An entire local TV newsroom in Indianapolis disappeared overnight. News of layoffs spread on social media Wednesday morning.
“If you haven’t heard yet, WRTV was sold yesterday to another owner in town, and essentially the entire staff was let go,” read the beginning of a Facebook post by Todd Klaassen, a meteorologist who was laid off from the station. Its new owner, Circle City Broadcasting — already the owner of WISH-TV in Indianapolis — bought it from Scripps for $83 million.
An entire newsroom disappearing overnight is shocking, but for some, these layoffs don’t come as a surprise.
“Anytime there’s a merger between two major media corporations, they’re looking to cut costs,” said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
To manage the hefty debt companies take on for acquisitions, “they have to start cutting jobs left and right, and that’s not good for any of us,” he said.
This same consolidation is happening in television markets across the country.
Last month, for example, Nexstar laid off a number of employees at its television stations in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago ahead of its merger with Tegna, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on March 19.
The drive to consolidate
Broadcast owners have long argued that combining businesses will help them survive. In February, Scripps CEO Adam Symson told investors that consolidation will help preserve journalism and allow local stations to compete in the national marketplace. The National Association of Broadcasters has expressed the same sentiment, urging the FCC to change ownership rules that bar a single company from reaching more than 39% of all U.S. television households. Broadcasters argue that rule is outdated due to technological innovations like social media and streaming, plus the change in audience viewing habits.
The FCC’s approval of Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna creates the largest owner of local television stations in the country. The combined company would reach 80% of households nationwide, about 265 television stations. There are two different lawsuits opposing the deal.
“Journalists are really upset about it, because they know that it’s going to mean fewer jobs. It means less local news coverage,” said Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild, a union that represents journalists across the country, including some impacted by the Nexstar-Tegna merger. “We joined a lawsuit … to try and convince the D.C. Circuit Court to issue an emergency stay and try to prevent Nexstar from taking over Tegna and then also blowing past the ownership cap.”
The layoffs at WRTV are an example of what consolidation looks like — a company buys a second or third station in the market and operates one newsroom for both stations.
In a statement, Circle City Broadcasting President and CEO DuJuan McCoy said, “WRTV-ABC will increase to more than 30 hours of live local news and entertainment programming per week – distinct and separate from the 90 hours of WISH-TV’s content we currently have on air.”
In Indianapolis, just two companies now control most local TV news:
- Circle City Broadcasting owns WISH (CW affiliate), WRTV (ABC affiliate) and WNDY (MyNetworkTV).
- Nexstar owns WXIN-TV (Fox affiliate) and WTTV-TV (CBS affiliate) and WTHR (NBC affiliate, acquired from Tegna)
As it stands, that leaves two broadcast owners producing local news in Indianapolis. Under the terms of the merger, however, Nexstar will sell WTHR. Consolidation will impact other markets like Denver, where:
- Nexstar owns KDVR (Fox affiliate), KWGN (CW affiliate) and acquired KUSA (NBC affiliate) and KTVD (MyNetworkTV) from Tegna.
- Scripps owns KMGH (ABC affiliate).
- CBS News and Stations owns KCNC (CBS).
Nexstar will have to sell KTVD, keeping its ownership of the Fox, NBC and CW affiliated stations. This scenario is likely to repeat in markets where Nexstar-Tegna owns stations. Other companies could buy and sell stations, too.
Fear of reduced voices
Most people still get their news from broadcasters. A recent Pew study found that 57% of people who get their news from TV say their news mostly comes from cable, satellite or broadcast television rather than a streaming service or social media. A concern is that fewer owners in a market means fewer points of view and less variety of content.
“You’re going to see a rapid escalation of job losses in broadcast news, and particularly the destruction of local news coverage,” Schleuss said when asked about the impacts of consolidation.
A 2019 study from the Stanford School of Business found that large corporate ownership causes stations to focus more on national politics at the expense of local politics. On the financial side, Symson, the Scripps CEO, believes consolidation will overall allow his company to put more journalists in communities and streamline workflows.
“To have a democratic society, you have to have a self-informed populace that’s able to self-govern and to be able to do that, you need to have access to reliable local news and information,” Pickard, the Penn professor, said.
Solutions
There isn’t an easy answer to solve the issues facing local news stations.
Pickard thinks support for nonprofit and public media is key.
“I think we … can see what democratic societies do around the world, which is to maintain robust public media systems, because they know that a commercial media system can’t provide for all their democratic needs,” he said. “They find ways to subsidize even their commercial media, their privately owned media. We have things we can do, we just need to have the political will to do them in the United States.”
Schleuss said we need an FCC willing to limit consolidation.
“I think really preventing monopolies and creating an ecosystem where we would have a diversity of ownership, like making sure that there’s a bunch of owners, and not just like a few owners,” he said.
Schleuss also suggested tax credits for journalism jobs, which have supported journalists working in newspapers, online outlets and in broadcast stations.
Back in Indianapolis, life goes on for Klaassen. He ended his Facebook post with “While I’m smiling — it’s what I always do (nickname: Smiley) — I’m also hurting. I gave everything to my job: long nights, early mornings, holidays, covering too many tornado warnings (sorry if I interrupted your programming), and time away from my family. But you know what? The sun rose again this morning, and it’s a new day.”
