Former KION news anchors: Where Are They Now?

As we celebrate our 50 th year of broadcasting, we thought it would be fun to look back at some of the people who reported the news here at KION.

Some of our news alums were probably before your time. After all, we’ve been doing news, weather and sports for 50 years.

“I’m Jas and this is Marc.”

Recent alums include Marc and Jas: Marc Cota-Robles and Jasmine Viel, who reported, anchored and married while they were here.

Today, they are a family of three and continue to work in television news in Los Angeles, although at competing stations.

One of the station’s earliest news anchors was Dan Cullen. Cullen was already a seasoned newsman when he got here, but in one memorable clip, he gets the giggles.

Weather guy Christopher Nance went on to TV jobs in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“And I said, we’re gonna have problems.”

Forecaster Norm Hoffman is retired, but still talks about the weather. For him, TV was a second career after spending 30 years with the Air Force and National Weather Service.

“Well, as you know,” he recalls, “I stumbled my first couple times in front of the green screen. But that’s the fun of live TV. There’s no going back. You just keep moving.”

An on-air coffee spill is a good example of that. Weather forecaster Carl Bell worked here in the 80s before a long career in Los Angeles.

Former news anchors Adrienne Laurent and Karina Rusk remember another former anchor, George Reading, for his ability to create news copy on the fly and make it sound like poetry.

Laurent recalled this line: “The gold of California, the true gold, the soil of the Salinas Valley, is washing into the sea tonight (laughter). “He just came up with this. And that voice!”

Today, Laurent and Rusk work with SVMHS and Rusk remembers others.

“I anchored with Mark Ericson, Ed Bradford, Allen Martin,” she said.

These days, Martin anchors at the CBS station in San Francisco. Other alums include sports anchor Hunter Finnell, who owns a marketing and production company in Carmel, Kimberly Hunt, who anchors in San Diego, Colleen Odegaard hosts a show in Charlotte, North Carolina, former anchor/reporter Romney Dunbar operates a production company in Santa Cruz, and Mark Ericson says hello from Southern California.

A lot has changed over the years – and not just fashion and hairstyles. The Central Coast has changed and through it all, we’ve been here to report and explain those changes. That was true 50 years ago and it’s true today. So here’s to another 50.