For a seasoned and passionate TV news afficiando this past week’s headlines have been more than a little gut-wrenching. I admit I got a tad emotional when I saw this item from THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS’ Brian Niemietz burn up my timeline:
News anchor Kaity Tong is retiring from PIX11 after nearly 35 years of with the outlet. The station’s managing editor, Patrick Mason, informed Tong’s colleagues in a letter referring to the 79-year-old reporter as a “legend” and a friend.
“After more than 34 years at WPIX, Kaity has opted to move into a much-deserved retirement at the end of August,” he said. “You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the New York City area who doesn’t immediately associate PIX11 with Kaity. A powerhouse name in an industry that can change in a New York minute.“
Almost forgotten in the parochial release was the fact that Tong had a total of 50 years on air in the market, having been one of the last remaining hires of the OG EYEWITNESS NEWS era that redefined local broadcast news and made the ABC owned-and-operated stations tops in demographic ratings and revenue in the majroity of their markets, including New York’s WABC where I actually confess to watching her when she first began co-anchoring their afternoon newscasts when I was still in high school. I’d occasionally see her on air at WPIX during various New York trips, aging reasonably gracefully with the help of makeup and good genes, and find her presence somewhat reassuring. Despite whatever alliance I had to my FOX employers I’d find time to spend time with an “old friend”.
It’s painfully clear that behaviors like mine are mostly a thing of the past and the likes of someone like Tong emerging any time soon an even more outdated concept in the wake of the more dystopian news that THE WRAP’s A.J. Katz authored on Friday:
E.W. Scripps has cut 12% of its workforce this year as the high-profile TV station group embraces artificial intelligence and automation in a sweeping overhaul of its news operations to become an “AI-powered broadcast journalism company.” The company has eliminated 432 positions and 126 open roles since the beginning of the year, CEO Adam Symson told analysts during Scripps’ second quarter earnings call on Thursday. That includes 268 layoffs disclosed earlier this week, most of which affected employees at the company’s local television stations.
“We’re leaning into AI, automation, technology and the centralization of some roles,” Symson said, describing the changes as a “revolution” in how Scripps produces local news. Symson said the company is moving toward a 24-hour streaming news model and aims to turn its local station group into a “technology-forward, AI-powered broadcast journalism company.” “We are not wavering on our commitment to quality journalism,” he added. The CEO acknowledged the toll of the cuts, calling the process “painful” and “full of difficult decisions,” while arguing that the moves are financially necessary for the company.
I would almost be willing to take Symson at his word had I not landed upon a cheery predecessor to this news from a mere six months earlier which the appropriately byline-shy MEDIA COPILOT dropped:
Scripps released details Monday on how its newsrooms use artificial intelligence as “an assistant, not a decision-maker.” The company’s approach focuses on streamlining processes so journalists can spend more time reporting stories that impact their communities. Scripps’ most common AI application converts broadcast scripts into digital articles. When reporters finish their TV stories, AI transforms those scripts into web-friendly formats. The facts, quotes, and reporting all come from journalists—AI simply organizes the content for online readers.
“All the facts and reporting come from us; AI just helps tidy things up, so we can spend more time chasing new stories for the community,” the newsroom explained in a statement on its website.
Scripps runs scripts through AI systems programmed with the company’s ethics guidelines to help identify potential issues with accuracy, fairness, or bias. Editors still conduct their traditional reviews of all content. This approach aligns with broader industry efforts to teach journalists to use AI without losing critical thinking. As AI agents become more common in newsrooms, clear governance frameworks like Scripps’ become essential. Every piece of content processed through AI undergoes thorough review by editors and news managers before publication. Human judgment drives all editorial decisions at Scripps. Journalists remain responsible for all story choices.
The degree of defensiveness that Scripps opted to provide at the time now seems exceptionally hollow and, well, robotic in the wake of the fact that now a lot fewer humans will be providing that judgement across their footprint. The fact that Katz’s story added these postscripts makes Symson’s “acknowledgement” all the more disingenous and his faux tears that much more crocodilian:
Scripps’ overhaul comes as the economics of local television remain under pressure. The company reported $490.4 million in second-quarter revenue on Friday, a 9% decline from a year ago, and a net loss of 34 cents per share…Wall Street responded positively to the cost-cutting push despite the weaker quarterly results. Scripps shares surged more than 20% in midday trading Friday.
Natch, that news caused more than a bit of hand-wringing and expected panic among the many directly affected, not to mention those that remain at the significantly larger competitors to Scripps whose own voracious appetites were buoyed by the news that VARIETY’s Cynthia Littleton shared mere hours before the Symson performance was chronicled:
The FCC has formally moved to eliminate the longstanding national limit on the number of TV stations that a single entity can own on a 2-1 vote that is likely to draw legal challenges. FCC chief Brendan Carr and fellow Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty voted to end the restriction that has its roots in regulations around radio station ownership in the 1940s…Carr, according to prepared remarks provided by the FCC.. reiterated the longstanding view of the National Association of Broadcasters and others that TV station owners are bound by anachronistic regulatory rules while the likes of Google, Netflix, Meta and Amazon are able to reach the entire world with a keystroke.
So now not only can the politically skewed behemoths like Nexstar and Sinclair go about the same business they otherwise were without the wink-wink of UHF “discounts” or joint marketing aggrements that were already successfully sticking a middle finger in the eyes of those “ananchronistic” rules, but now if Scripps wants to swallow up a few more markets and competitors in the ones they are already in with some of those expected cost savings, so much the better. Expect that number 268 to swell exponentially six months from now when that upbeat assurance of human judgement will be even more distant than my memories of a younger and alluring Tong providing a fresh alternative to aging alcoholics on my then-preferred local news choices when I was barely out of puberty.
But for those of you who like me seem to immediately rush to the conclusion that all of this is yet another politically inspired pre-meditated plot to make us all less informed and susceptible to biased agendas (and I can’t deny that’s not an end result in some cases) maybe do what I did and take a step back and ask yourself this: When was the last time YOU chose to watch a local TV newscast because of the talent?
I’ve personally conducted hundreds of studies where such claims of “intent to view” based upon an incumbent anchor’s possible move to a competitor were expressed, and I also knew dozens of vendors who have conducted thousands more over the years where employers made hiring decisions based on those result. Even before fractionization made those outcomes often statistically inconsequential even if they did come to pass on a disproportionate number of occasions those intents never become behaviors.
If only now that all of these chickens are coming home to roost are you outraged by what many are now whining is a frontal assault on democracy perhaps look in the mirror and ask what might have gotten in the way of your otherwise noble intentions in the past? Traffic? A sick child or parent? Your phone providing more entertainment and faster reactions to breaking news than your television station? Maybe a combination of more than one of those legitimate reasons or something equivalent? In which case, if it were your call to make and your ass on the line in the manner that Symson needs to at the behest of his investors, would you have had the huevos to fly in the face of those historic results and current trends and chart a radically different course than the one he’s now setting for Scripps?
If as a viewer you’re that upset you can always choose to stop watching–you won’t be alone and if you’re not yet collecting Medicare you’ll be in a vast majority. Odds are a goodly number of you are still gonna stick around the same way that the audience size of ABC-owned stations are still superior to those of the likes of WPIX’s–albeit at much lower raw numbers than when Kaity Tong first anchored.
And at least all this technology might give us the option of Tong’s “return” –or a plausible facsimile of her–at some point in the future. From those that still watch her regularly, I’ve heard that this may have already been the case.
Until next time…