E.W. Scripps CEO Adam Symson is defending the company’s layoffs and its restructuring of local TV newsrooms around shared resources and artificial intelligence, saying there are early signs it is paying off.
In an internal memo he also posted as a column on social media, Symson said total viewing hours on the stations’ new 24-hour online news streams are up 23%, and viewers are watching about 10 more minutes of news. He said four early markets (Tallahassee, Green Bay, Tucson and Waco) saw close to 70% average growth in viewing hours after eight weeks. He acknowledged that those gains come from small starting audiences. TheDesk says it could not independently verify the figures.
The restructuring has eliminated positions, reorganized workflows and moved some stations toward regional management. TheDesk reports that at some stations, anchors have been let go and recorded reporter packages are strung together into 30-minute newscasts, with local weather and sports mostly kept. Viewer reaction has been mixed, including criticism in Baltimore.
Symson called eliminating colleagues’ jobs the most painful part of the changes and said more difficult decisions lie ahead. TheDesk notes that Scripps carries more than $2.5 billion in debt against roughly $13 million in cash, and the memo landed about two weeks before its third-quarter earnings report.
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