On Wednesday August 5th, viewers across the central coast turned on their TVs for another edition of Your News Channel’s Morning News. Only this time, they weren’t greeted by Andie Lopez-Bornet and Joey Vergilis. Instead, they were left watching local coverage from our ownership group’s station in Palm Springs, hundreds of miles away.
Understandably, our newsroom received numerous emails and phone calls, paired with a wave of local media coverage. Everyone asking the same question: Why did KEYT staff sign-off on the same day as Fiesta Pequeña?
Before I explain why, I want to walk you through what it’s like to air a newscast.
Local news doesn’t happen by accident. When you turn on your TV, every show you watch is produced by a dedicated team of reporters, videographers, producers, editors, and directors. It requires a full day of preparation, making sure scripts are written, stories are fact-checked, and video is gathered and edited; all while being ready to pivot to breaking news at any time.
Our schedules are all over the place. KEYT has shows on every day of the week, requiring our staff to work early mornings and late nights, on top of weekends and holidays.
Everyone at KEYT understands the sacrifices this career requires. Even on our hardest days, we would still rather be here than anywhere else. We chose this life because we recognize the importance of local journalism. We truly love what we do.
But that love doesn’t pay the bills.
According to the MIT’s cost of living calculator, the average adult needs a living wage of $35 an hour to live comfortably in Santa Barbara County. When we talk to the public about our jobs, they’re shocked to find out most of our staff make less than $40,000 per year. Even some of our coworkers you see on TV work second jobs just to get by.
This economic reality puts us all on a timeline. We’re all one emergency away from having to pack up our lives and move on. Employees at the station are expected not to stick around very long and find higher wages elsewhere. It’s caused intense turnover with little room for newsroom growth.
We’ve seen roughly a dozen people quit or leave in the last two years, with management leaving multiple positions unfilled, some for years. From Santa Maria to Paso Robles, we only have two dedicated reporters for that whole region. We have no producers, reporters or photographers for the weekend shows. Our remaining workers are stuck doing the jobs of multiple people, leading to high expectations and routine burnout.
But no group is more negatively impacted than the public. When wildfires break out, we have viewers that rely on us for evacuation orders. When our neighbors go missing, we make sure the public knows who to look out for. Every year our staff comes together for noble causes like the News Channel 12 Turkey Drive and the Unity Shoppe Telethon, because we recognize that the strongest communities protect one another. Unfortunately, business decisions made very far away make working in our area untenable.
We know we’re not alone in this struggle. Newsrooms across America are facing aggressive media consolidation, layoffs, and the increasing threat of Artificial Intelligence.
As much as we love our jobs, these issues must be addressed. That’s why we voted to unionize back in November 2024. Like any fight for change, a healthy bit of compromise was expected going in and we were happy to hear how both parties to the negotiations process would ensure the quality of our news wouldn’t be negatively impacted in the eyes of the public and could even be improved.
Our priorities include raising our base pay to at least $23/hour, adding staffing minimums, and expanding our bereavement leave. We’ve already negotiated an A.I. clause that changed our workplace for the better and protected job security.
But after a year-and-a-half of negotiations, our parent company News-Press & Gazette (NPG) has refused to budge on our proposals while actively bargaining in bad faith.
Since negotiations started, our station has spent a considerable amount on investments like an automatic gate, new equipment for our control room, and an office renovation for the sales department. And that’s not even including the multiple vacant positions which may be freeing up space on the ledger, but are certainly not improving the newsroom or the work we do each and every day.
While infrastructure changes are important, the human beings who do this work need to be prioritized.
NPG even went as far as proposing a wage grid featuring less pay than we already make during negotiations. They didn’t even bother to look up California’s minimum wage law before presenting it to us. The blatant disrespect for those who do the actual work of getting your news to you speaks for itself.
Throughout this process, our union members have been incredibly patient and continued to work at the quality expected by everyone inside and outside of the station. A big reason why we didn’t go on strike sooner is because we didn’t want to put our direct managers – people we like, respect, and work alongside every day- in the impossible position of working without us. We held out until we had no other options. Now, even the people you see on TV and station management have had to change their work to accommodate the attitude towards all of us, made clear by corporate ownership’s behavior during negotiations.
But we’re coming up on two years since our vote, and we’re all tired and fed up. NPG is clearly trying to wear us down, as they have for years, hoping that we throw in the towel, but that tactic has backfired.
Our next negotiation meeting is scheduled for Wednesday September 2nd.
Without notable progress in the negotiations, we will have to continue striking and the public will once again be left without the quality journalism they have come to expect. We know we want to work, we know station management and on-air talent want to work, it’s up to ownership if they have found the respect for everybody here, including the local viewing public, to negotiate in good faith and ensure everybody at Your News Channel can continue to inform the public and make this community stronger each day.
Working in news often means holding people in power accountable for their actions. As journalists, it’s high time we hold our corporate ownership to that same standard.
We appreciate your support, your questions, and most importantly, your trust in us.
Editor’s Note: KEYT’s parent entity, the News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is based out of Missouri and has no connection to the Santa Barbara News-Press.