Content area
Full Text
West Valley City - It's 6:50 a.m. at the Channel 23 studio, where the show "Despertando Utah" - "Wake Up, Utah" - is set to go live at 7 a.m.
Even though the crew isn't in sight at this Redwood Road station, the show's two local anchors - Ely Martinez, 28, and Michelle Ortega, 23 don't seem worried as they read over final notes, retouch their blush and tame flyaway hairs.
For two years, the pair have been working as anchors, producers, reporters and editors of the local Spanish-language morning variety show, a production of cable channel 23, KBTU TV, owned by Bustos Media.
The daily morning show was launched as a half-hour program in 2006, then extended to an hour, before it was extended again, this month, to two hours. The show airs live daily, with edited "best of" segments repeated on weekends.
The station hopes to add news segments to the current program, which includes regular segments on beauty, health, local human-interest stories and interviews, as well as traffic and weather updates.
At first, the hosts had some on-air trouble reporting weather and traffic updates, but they learned the ropes by studying other local broadcasts. "It didn't go so well those first times," Martinez said.
The anchors' can-do attitude is a metaphor for the show, which the station hopes will develop a large audience...