A year after being appointed to a corporate job with the Fox station group, longtime KTTV news director Jose Rios is retiring.

“Our dear friend and colleague led us to top ratings for a number of years,” KTTV anchor Jean Martirez said during the Fox O&O’s morning newscast on Thursday, announcing Rios’s retirement.  “Jose hired all of us.  I would walk on red-hot coals for this man.”

Rios spent two decades as news director at KTTV.  Last April, the Fox station group announced that he had been appointed to vice president of digital news applications, overseeing app development for all of the company’s stations.

Rios put together KTTV’s long-running morning show, “Good Day LA,” and his retirement comes in the wake of the station’s decision to blow up its established morning team of Steve Edwards, Jillian Reynolds, and Dorothy Lucey.

Before joining KTTV in 1992, Rios spent 13 years at KCBS.  There, he held a variety of positions before eventually becoming the news director.

>Update: “Jose is a Fox pioneer with a 20-year tenure filled with countless achievements. We want to thank him for his dedication to FTS and unmatched energy and ambition,” a spokesperson for the Fox O&Os told TVSpy. “He will be truly missed.”