Don Corsini, the general manager at Nexstar Media’s biggest television station, will be leaving his job as general manager of the station by the end of the year.
The announcement was made by Corsini himself during an all-hands meeting with employees at Nexstar’s newly-acquired Los Angeles station KTLA-TV (Channel 5) on Tuesday, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
Corsini has served as general manager and president of KTLA and its San Diego sister-station, Fox affiliate KSWB (Channel 69), since 2009.
Corsini has worked at nearly every major local TV station in the Los Angeles market, starting his career in local broadcasting as an account executive at CBS station KCBS-TV (Channel 2) when it was known as KNXT in 1973. One year later, he went to ABC in Burbank where he worked in national sales for the television network.
In 1984, he became a local sales manager for Los Angeles ABC station KABC-TV (Channel 7), where he worked his way up from a senior account executive position to that of a program director. In 1989, he switched gears, becoming the executive vice president of programming at Prime Ticket, a regional cable sports channel.
Corsini stayed with Prime Ticket — later Fox Sports West — until moving to independent station KCAL-TV (Channel 9) in 1995, eventually becoming the general manager of the station. In 2002, he became general manager of KCBS when its parent company, CBS Corporation, acquired KCAL from Young Broadcasting.
In 2009, Corsini left KCBS/KCAL for KTLA at a time when then-parent company Tribune Broadcasting was struggling through bankruptcy.
“Don has an impeccable reputation in the Los Angeles market as a visionary and a leader who knows how to recruit and manage top talent,” Ed Wilson, a Tribune executive, said in 2009. “His track record in news, programming, production, marketing and sales is without equal. In addition, Don has long-standing relationships with the area’s major sports franchises and has negotiated broadcast-rights deals with them regularly.”
Though Corsini might have been expected to negotiate local sports rights for KTLA, those agreements never materialized during his decade-long run at the station.
On Tuesday, Corsini told KTLA employees he would be retiring by the end of the year. A successor has not been named.
Nexstar Media acquired KTLA from Tribune Media last month.
