Update: Gray’s KSFY/KDLT Reveals More Details of Merger

Gray TV’s KSFY/13 and KDLT/46 (Sioux Falls) have announced staffing details and a new name for their combined news operation that launches Monday, Jan. 13.

While there will be additional newscasts at the new “Dakota News Now,” some other newscasts will be simulcast on both stations and some jobs are being lost as part of the merger that reduces the number of TV newsrooms in Sioux Falls from three to two.

The ABC and NBC affiliates will offer an additional two hours of newscasts from the outset, with four more hours of daily local programming still to come based on previous regulatory commitments. KSFY and KDLT will also simulcast their 5 to 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts.

The stations reported Thursday that the combined newsroom, located in KSFY’s building, will add ten positions. But not everyone from KDLT will make the move.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader quoted General Manager Jim Berman as saying there were an undisclosed number of job cuts, mostly part-time. KDLT evening news anchor Tom Hanson is among those leaving, according to a post on KDLT’s Facebook page:

Hanson’s KDLT co-anchor, Kelsie Passolt, will stay on at the new “Dakota News Now,” co-anchoring a block of news from 4 to 7 p.m. with KSFY’s Brian Allen. The block will begin with an hour on KDLT and then alternate between the stations in half-hour segments on KSFY at 5:00 and 6:00 and KDLT at 5:30 and 6:30.

Meanwhile, KDLT sports anchor Mark Ovendon will take over the evening sports chair at “Dakota News Now.”

Current KSFY evening sports anchor Erik Thorstenson and KSFY evening news co-anchor Vanessa Gomez will move to mornings as news co-anchors with KDLT meteorologist Aaron Doudna.

NBC Nightly News will move to 6 p.m. on KDLT and numerous syndicated shows will move to new times on both stations.

The schedule changes mean that viewers will only have two choices for local news at any given time, with “Dakota News Now” competing only with “KELOLAND News” on market-dominant Nexstar CBS affiliate KELO-TV.

Simulcasts on two major network affiliates are not unheard of; Gray’s NBC and CBS affiliates in Fargo have simulcast newscasts for more than a decade. But that isn’t the case everywhere: In Duluth, for example, Quincy Media’s KBJR offers three hours of competing daily newscasts on its NBC and CBS channels from separate studios in the same building.

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Gray, which first owned KSFY, closed on its $32.5 million purchase of KDLT from Red River Broadcast Corp. in September after the FCC issued its first-ever waiver allowing the owner of one top-four station to purchase another. It may also be the last waiver for a while, since an appeals court decision ordered the FCC to revert to its previous ownership rules.

While the KSFY-KDLT merger was a first for the FCC, workarounds to put two major network affiliates under one roof have been used for decades in dozens of markets nationwide. The only difference in this case is that Gray owns both full-power stations outright instead of using a joint sales agreement or moving an affiliation to a subchannel, low-power station, or license obtained using a failing station waiver. (In fact, Gray already owns an LPTV license in Sioux Falls that could have been used for this purpose if the FCC waiver had been denied.)

Gray TV’s promise of additional newscasts on KSFY and KDLT was part of the FCC’s reasoning for approving the merger. Documents submitted as part of the approval process indicate that in addition to the newscasts already publicly announced, Gray also plans to add a two-hour morning newscast on KSFY’s CW channel, an hourlong morning talk show on KSFY, a half-hour 11 a.m. newscast on KDLT, a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast on the CW channel, and weekend morning newscasts on KSFY.

Additionally, Gray is adding a state capitol news bureau in Pierre to serve its Sioux Falls and Rapid City stations and making the ABC and NBC channels more widely available in rural areas of the Sioux Falls market through simulcasts on the two stations’ transmitter networks.

As reported here last September, the FCC concluded that the combination of KSFY and KDLT would put the company in a better position to compete with market juggernaut KELO-TV, which was said to have not fallen below 56.6% market share in the five years prior to the merger application being filed in 2018. The FCC order also noted that KDLT was “struggling to maintain a profitable local news operation” and that its news department might have been eliminated if it was left as a standalone station.