KVCR president put on administrative leave for "undisclosed matter"

Larry Ciecalone, president of dual licensee KVCR in San Bernardino, Calif., has been placed on administrative leave "while an undisclosed matter is investigated," the Press-Enterprise in Riverside is reporting. Bruce Baron, chancellor of licensee San Bernardino Community College District, announced the decision to the station staff Tuesday (March 27). He told the newspaper that the issue was a personnel matter and declined to discuss details. The investigation is expected to take about three months. During that time, Baron will head up station operations, TV Station Manager Kenn Couch will oversee both TV and radio, and Charles Fox remains head of the new First Nations television, funded by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians (Current, July 26, 2010). KVCR is one of three PBS member stations working to collaborate in the Los Angeles market (Current, Dec. 12, 2011).

UPDATE: Mel Rogers, president of PBS SoCal, PBS primary station in Los Angeles, tells Current he's not sure "how this will all play out" in regard to the collaboration. The three station partners are scheduled to meet early in May in a collaboration-related meeting with CPB there. Strategic program scheduling and online cross promotion continues with both KVCR and KLCS. "We continue to do events with KVCR, and a small bit of on-air cross promotion as well," he said.

"We are also discussing internally the need to be helpful to our sibling stations as we go forward," Rogers said. "I'm not sure what that means exactly but we, obviously, want to make sure public bandwidth is preserved and well-utilized for the good of the 18 million people in this region."