KSEE24 Sunrise anchor leaves Fresno, joins former colleague in Las Vegas

Last week was the final week in Fresno for local newscaster Joe Moeller.

The KSEE Sunrise anchor announced on social media that he was leaving the station for a new job in Las Vegas.

“I have enjoyed the past nearly four and a half years in the Central Valley with a great team on Sunrise, but my time has come to continue my career in a new location,” he wrote in a post on Instragram. He will start as a reporter at CBS affiliate 8 News Now this week.

“I have met great people in the Central Valley and I will be back,” he wrote.

Moeller was hired in 2015 as a reporter for both KSEE24 and CBS47. The two stations are owned by Nexstar and operate as a duopoly.

Before coming to Fresno, Moeller worked in Los Angeles and Helena, Montana.

In Las Vegas, he will join former KSEE24 and CBS47 reporter and anchor Alex Backus. The Turlock native joined 8 News Now as the morning anchor in August.

Backus joined CBS47’s morning crew in 2016, co-anchoring with Joey Horta, who left the station in September. Horta was a reporter for the Merced Sun-Star while working as in intern at ABC30. He worked for the CBS affiliate in McAllen, TX, before returning to Fresno as KSEE24’s weekend anchor in 2014. He is now the Public Information Officer for Merced City School District.

Earlier this month, the stations lost meteorologist Madeline Evans who left to work at ABC30.

This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 2:45 PM.