early Show abandoned the local/national hybrid format and replaced it with a national format on January 7, 2008, KENS decided to cut its weekday morning newscast from three hours to two, airing from 5-7 am. Also at the same time, Itza Gutierrez left as anchor for the Saturday morning newscast to become a stay-at-home mother (she has since been replaced by Stacia Willson, who was later promoted to the weekday noon newscast and replaced by Natalie Tejeda on Saturday mornings).

Emmy-Award winning longtime anchor Chris Marrou, who worked at KENS for 36 years beginning in 1973, retired in 2009. Marrou and other well-known anchors, helped KENS dominate the 5, 6, and 10 pm newscasts from the 1970s through the early 2000s. In 2009, KENS announced that Chris Marrou's replacement would be Jeff Vaughn (previously with NBC affiliate KSHB in Kansas City) and co-anchor the 5, 6, and 10 p.m. newscasts starting in January 2010.

A long-running, weeknight segment of the news was the Eyewitness Newsreel in which former anchor Chris Marrou narrated a faux, old-style newsreel at the end of the 10 p.m. newscast. The Newsreel usually consisted of humorous segments of local news juxtaposed with out-of-context snips of CBS news anchors, politicians or celebrities "commenting" on the situation. Marrou wrote the segment each weeknight. After anchor Chris Marrou's retirement from the station in 2009, the "Eyewitness Newsreel" segment was also retired.

On August 2, 2010 KENS debuted a half-hour weekday newscast at 4 p.m., making KENS the first San Antonio station to air a newscast during the 4 p.m. hour. On January 10, 2011 KENS expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, adding an extra half-hour at 4:30 a.m.

At the beginning of June 2008, KENS began to run ads about "the biggest thing in KENS' history", however that ad specifically would not say exactly what, only that it would happen on June 30, 2008. On June 30, 2008, KENS became the first television station in the San Antonio market to produce its newscasts in high definition. Currently, all four local stations carry their newscasts in HD. KENS was followed by KSAT (which began airing in upconverted 16:9 and later made the switch), then WOAI (which launched with a new set, and was the first station to broadcast in HD not only in studio but in the field as well), and finally KABB, the local Fox affiliate.