The E. W. Scripps Company’s president of news Kate O’Brian says she will be leaving the broadcaster as part of the closure of the Scripps News TV channel.
Her departure was announced in a note to employees on Friday, the same day Scripps CEO Adam Symson announced Scripps News will stop broadcasting as a national news channel in mid-November and revert to producing news content for digital platforms and the company’s local TV stations.
The winding down of Scripps News ends a three-year run as a national TV channel, which evolved from Newsy, a news production brand that Scripps acquired for $35 million in 2014.
One year after the global health pandemic, Scripps embarked on an audacious mission to redevelop Newsy — and, later, Scripps News — as an audacious national news brand that stood to deliver facts-first, non-partisan news reports on streaming, broadcast and cable TV.
Scripps News earned high marks for its original journalism: The brand won a news Emmy Award earlier this week, and is poised to accept several Edward R. Murrow Awards next month.
Related: Scripps News to lay off 250, shut down broadcast TV channel
Despite expanding its weeknight and weekend schedules with more live news shows and syndicating weekday programming to some Scripps-owned TV stations, the channel never grew its audience in a meaningful way, and advertisers were reticent to buy inventory against its news content.
“The tough reality is that despite doing remarkable and award-winning journalism, building our OTA audience steadily since we launched, and doubling our weekly OTA revenue in the last year, the national ad market simply did not sustain over the air Scripps News as a viable business,” O’Brian wrote on Friday. “Even with these gains, the company simply could not find the revenue in the marketplace to support the over the air broadcast.”
On Friday, Symson announced the company intends to lay off more than 200 workers as part of the channel’s closure. Sources who spoke with The Desk put the number of job losses at closer to 250. Affected workers will meet with Scripps’ human resources department next week; some will be pointed to opportunities in other parts of Scripps’ businesses, which include dozens of local TV stations and Court TV, while others will be offered information about severance benefits.
A small group of around 50 employees will remain at Scripps News, producing news packages under the brand that will be distributed across digital platforms and to Scripps-owned broadcast stations in other parts of the country. Most of those employees will be based at the Scripps bureau in Washington, D.C.
More details on the evolution of the Scripps News brand after November are expected to be revealed next week, according to a source.
As part of the shutdown, O’Brian affirmed that she “will also be leaving the company,” though she did not say when that will occur or whether she has accepted work at another company. Until then, it will be business at usual at Scripps News, she said.
“We owe it to our loyal audiences on every platform to continue to deliver the highest quality news and information right up to November 15 when we expect more than 200 of our colleagues will be leaving Scripps News,” O’Brian concluded.
O’Brian joined Scripps three years ago to serve as its head of network news, where she oversaw the development of Scripps News programming and its distribution on broadcast and free streaming platforms like Pluto TV, Xumo Play, Freevee and Tubi.
Prior to joining Scripps News, she was the founder and CEO of O’Media Strategies, a consulting firm that worked with newsrooms like Voice of America, TEGNA and the Washington Post to develop talent management, leadership and media distribution strategies.
Her lengthy career in television also included a 12-year stint at ABC News, where she was elevated to the role of Senior Vice President of News for the network in 2007. She left ABC to join Al Jazeera in 2013, where she oversaw the transition of Current TV into Al Jazeera America. That channel folded in 2016.
