Starting this Saturday, May 31, Telemundo Puerto Rico will once again produce weekend newscasts. “Telenoticias Fin de Semana” will air Saturdays and Sundays at 5 and 10 pm.
The newscasts will be followed at 10:30 pm with “Deportes Xtra,” a half-hour show also produced by the Telemundo news department.
The weekend edition newscasts will be anchored by reporters Marjorie Ramírez and Ricardo Currás. Héctor Vázquez Muñíz will be in charge of sports and Yara Lasanta will be the weather anchor. Reporters Carlos Rubén Rodríguez and Kaly Esther Toro round up the team.
All are new hires. With the exception of Rodríguez, all are former Univision Puerto Rico employees. That station canceled weekend newscasts in January of this year.
According to José Cancela, president and GM of Telemundo Puerto Rico, the station had plans for a 2015 launch of weekend newscast, but sped up the process when Univision shut down its weekend news operation.
“As goes the news, goes the station is a long standing mantra in our business, and one that the Telemundo Station Group Leadership very much believes in,” says Cancela. “So when Univision pulled the plug on their weekend editions, we immediately received the green light to accelerate our weekend news launch from 2015 to now.”
Telemundo Puerto Rico previously had weekend newscasts, but they were canceled in 2004.