Is KCETLink’s award-winning news show SoCal Connected ending production? There’s no official announcement from the pubcaster in Los Angeles yet, but co-host Madeline Brand tells Current that she’s “proud to have worked” on the program.
“It’s a journalistic gem in TV news,” she said. “The show regularly aired investigative, hard-news stories and in-depth interviews — something that’s becoming increasingly rare in all media. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to do that.”
LA Observed is reporting that Brand posted on Facebook that she was “sad that today was the last taping day of SoCal Connected.”
In 2011, KCET was forced to shut down production of new episodes a few weeks earlier than usual, after losing U.S. Bank as a corporate sponsor. Now there’s the added complexity of KCET’s merger with noncom satellite network Link TV in January. Episodes of SoCal Connected were to be among the KCET programs to run on Link TV’s national schedule.
Since its September 2008 premiere, SoCal Connected has won 17 local Emmys, 19 Golden Mikes, a George Foster Peabody Award, three Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and two Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards for Excellence in Journalism.
The show went from weekly to weeknight in September 2012.
Brand, a veteran pubradio broadcaster, joined the program in October 2012, after departing longtime radio home KPCC, which had revamped its top-rated Madeleine Brand Show and brought in a co-host.
Here’s Current’s in-depth look at SoCal Connected in 2010, just before KCET dropped its PBS membership.