Todd Mokhtari Is named President/GM of KVEA & KNBC.
Todd Mokhtari has been named President and General Manager of Telemundo 52 / KVEA and NBC 4 Southern California / KNBC, NBCUniversal's local television stations that serve English and Spanish-speaking audiences in the Los Angeles DMA.
He will oversee operations for both stations across the news, digital, sales, marketing/promotions, community affairs and operations/technology departments. Mokhtari will usher in a new era for KVEA and KNBC by bringing together two powerhouse stations to better serve Southern California's diverse audiences. He will report to Valari Staab, Chairman, NBCUniversal Local and will work closely with Manuel Martinez, President, Telemundo Station Group.
"Todd is an exceptional General Manager for our San Diego NBC & Telemundo stations. He understands both the English and Spanish language television markets and has long been one of our most innovative managers. Todd is from LA and once led our KNBC newsroom. He understands the power of bringing KVEA and KNBC together to serve the entire Los Angeles area with its large Latino population and ever increasing diversity, in a way no other television operation can," said Staab. "Todd is a collaborative leader that will work with our talented KVEA & KNBC management teams to come together to serve local audiences for years to come. I also want to publicly thank Steve Carlston for taking KNBC from a place where it was significantly under-resourced and therefore, struggling to compete, to the great station it is today. Steve is known for his culture-driven leadership style and the driving force behind assembling an impressive diverse leadership team and talented staff. Today, we take that great individual work to the next level by combining these two very strong stations to be one station serving a large and diverse population in two languages."
Mokhtari returns home to Southern California and brings with him more than 30 years of experience in broadcast that includes leading NBCUniversal's Telemundo/NBC San Diego stations and helping them innovate on the way that news is presented to Spanish and English local audiences. Together, Telemundo 20 and NBC 7 dominate the market as the #1 ranked station for their key demo groups. He has extensive local experience from working in the country's top 20 TV markets including Los Angeles where he worked as Vice President of News for KNBC. He has spent fifteen years working with Telemundo and NBC stations in California including KNTV where he was Assistant News Director and helped to create a more diverse newsroom and oversaw the launch of new digital channels.
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"With the demographic makeup of our country rapidly changing, the general market as we once knew it no longer exists. Our markets are not fragmented anymore, they are one, and the Telemundo and NBC stations every day reach English, Spanish and bilingual audiences and multigenerational families through each of their newscasts. Todd knows how powerful our Telemundo station is in Los Angeles and the value our newscasts provide to our communities. I cannot wait to see what Todd and our KVEA and KNBC teams will do to strengthen both stations," said Manuel Martinez, President, Telemundo Station Group. "I also want to take this public opportunity to thank Celia Chavez for the 27 years of service she dedicated to our company. She has served KVEA and our Los Angeles Spanish-language communities for over a decade. She put together a great management team and experienced many ratings, revenue and community successes with KVEA."
At KNSD and KUAN, Mokhtari made inclusion, collaboration and innovation his top priorities. To better reflect the diversity of the market during his weekly leadership meetings, he broadened his leadership team to make sure it reflected San Diego's diverse communities and ensured that those voices would be heard as the stations' operations and business priorities were discussed. He created a bilingual Telemundo 20 and NBC 7 consumer unit, with bilingual Consumer Reporters reporting for both stations, in both languages.
Mokhtari added weekend evening newscasts on Telemundo 20 in January 2020, resulting in the station delivering the only Spanish-language weekend newscast in San Diego throughout the pandemic. Under Mokhtari's tenure, the KNSD news team introduced an entirely new approach to its late newscast by getting away from high story count and crime stories. Instead, KNSD's News Anchors are walking viewers through the big stories of the day by giving context, depth and detail and answering all the unanswered questions about important news stories and topics. Spanish-speaking audiences will soon benefit from this new approach to local news when KUAN launches this news format during the late news.
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In addition to working for NBCUniversal's California TV stations, Mokhtari has worked as News Director for KIRO-TV and KCPQ-TV in Seattle. He launched his career in local broadcasting as an intern at KCRA-TV in Sacramento and held various roles with increasing responsibility including Newscast Producer.
Mokhtari earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Rhetoric Communications from University of California, Davis.
He will be relocating and returning home to Southern California.
