Chuck George, chief meteorologist for Tucson CBS affiliate KOLD, is taking a leave of absence.

KOLD general manager Debbie Bush confirmed with TVSpy George was taking the leave of absence, but gave no indication of why or how long he would be gone saying she could not comment on employee matters.

George took a previous leave of absence from the station in September of 2011 after sending strange tweets and appearing slow and rambling while on air.

Randy Garsee, former anchor for Tucson CBS affiliate KOLD, died over the weekend at his home in Virginia.

“I’m in shock, as a lot of his friends are. We can’t believe this happened,” said his former co-anchor Kris Pickel. “He was an eloquent man and prolific writer. Just a hell of a guy. I was lucky to be paired up with him.”

Garsee was a news anchor for KOLD from 1997 until 2006 before moving to KTEN in Sherman, TX, and Ada, OK. He then went to work for the U.S. Marine Corps as a public affairs specialist and journalist at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq before taking a job as communications and public affairs officer for the Center for Naval Analyses.

He is remembered by colleagues for his humor and focus, “When he would get into a story, he would really get into it,” said KOLD anchor Scott Kilbury.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, Garsee died in his sleep. He was 50.

Concetta Callahan is joining the morning newscast at Tucson’s KMSB-KOLD, Inside Tucson Business reports.

Callahan comes from WHBF in the Quad Cities region of Iowa and Illinois, where she was the weekend evening anchor. In Tucson, she will co-anchor from 7 to 9 a.m. on Fox affiliate KMSB and report from 4:30 to 7 a.m. on CBS affiliate KOLD.

She replaces Gina Trunzo, who left the station earlier this year for medical reasons. She will co-anchor alongside Mark Stine.

KOLD chief meteorologist Chuck George had his weather forecast interrupted by an uninvited guest during last night’s 10 p.m. newscast (video after the jump).

The Tucson CBS affiliate’s website said George was unsure of what to do with the large arachnid but gave the the director enough time to take a close up without weather graphics.

He didn’t know if he should call attention to it, afraid the audience wouldn’t be able to see it, but what appeared to be a wolf spider was too large to go unnoticed!

After pointing out the spider, George and the rest of the news team continued with the show. Watch inside… Read more

KVOA anchor Martha Vazquez, who has been a fixture on Tucson TV for three decades, abruptly resigned on Monday, following an alleged shoplifting incident that occurred over the weekend.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that a woman with the same name and birth date as Vazquez was cited Saturday on suspicion of shoplifting from the Tucson Mall.

After alerting staff of Vazquez’s resignation on Monday afternoon, KVOA news director Cathie Batbie-Loucks told the Daily Star that the veteran anchor’s departure was “due to personal reasons.”

A native Tucsonan, Vazquez began her broadcasting career with CBS-affiliate KOLD in the 70s, before moving on to KVOA in 1984. Most recently, she anchored the station’s 4 p.m. weekday newscast. Read more

Last week it was announced that Bob Simone was leaving his general manager post at Tucson’s KMSB amid the aftermath of the station’s shared services agreement with KOLD.  Today it was announced that Simone has been named vice president and general manager of WLNS, Young Broadcasting’s CBS-affiliate in Lansing, MI.

“Bob brings a lengthy track record of effectively managing stations while strategically building their revenue streams,” Deborah McDermott, President of Young Broadcasting, said.  “We look forward to having him aboard and leading WLNS‐TV to new levels of success in the greater Lansing marketplace.”

Simone brings 15 years of GM experience with him to Lansing.  Before joining KMSB in 2009, Simone was GM of three different Fox stations: KDVR in Denver, KPTV in Portland, and WTFX in Philadelphia.

General manager Bob Simone and news manager Bob Richardson have both left Tucson Fox-affiliate KMSB in the aftermath of the station entering into a shared-services agreement with CBS-affiliate KOLD.

KMSB parent company Belo announced in November that news operations at the station would be shut down and taken over by Raycom Media’s KOLD. Belo cited a lack of advertising revenue as the reason for the transition.

Simone, who was named president and general manager of KMSB in 2009, told staffers he had not been retained, according to a station source. Both Richardson and Simone worked their last day at KMSB this week.

Richardson had been news manager at KMSB since 2003. He announced today that he is launching a media consulting company in Arizona called RAR Productions. The company  will help businesses and organizations “with the news media, crisis management, event production or political messaging,” Richardson said in a statement. Read more

As the result of a recently struck shared services agreement in Tucson, CBS-affiliate KOLD will take over production of newscasts on Fox-affiliate KMSB beginning tomorrow, February 1st.

KOLD has already rebranded its website “Tucson News Now” to reflect the joint news operation and, starting tomorrow, the station will produce a one-hour 9 p.m. newscast on KMSB, as well as a new, two-hour weekday morning show that will run from 7 to 9 a.m.

The 9 p.m. newscast will be anchored by Scott Kilbury during the week and Chris Holmstrom on the weekends.  Kilbury currently anchors KOLD’s 4 p.m. newscast, alongside Heather Rowe, and Holmstrom has been a reporter with the station since August. Read more

When Belo announced last month that it had struck a shared services agreement with Raycom Media in which the company’s Tucson Fox-affiliate KMSB would hand over its news operations to Raycom’s KOLD, a large-scale round of layoffs were expected.  Now it appears that at least a handful of KMSB staffers will be able to land jobs with their onetime rival.

According to Inside Tucson Business, KOLD has posted 15 full-time and three part-time job openings specific to the agreement, and additionally there are three positions at the station that were vacant before the agreement.  And KOLD may soon post three or four additional openings.

By Inside Tucson Business’s calculations, that means there will be roughly 20 available positions at KOLD for the 30 or so people who will soon be out of a job at KMSB.

It’s probably the most personal news KMSB anchor Lou Raguse has ever had to deliver to Tucson viewers. Following Belo’s announcement that the company was handing over news production at KMSB to Raycom Media’s KOLD, Raguse went on the air and told everyone that he was now out of a job.

“Beginning February 1st, Raycom will produce this newscast on Fox 11 as well as a two-hour morning newscast,” Raguse, who has been with KMSB since 2008, informed viewers at the top of the Fox-affiliate’s 9 p.m. newscast. “For right now, it means that all the news, sports, engineering, and production people here at Fox 11 are out of a job by that date.” Video inside… Read more