KSBY television, the NBC affiliate headquartered in San Luis Obispo, is undergoing three major staff changes.

News director Dave Schermer said Wednesday that he will step down. He will stay in San Luis Obispo with his wife and two daughters to focus on three informational website businesses: two about home improvement and one about nutritional supplements, he said in an email to The Tribune. Schermer has worked at the station since 2006, and will stay at KSBY for the next several weeks while a new news director is sought.

Under Schermer’s leadership, KSBY’s news department has won several awards, including Emmy Awards for Best Evening Newscast in 2008 and Best News Special in 2007.

Schermer’s resignation follows the April 1 addition of Kathleen Choal as KSBY’s general manager. Choal was previously station manager at KVOA-TV in Tucson, Ariz., which she joined as a news director in 2005. She’s also held management positions with CBS and Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcasting branch of the Washington Post Co.

The third change involves a new hire who strengthens KSBY’s ties with a television station in Minneapolis.

Caroline Lowe, the crime reporter at WCCO for the past three decades, will work in Santa Maria as KSBY’s news manager for Santa Barbara County, Schermer said.

Lowe joins KSBY anchors Jeanette Trompeter and John Reger, who both worked at WCCO before heading west.

According to a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Lowe has called KSBY “WCCO West.”

Also working at KSBY as the producer of the morning Daybreak show is Lowe’s daughter Shelby Rhodes.

Lowe will start her new post in late May.

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David Stoothoff, the owner of Madeline’s restaurant in Cambria, now owns the wine boutique that shares space with his restaurant.

The former Cambria Wine Shop, now known as Madeline’s Wine Shop, had been the primary lessee of the property at 788 Main St. in Cambria’s West Village for 19 years.

Stoothoff has subleased half of the building for his restaurant for more than seven years. He officially took over the wine shop March 3.

Stoothoff said the wine shop will focus more on “hard-to-find local wines from small wineries that don’t do large production.”

For details, go to www.madelineswineshop.com or www.madelinescambria.com, or call 927-0990 or 927-4175.

And who is Madeline? She’s Stoothoff’s 16-year-old daughter.

— Kathe Tanner