Key Points
- Nexstar laid off about a dozen on-air staff at KTLA in Los Angeles and WPIX in New York, following similar cuts at WGN-TV in Chicago.
- The layoffs come as Nexstar seeks FCC approval for its proposed TEGNA acquisition, drawing criticism from FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and SAG-AFTRA.
- Union leaders said the job cuts undermine local news commitments made by Nexstar amid its push for further media consolidation.
Nexstar Media Group has issued layoff notices to around a dozen on-air workers at television stations in the country’s two biggest TV markets.
The job losses at KTLA (Channel 5) in Los Angeles and WPIX-TV (Channel 11) in New York come about one day after 10 workers received layoff notices at Chicago TV station WGN-TV (Channel 9).
Mark Kriski, a veteran weather forecaster at KTLA, was among those let go from the station on Wednesday, according to multiple sources. Kriski joined KTLA in 1991, serving as the morning news meteorologist upon its launch.
Kriski took a brief leave of absence last year after experiencing a mild stroke, and has taken other short health-related breaks over the past few years.
Other on-air talent laid off at KTLA include mid-day anchors Glen Walker (joined in 2010) and Lu Parker (joined in 2015), along with reporter and weather forecaster Kacey Montoya (joined in 2013) and reporter Ellina Abovian (joined in 2015). Dean Richards, a movie critic at WGN-TV whose entertainment-related reports appeared on KTLA, also received a pink slip.
At WPIX, anchors Kori Chambers, John Muller, Craig Treadway and Arrianae LeBeau were among those affected by layoffs, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Nexstar does not own WPIX-TV outright: Federal regulators required Nexstar to divest the station in 2019 as a condition of acquiring KTLA, WGN-TV and other outlets owned by Tribune Media. WPIX was sold to the E. W. Scripps Company, then acquired by Mission Broadcasting, whose stations are operated through shared services agreements with Nexstar.
A source told The Desk on Wednesday that Nexstar’s human resources department was responsible for the job cuts at WPIX, despite the station’s TV license being held by Mission Broadcasting.
Reached by e-mail on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Nexstar said the company was taking “steps necessary to compete effectively in this period of unprecedented change.” The spokesperson declined to comment on “personnel issues.”
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.
The layoffs at WGN-TV are connected to Nexstar’s proposed acquisition of TEGNA, the Sun-Times reported Monday. Nexstar is one of several broadcasters that has lobbied the FCC for a modification of its ownership rules to allow regulated media companies to consolidate, saying the practice is necessary to better compete against unregulated streaming services that have grabbed TV programming rights and chipped away at broadcast advertising dollars.
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FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said the layoffs at Nexstar stood as proof that “unfettered media consolidation has real consequences.”
“When business interests outweigh the public interest, communities face layoffs, shrinking newsrooms and fewer local stories,” Gomez wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. Her posts on platforms Bluesky and X (formerly Twitter) included a link to The Desk’s earlier coverage of Nexstar’s layoffs.
Some of the on-air workers laid off at KTLA and WGN-TV are covered by the trade union Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). In a statement on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA said the job cuts at both stations were an attack on local news — the same programming that Nexstar promised to maintain if it is allowed to merge with TEGNA.
“By laying off journalists across the country, Nexstar is eroding the resources and talent that local communities rely on for trusted news,” Sean Astin, the President of SAG-AFTRA, said on Wednesday. “These actions highlight the risks of media consolidation and underscore the urgent need for regulators and the company to prioritize the public interest and the professionals who serve it.”
“Our members are trusted voices in their communities, and they deserve contracts that respect their work and safeguard their futures,” SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland remarked. “SAG-AFTRA will not stand by while the future of local news is put at risk. We will continue to fight for strong agreements that protect journalists and the audiences who rely on them every single day.”
SAG-AFTRA said the job cuts at KTLA and WGN-TV coincided with ongoing bargaining efforts between the union at Nexstar involving on-air talent at local TV stations in other markets.
“At the table, Nexstar is pushing to gut severance pay and insert onerous provisions into the union contract that limit workers’ ability to freely negotiate the terms of their own employment,” a spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA said. “These reductions in SAG-AFTRA talent also comes as Nexstar finalizes its multi-billion-dollar acquisition of TEGNA. This consolidation makes the decision to cut local newsroom jobs particularly troubling.”
