After just one year on the job, Adrienne Roark is hanging up her hat at local television broadcaster TEGNA.
In an announcement on Friday, Roark said it was her decision to move on from the company after a “remarkable run” in the C-suite position.
“I came to TEGNA because I believed in the power of local journalism,” Roark said in a statement. “That belief only deepened.”
Over the past year, Roark has supported new distribution models for TEGNA’s local journalism, to include launching dedicated streaming apps with 24-hour content feeds and nurturing a “high-velocity culture, org structure, and operating system that future-proofed local journalism.”
“That work matters, and it will continue to matter. I’m incredibly proud to have been at the forefront of that digital transformation, meeting audiences where they are, with the content they want, on the platforms they live on,” Roark said.
Roark said she is “turning the page” and “energized about what’s next,” though she didn’t say whether she has another job lined up or where that might be. She joined TEGNA last year from Paramount-owned CBS News, where she was in charge of the company’s stations in New York and Boston.
Roark is the latest executive to depart TEGNA this week. Chief Financial Officer Julie Heskett, Chief Strategy Officer Ed Busby and Chief Experience Officer Dhanusha Sivajee also left the company, according to a person familiar with their exits.
In a statement on Thursday, a spoeksperson for TEGNA’s parent company Nexstar Media Group expressed gratitude toward the departing executives, confirming they opted to step away from the company and were not otherwise dismissed.
“We’re grateful to the departing TEGNA leaders, who have chosen to resign from their roles, for their dedication and service to the company, its local television stations, and the communities they serve,” the spokesperson said via e-mail. “Their contributions helped strengthen local journalism at a critical moment for our industry, as broadcasters face a dramatically changed media landscape dominated by trillion-dollar streaming platforms and Big Tech. The Nexstar-TEGNA merger is about building on that work — ensuring local stations have the scale, investment and resources needed to preserve trusted local journalism and successfully compete in the future.”
Nexstar acquired TEGNA in March, just a few hours after regulators at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approved the deal. The acquisition came less than 24 hours after several states attorney general and DIRECTV filed separate but related lawsuits in federal court, arguing that the deal violated antitrust laws.
Nexstar contends that the deal secured all needed approvals after a lengthy period of scrutiny. Ordinarily, a deal of that size would be blocked under a federal law that prohibits one broadcaster from owning local TV stations that reach more than 39 percent of the American viewing audience, but the FCC granted waivers to the ownership rule in each market where TEGNA and Nexstar own local TV stations.
