San Antonio TV stations WOAI and KABB will undergo significant changes in the coming months, including sharing a home and sharing more reporting resources.

The two stations are both owned by Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, which purchased WOAI late last year.

WOAI will be moving to KABB's current building off of NW Loop 410 and Babcock Road sometime during the fourth quarter of the year, said John Seabers, Sinclair's group manager who oversees both stations. The anchor teams at both stations will remain the same, but the stations will be consolidating news assets.

“You'll see more of a bleeding of reporters back and forth,” Seabers explained. “We don't have to send duplicate reporters and camera persons to the same story. Therefore, we'll have resources to send for another story. We'll be able to create a lot of new, different and varied content that I don't think any other news station in town has the opportunity to do.”

These plans were outlined in the wake of Monday's announcement that WOAI news director Tom Bell is leaving to be news director at KOVR, the CBS-owned and -operated station in the larger TV market of Sacramento, Calif. Bell, who has been with San Antonio's NBC affiliate since late 2009, said his last day will be Wednesday, the final day of May ratings.

Earlier, KENS-TV announced that executive news director Kurt Davis will depart late next month for a position as vice president of CBS' news services in New York. In his new role, Davis will oversee the affiliates' news-gathering arm — called Newspath — which provides content to 200-plus CBS affiliates.

“I'll be overseeing nearly 200 employees in offices throughout the country and in London and a couple of international desks as well,” said Davis, who has been with KENS for 10 years. “It's a tremendous opportunity and promotion for me,” Davis said in a phone chat late Sunday.

Bell wrote in an email Monday that family was the deciding factor for his leaving. “Sacramento puts us very close to two of our daughters and other family in the West.” One of those daughters is Hollywood actress Kristen Bell, who recently presented a new granddaughter to the S.A. news director.

The move also represents a step up for Bell in TV market size; Sacramento is ranked No. 20 while San Antonio sits at 36.

Once Bell departs, Seabers said, WOAI assistant news director Mandi Johnston Mendoza will take over as acting news director.

Meanwhile, Seabers will conduct a nationwide search for a newly created position, director of news — another step toward consolidation. The person hired for this job will oversee news for both WOAI and KABB “in a kind of management and visionary role,” Seabers explained. However, he added, KABB will still have its own news director, as will WOAI.

Seabers promised, as he did when Sinclair took ownership of WOAI, that the respective anchor teams, led by Randy Beamer and Elsa Ramon at WOAI and Michael Valdes and Cynthia Lee at KABB, will remain as they are.

Also to stay unchanged are “the unique dynamics” of each station's newscasts, he said: the more classic look and feel of WOAI's newscasts, and KABB's nontraditional delivery of its 9 p.m. newscast, which targets a younger audience.

“There will be separate newscasts with separate anchor teams,” he said, “just as you see them right now.”

“We're merging our news operations in a way that nobody has ever seen before,” Seabers said. “We're taking full advantage of two independent news operations under one umbrella.”

Although WOAI's news and engineering staffs still work at the downtown offices at Navarro and N. St. Mary's streets, he explained that the damage from the March fire still poses problems. The business side of the stations — sales, finance and executives — had to relocate to KABB's offices. However, soon they will move into an entirely new building, located near KABB. The specifics of that will be announced later.

“The fire forced us into moving things along a little further,” Seabers said of the plans to consolidate the station's resources in more effective ways.

jjakle@express-news.net