The E. W. Scripps Company has issued an additional round of pink slips to more than two dozen senior executives at its local broadcast television operations as part of a regional restructuring effort affecting those business units, sources told The Desk on Wednesday.
This week, the company is rolling out a new model that breaks its local TV station operations into 11 regional territories, overseen by regional general managers who will manage up to four local TV markets each, a spokesperson for the company said by e-mail.
The new model will require Scripps to part ways with 27 local market and sales leadership positions, the company affirmed.
“Local television is changing, and the way we operate local stations has to change with it,” Adam Symson, the Chief Executive Officer of Scripps, said in a statement by e-mail. “Through this transformation, we are rethinking outdated operating models built for a different era while creating a more technology-forward media company to sustain local journalism and bring more consistency, scale and support across our markets.”
The restructuring of its local TV operations comes as Scripps has worked to implement changes across its local TV station footprint, including a stronger reliance on artificial intelligence in its operations. In some markets, Scripps has also evolved its local TV news broadcasts to depend more on pre-recorded packages from reporters and weather forecasters, and has dropped the traditional anchor-driven format, with mixed results.
Scripps said the new structure is designed to concentrate leadership around journalism and revenue while reducing duplication across individual markets. Each TV station that produces news broadcasts will continue to have a news director installed at the local level, but that news director and other station executives will report to a regional general manager who will likely be based in another city.
Symson made it clear that the new model was intended to strike a balance between Scripps’ ongoing commitment to serving local communities with facts-first journalism and generating much-needed cash from its operations.
“This regional structure aligns leadership to the two areas where focused local execution matters most: journalism and revenue,” Symson said. “Scripps is transforming from a collection of individual stations into a more integrated local media company, with strong news and sales leaders in our markets supported by scale, technology and regional leadership.”
The eleven regional general managers will report to Anita Helt and Joe Poss, the Vice Presidents of Local Media at Scripps, and Lyn Plantinga, the company’s Senior Vice President of Local Media.
The regional leaders are Teresa Morgan for the Southeast; Kathleen Choal in Colorado; Whitney Grover for the Midwest region; Justin Hartley in Montana; Mike Murri for the Great Lakes region; Stephen Hayes for the Mid-Atlantic region; Merri Hanson for the Mountain West region; Bill Siegel in Florida; John Cook for the Southwest region and Lisa Moore in California.
Additional regional general managers will be appointed in the future for Scripps-owned stations in the Northeast region, which includes stations in Buffalo, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Scripps operates nearly 60 television stations in 40 markets. In August, the company laid off 270 workers.
