The E. W. Scripps Company is readying the issuance of pink slips at several of its local television stations across the country as the broadcaster finalizes some of its transactions and installs new automated systems at a few of its news-producing outlets.
Starting last week, executives at some of the affected stations held readiness meetings with newsroom, creative services and sales workers to inform them about the changes, according to three sources who spoke with The Desk on background. Those meetings continued on Monday and are expected to conclude by the end of the week.
Among the topics covered in the readiness meetings was an ongoing initiative at Scripps to incorporate more automated systems into the company’s local news and creative services processes, some of which involve artificial intelligence, the sources said. As part of the transformation, a number of production-related roles are being consolidated, which will result in layoffs, two people affirmed.
Some of the stations that held readiness meetings include outlets based in Nebraska and Oklahoma, one source said. The precise number of layoffs and the specific positions affected were not immediately clear; affected workers are expected to start receiving their layoff notifications on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the E. W. Scripps Company has not returned a request for comment sent after-hours last week nor a follow-up message Monday morning.
The readiness meetings were assembled shortly after Scripps announced the promotion of Dean Littleton to the role of President of Local Media. In that role, Littleton has oversight of five dozen local TV stations owned by the company and many of its national broadcasting businesses, including Ion Television and Scripps News. (Matt Simon remains the editorial lead and programming director of Scripps News with an official vice president title.)
In a statement last week, Scripps said Littleton’s appointment was rooted in the need to find and execute on various operational efficiencies and new growth opportunities across its local and national broadcast operations.
It wasn’t clear if Littleton’s appointment was connected to the ongoing transformations at some Scripps-owned local TV stations, including production-related changes announced last week and this week.
Scripps is scheduled to report their second quarter (Q2) earnings on Thursday, with its executives participating in a conference call with investors the following morning.
The earnings release was coincidentally scheduled on the same day that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to hold a vote on abolishing the broadcast TV ownership rule, which is more likely than not to be approved. Current federal regulations limit how many local TV stations one broadcaster may directly own, preventing them from amassing a collection of licensed outlets that reach more than 39 percent of the American viewing audience.
Scripps is one of several broadcasters that has benefitted from relaxed regulatory scrutiny over the past year and a half, with the company engaging in several station sales and swaps. Scripps is in the process of re-acquiring Ion TV affiliates that were divested to a holding company several years ago.
