It was anything but a bellweather week for TV journalists, and I’m not merely referencing the shell-shocked and panicked employees at CBS NEWS and CNN. While their worlds may be crashing down in their minds, as THE GUARDIAN’s Jeremy Barr conveyed yesterday, at least for the moment they’re still employed. That’s more than can be said for a sizable number of their compatriots on the local side of the street, and like a slowly corrosive drip those stories were dropping throughout last week. On Monday the tundra of a Chicago winter was upended by this eye-opener from the TRIBUNE’s Robert Channick:
The axe is falling at WGN-Ch. 9, cutting a wide swath out of “Chicago’s Very Own” TV newsroom. Eight veteran reporters and anchors were laid off Monday: Sean Lewis, Ray Cortopassi, Bronagh Tumulty, Judy Wang, Julian Crews, Paul Lisnek, Chris Boden and Dean Richards, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. Lewis, a nearly two-decade veteran at WGN-TV who has anchored the weekend morning broadcast since 2010, got the bad news Monday afternoon.
“This afternoon, I filed my last report for WGN on the noon show,” said Lewis, 50. “ A lot of really good people lost their jobs today, and it’s a shame.” A union steward at WGN, Lewis was sitting in on a meeting in that role where a colleague was being laid off. When that meeting was over, his bosses asked him to stay, adding his name to the list. By Monday evening, the final tally of layoffs reached eight.
By midweek, the cancerous news had spread to Los Angeles, where even national trade beat writers like VARIETY’s Michael Schneider were considering this clickbait-worthy:
Longtime KTLA weather anchor Mark Kriski, an eight-time Emmy winner who has been an L.A. TV fixture since he joined “KTLA Morning News” at its launch in 1991, has been let go by the station….Also let go at KTLA were midday anchors Glen Walker, who had been at KTLA since 2010, and Lu Parker, who had been with KTLA since 2015.
And by Thursday morning the purge had hit New York, per NCS’ Michael Hill:
At WPIX, sources confirmed the station parted ways with anchors John Muller, Craig Treadway, Kori Chambers and Arrianae LeBeau. Muller anchored on weekend mornings. Treadway was an early morning anchor, Chambers appeared at 6 and 10 p.m. weekdays and LeBeau held down the 4 and 5 p.m. spots.
This may have been shocking and lacking recent precedence in these metropoli, but check in with anyone in the flyover states and this is an all too familiar refrain. All of these stations are now under the purview of Nexstar, which had only recently entered the nation’s largest markets via their takeover of Tribune Broadcasting in 2019. (As THE DESK.NET’s Matthew Keys exclusively noted, they technically don’t even own WPIX). Nexstar had built up the largest warchest of stations markets below the Top Three over the past coupla decades by swallowing up historically modest-sized station groups like Pac-Man swallowed dots. In dozens of those cases, they created duopoiles and triopolies that eliminated competitive newsrooms, not only just in the market but in many cases creating situations where sister stations’ talents were shared across neighboring DMAs. That’s been especially true about supplemental talent like weather and sports anchors.
What made these stories all the more galling was that these stations have all expanded and added hours to their newscasts since Nexstar took over. In the most extreme cases like KTLA they now run local news content nonstop Mondays through Fridays from 4 AM to 11:30 PM, changing only the titles of some of their casts for sales purposes. And because virtually no one watches that much news–or even a fraction of it–the way those newscasts are sold these days is now more akin to how radio has been traditionally sold–reach and frequency, with ratings at best only a tangential consideration. Frankly, if one looks at a local rating PDF (“books” haven’t existed for years, kids) and gets a gander at the numbers that an individual newscast now delivers, especially in comparison to the sort they historically put up, it’s a sobering experience.
But in these cases it wasn’t necessarily their lack of or a downturn in their own ratings that seemed to be the motivation for Nexstar’s layoffs. Rather, it was the same gluttonish appetite that has defined them in the past. As Keys keenly observed:
The layoffs…are connected to Nexstar’s proposed acquisition of TEGNA, the Sun-Times reported Monday. Nexstar is currently seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to acquire local, licensed TV stations owned by peer broadcaster TEGNA. The deal is expected to move forward, according to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
And as we mused last summer, the engulfing of TEGNA is being designed to create an unwiedly behemoth that in aggregate can now actually rival a broadcast network in size and viewership. A 2024 client report authored by KATZ MEDIA’s Michael Steinberg confirms the cumulative potency of local news. But a deep-dive PEW RESEARCH CENTER study conducted at roughly the same time via the Pew-Knight initiative revealed what the drivers and motivators for that viewership are and how they vary by age, SES and geography. Breaking news: nowhere in there is there any reference of a specific personality being high on those lists.
When I was cutting my eyeteeth in this industry decades ago consultants like Frank Magid and Willis Duff routinely conducted regular research studies with station groups to measure qualitative shifts and opportunities surrounding particular personalities and formats. Talent agencies would also take advantage of such information when they could to be able to better recommend clients looking to shift markets. Duff’s company was eventually acquired at pennies on the dollar, and the eponymous remains of Magid’s now relies almost exclusively on projects related to digital media.
And if you’re seasoned enough where any of this ramble resonates ask yourself the same hard question I forced upon myself when I was being inundanted by the almost nonstop barrage of outrage and consternation about these heartless firings: When was the last time you actively chose to watch a local news program on a regular basis because of your connection to a particular personality? And was it really their reporting skills and journalistic integrity that motivated you to do so, or was it simply how hunky or hot they may have looked on camera when the weather got warm?
If you happened to answer in the affirmative, the preponderance of actual data would suggest one or more of three conclusions: You’re in a statistical minority, you’re in a demo that advertisers don’t pay a premium for, or you’re lying. In my case, it’s two out of three; how do you stack up?
Yes, I feel very badly for those now ex-Nexstar employees who are now unemployed through virtually no fault of their own. In the case of Kriski, who at one time I did choose to regularly watch when he was part of Los Angeles’ first local 7-9 AM effort that for a change beat FOX at their own game, it’s an especially poignant dismissal. They have every right to be angry at what was clearly a lazy reaction to a self-induced financial fire drill where it’s obvious someone in corporate ran a sorted list of salaries and these happened to bubble up to the top. It’s right in line with the “genius” that continues to add more and more hours and avails to a supersaturated marketplace that even in an election year (assuming we even have them) and drags down the expectedly higher news CPMs to levels much more aligned with any other drek that still airs. And with virtually no consequential syndicated alternatives to draw from in the wake of the demise of talk shows like KELLY CLARKSON’s, I don’t see Nexstar or its station group brethren changing course anytime soon.
I would merely advise those impacted to move on and perhaps join the rest of us in amplifying your social media footprint and efforts like Substack; your history of followers gives you an advantage that many of us envy. Do what you can to add to the competitive forces that the Pew study cited that are the real challenger to Nexstar’s definition of success. And don’t dilly-dally too much. A whole bunch of CNN and CBS NEWS folk are not far behind you.
Until next time…