Fresno TV newscaster diagnosed with cancer. When will he be back on air?

Viewers of KMPH Fox 26 have likely noticed that Monty Torres has been recently missing from its 10 p.m. newscast.

The nightly news anchor is on medical leave following a cancer diagnosis in October.

It’s the longest Torres has been away from the news desk since he started at the station in 1996.

“After 20 years here with you, most every night, I feel I owe you an explanation,” Torres told viewers in a video segment that aired last month. “About a month ago, I started experiencing severe shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, wheezing and coughing.”

This led to a doctor’s visit, and a chest X-ray.

Eventually, Torres ended up in an emergency room with a partially collapsed right lung and a diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer.

“It is inoperable, due to its location, and incurable,” he told viewers. “But still treatable.”

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month and according to the American Association for Cancer Research and the National Cancer Institute, Torres is one of 226,650 patients expected to receive a diagnosis of lung or bronchus cancer in the United States in 2025.

A career in news and politics

Torres joined KMPH as an anchor in 2006, but had worked at the station a decade earlier as a general assignment reporter. Before coming back to Fresno, he was the morning show anchor for the NBC station in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he also produced and hosted several public affairs shows, including one aimed at the state’s Hispanic population.

Early in his career Torres was a weekend news anchor in Los Angeles, where he co-hosted a community affairs show on KCOP-TV for three seasons.

Last year, Torres hosted KMPH’s “California Votes 2024,” a Sunday night politics show that aired in the run-up to the election.

In an interview with The Bee, Torres said sharing his story with viewers felt like something of an obligation.

“To suddenly disappear, it didn’t really feel quite right to me.”

The response has been nothing by kind and supportive, he said, and has gone a long way to ease the apprehension that comes with a cancer diagnosis.

One viewer shared her own cancer story, which included time at the research and treatment center City of Hope.

“She went to City of Hope, and she told me what I’m telling you now.”

She is now in complete remission, he said.

Torres isn’t a smoker and had never had lung issues more than what’s normal for people in the Valley, he said. In fact, he had been running sprints on the track at Clovis East High School when he first started noticing symptoms.

This is a growing trend. According to the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, nonsmokers account for 20% of lung cancer deaths and people are seeing cases earlier in life.

With Torres, there is a family history. His father died of an autoimmune disease that attacked the lungs and two cousins have been diagnosed with the same form of cancer.

‘A developing story’

In his statement to viewers, Torres was clear that this is still a developing story.

“How it ends is still unknown,” he said.

“The one who determines that outcome hasn’t determined that outcome yet.”

While the diagnosis has changed so much of what’s happening around him, it hasn’t changed Torres’ faith and his belief in a God “who loves us and who sent his son Jesus to save us from our sins.”

“The rest of this is still a part of the mystery I have yet to uncover,” he said. “I will let you know how this challenge all turns out when I get there.”

He is on that path. Earlier this week, he completed a treatment plan with doctors and says he will begin taking pills to attack “mutations within the cell line of the cancer itself.”

“They’ve had a tremendous amount of success with those recently,” he said.”

When will Torres be back on TV?

Whether Torres will return to KMPH is still up in the air. It will depend on whether he goes into remission and what that looks like.

The station would like to have him back, he said.

And he’d like to return, too, if only to share his story.

“I would like to be able to come back. To come back and tell everybody I’m still here and that God is good,” he says. “I’d like to be able to share that message.”