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THE POPULATION GROWTH OF STATE CAPITAL SACRAMENTO CONTINUES UNabated as San Francisco Bay Area residents, as well as immigrants from places like Latin America and the Ukraine, flock here to take advantage of the region's job opportunities and more moderately priced housing. The last U.S. Census (2000) put the population of this racially and culturally diverse Northern California city at 1.2 million and projected it would grow to 1.4 million by 2004.
To accommodate the influx, some 5,000 new high-rise condominium units, luxury apartments, town houses, offices and retail outlets are either planned or approved for the downtown area. Projects scheduled to be completed later this year include The Towers, a $300 million, 53-story condominium, hotel and retail project; and Six Twenty-One Capitol Mall, a 25-story, 366,000-square-foot office mall.
Among local TV stations aiming to attract the newcomers, KCRA-TV, Hearst-Argyle TV's NBC affiliate, has long dominated the local news race in both households and demos. (The Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market has 1.3 million TV households, ranking it 19th in the country.) Last summer, KCRA reassigned some of its on-air news team, including promoting anchors John Alston and Edie Lambert to primary weekday anchors at 6 and 11 p.m. Alston had been anchoring the 10 p.m. news that KCRA produces on sister WB affiliate KQCA and coanchoring at 6 p.m. on KCRA. Lambert had been a weekend anchor on KCRA.
On the late newscast, Alston and Lambert replaced legendary Sacramento anchors Lois Hart and Dave Walker, a married couple who have been in the business for more than 25 years and at KCRA for the last 15. The couple stepped down from the late newscast in midAugust but continue to anchor KCRA's 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. newscasts.
Over at KQCA, the late newscast expanded from 30 minutes to a full hour last year and took on a second anchor, Chris Riva. Riva joined the station in July from KWGN-TV in Denver, where he was the main sports anchor.
In terms of programming, KCRA/KQCA president and general manager Elliott Troshinsky chose not to renew Dr. Phil for KQCA, instead picking up Rachael Ray's new talk show to fill the 3 p.m. slot. KCRA also acquired Megan Mullally's new syndicated daytime talker, which will air at 11 a.m.
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