The E. W. Scripps Company will effectively pull the plug on its rolling national news channel Scripps News shortly in mid-November, the company’s chief executive Adam Symson confirmed in a memo to employees on Friday.
In the note, Symson said Scripps News will revert to its roots as a streaming news brand, but will no longer be distributed on broadcast TV across the country and will significantly pare down the amount of live shows it produces.
The move will result in the loss of around 250 full-time, part-time and contract employees, according to a person who spoke with The Desk on background early Friday morning. Most of the affected workers are based in Atlanta, Denver and Cincinnati, though some work for the Scripps News brand in other parts of the country.
Symson said the number of jobs that will be lost exceeds 200. A core team of around 50 journalists will remain at Scripps News, producing content under the brand name for its digital platforms and distributing news packages to local Scripps-owned stations, he said.
As described, sources said Scripps News will essentially revert to its roots as a news production and distribution service. The channel emerged from Newsy, a content production company that distributed short-form clips to clients like AOL, the Huffington Post and Yahoo. Scripps acquired Newsy for around $35 million in 2014.
Newsy evolved several times under Scripps’ ownership. The brand launched its own 24-hour streaming channel that shuffled through its news packages, and then launched a co-branded but otherwise separate linear TV channel that offered a limited amount of news throughout the day. The linear Newsy was distributed to cable, satellite and some streaming TV services, including Comcast and Philo.
Newsy went through its biggest evolution in 2021, when Scripps announced it was merging the aggregate content stream and linear cable channel into a single product that would offer rolling news coverage throughout the weekday. The company established a permanent studio for Newsy in Atlanta, and relaunched it under the Scripps News brand last year.
For three years, the company worked to build Scripps News into a national news channel that tried to stand out from its peers. At a time when network and cable news channels are viewed as increasingly partisan, Scripps oriented itself around facts-first journalism that played favor to no one and nothing but the truth.
From the outside, that strategy appeared to be working. The channel increased its output of live programming during the weeknight and into the weekend, syndicated some of its core shows to local broadcast stations across the country and underwent a significant overhaul of its website and mobile apps to make its brand of original, non-partisan and award-winning journalism shine.
That didn’t count where it mattered the most: In the ledger. Despite having wide distribution on broadcast TV and free streaming platforms, Scripps News has not earned a profit in the three years since the relaunch.
Election years are typically good for linear TV broadcasters, because political campaigns and causes flock to purchase a high amount of ad inventory, especially against news shows. Executives at Scripps were willing to invest more in talent and programming, hoping that the political ad money would flow to Scripps News, and were surprised when it didn’t, one source said.
Symson did not address the channel’s financial woes in his memo to employees on Friday, but he did note that the overall softening of the traditional TV ad market helped influence the decision to wind down the channel from its current state.
“The prospects for the necessary revenue growth haven’t materialized, despite our sales teams’ efforts,” Symson wrote. “Scripps News’ current financial position is what has led me to the decision to scale back our approach to 24-hour news and over-the-air coverage.”
Symson said most brands and media buyers “have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the polarized nature of this country, no matter the accolades and credentials a news organization like Scripps receives for its objectivity.”
“I vehemently disagree,” he wrote, “but it is hurting Scripps News, along with every other national linear and digital news outlet.”
Signs that something was amiss at Scripps News began this summer, when employees learned that a handful of TV stations that carried some of the channel’s syndicated programming had opted to replace the shows with local news or talk shows, according to two people, including a high-level Scripps News executive.
Rumors began to swirl after some anchors and reporters based in Denver, Atlanta and New York City began telling other staffers that their contracts were not being renewed. One person who spoke with The Desk early Friday morning said they were advised to “put a sizzle reel together” and offered the use of the digital archive system at Scripps that project.
Other employees in Atlanta began to feel that Scripps was increasingly prioritizing two of its other initiatives, Court TV and Scripps Sports, in a way that made it seem like Scripps News was a lesser-viewed product. That feeling increased earlier this year when Scripps informed employees that they would be partitioning some of its Atlanta facility for Scripps Sports, which launched a new studio there in August. (Before the launch, Scripps Sports shared a studio and set with Scripps News.)
Scripps Sports and Court TV have succeeded where Scripps News has not. Over the past few weeks, Scripps executives have touted record viewership for Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) games produced by Scripps Sports for its Ion TV network, with some of those games grabbing an average of one million viewers or more.
By comparison, the Scripps News channel averaged around 20,000 viewers each day, a source said, with most of those tuning in on streaming platforms like Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Xumo Play and Tubi. On YouTube, where Scripps News has more than a half-million followers, less than a dozen people were watching its live stream at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, according to a stream observed by The Desk.
On-demand clips fare better, with most averaging around 5,000 viewers and some international stories and long-form packages getting tens of thousands of views on YouTube. Some of the higher-viewed segments involved partnerships with other outlets like the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica.
Scripps will continue producing some of those stories for the foreseeable future, albeit with a smaller team. On Friday, Symson said the brand still had a responsibility to nurture the company’s local TV newsrooms, which had more support from advertisers.
“Locally, there is advertising support for our local news and our stations’ ability to connect local businesses with our audiences,” Symson wrote. “It remains our responsibility to serve local communities and connect them to the greater world through Scripps News’ national and international reporting.”
Some employees who are being cut by Scripps News will be offered jobs in other parts of the company, but the overwhelming majority of those laid off are likely to exit in mid-November. Human resources teams are meeting with affected workers next week to provide them with information about open opportunities at other parts of Scripps, as well as transitional benefits like severance for those who will leave.
