The headline on Scott Jones’ FTVLive.com (which many love to diss but read all the same) is pretty straightforward: “Is Scripps Planning To Shut Down News Departments?” And it would be easy to dismiss his premise as based on an unusually frank comment by an Indianapolis station’s general manager while announcing layoffs. When asked a question about the future of the station’s operation in six months, FTVLive reports that GM Charlie Grisham said, “I don’t know.”

No matter who you are, there is absolutely nothing easy about telling people you work with that they are losing their jobs and then having to tell those who still have jobs that they will be OK and have to keep working. That’s even more true now as we all live in this moment where little is promised to anyone working in any field—even in government jobs, which used to be potentially secure for the remainder of one’s working days.

But back to our story today: Scott’s been pounding Scripps pretty hard on his website for some time now. And he’s not without some justification. The company, E.W. Scripps, Inc., has gone from being a $25 dollar a share stock in 2021 to currently trading under $1.50 a share. Its one-year return rate is down about 67%, while the S&P 500 index is still up nearly 10% over the same period, even with the current market volatility roiling Wall Street. UPDATE: After we initially published this story, Scripps announced its 4th Quarter Financial Results for 2024 and announced a restructuring of some of its loans and credit facility, which it says will provide the company with "the runway and liquidity to continue the progress of its strategic and operating initiatives."

From any business metric you might want to apply, Scripps has not had a great track record over the past five years. With things not looking optimistic for most any broadcasting company for the rest of this year, this latest round of layoffs across the 60 local stations that Scripps owns isn’t good. Especially for those in an ever-shrinking market for jobs in local TV news.

We would argue here that a headline asking whether or not any local television station will be operating in six months may miss the more significant point. Each station will still have some value, no matter how diminished by the current economic factors battering the business. What might be the better—and more practical—question is whether or not some local stations will make the choice and just get out of being in the local news business this year.

Let’s make it clear as we don’t want our meaning to be misconstrued. We don’t ever want to see fewer local news outlets in ANY place in the country. And given our careers spent in local television, we certainly don’t want there to be fewer people working in the business.

But that said, we are reminded of a prediction that was made offhandedly back in 1996, at the launch of a 24-hour local news channel on cable in one major market: “You can imagine a time when a third or fourth-rated station might just decide to get out of doing news and counter-program in those time periods.”  Could that time be coming almost thirty years later?

The economics are simple enough. The expenses of producing local news are typically the largest in a local station’s finances. And the largest part of that expense is employee salaries and benefits. Yes, that is still true, even if wages seem low by comparison. This is why stations have embraced any technology that makes it easier to produce newscasts with fewer people. Take, for instance, a control room that puts a local newscast on the air. A decade or more ago, five or more people would typically work in that space. Through automation, the number is probably down to two people now: a Director/Automation Operator and a Producer. When you start talking about eliminating three positions across each shift, you are talking about significant savings to the bottom line. Now, some stations are beginning to implement systems that can make it possible for one person to write, produce, and then direct a newscast on television. Thus, the “headcount” in a control room is taken from five or more people down to a single person.

Station staffs have gone through a “cut down” process that makes the NFL’s annual process of going from 90 prospective players in training camp to having just 53 make the team's roster seem almost quaint by comparison.

Even with almost annual "reductions in force,” the reality is that you still need people to put the news on TV. Even with smaller staffs, the economics—especially for stations with the smallest share in the ratings—may have reached the point where the return on the investment, or “ROI” as business school types like to say, will not make sense to continue on.

Put more simply, the point where "throwing good money after bad” is not in the future anymore. It’s here this year.  This isn’t unheard of. There is the story of Toledo, Ohio’s WNWO-TV. In the country’s 81st largest market, the Sinclair-owned NBC affiliate dropped all locally-produced news in May of 2023. The move came after years of struggling as the market’s lowest-rated news station and trying to cut costs as much as possible. But the station still has news programming on the air because it carries blocks of Sinclair’s Washington, DC-based news operation “The National Desk” in Mornings, Early Evenings, and Late Nights. In other news time periods, the station carries additional news from the NBC network, or Judge Judy reruns.

More importantly to note is that the station is still on the air and delivering NBC programming to the people of Northwest Ohio. As far as we can tell, there wasn’t any boycott or viewer backlash against the station. It just doesn’t produce a local newscast anymore. Local news viewers are served by the newsrooms from the other television stations in Toledo, except that the Fox station doesn’t produce any local news but carries news from TEGNA-owned WTOL. So that leaves Gray Media’s WTVG as the other local station producing local news seen in the 424,056 television households of the Toledo market.

What was once four local television newsrooms in Toledo is now down to two.

Larger markets have, for the most part, avoided this “shrinkage," as George Costanza might refer to it. But those days might soon come to an end. Returning to the previously mentioned Indianapolis market, eight commercial television outlets are licensed in market number 25. And there are still four local television newsrooms in operation. Nexstar Media controls both the Fox (WXIN) and CBS (WTTV) stations, which share a building and a news staff—but produce distinctly different newscasts for each station. TEGNA owns the NBC station (WTHR), Scripps owns the ABC affiliate (WRTV), and locally-owned and independent Circle City owns CW-affiliated WISH-TV, which had been the market’s CBS affiliate until it moved over to WTTV in 2014, as well as MyNetwork affiliate WNDY.

WRTV has perennially been the market’s weakest station in terms of local news ratings. Along with the latest round of layoffs announced at the station, the station will begin airing more “Scrippscast” newscasts daily. This format features no anchor, playing a series of local news stories in what might be described as "a half-hour playlist of local news.” Scripps has deployed this “new idea” in many smaller markets.

But when that proves still too expensive, how long might it be before the Sinclair model in Toledo is followed? Scripps still has the remnants of its “Scripps News” channel in Atlanta that could serve as WRTV’s version of Sinclair’s “The National Desk” and fill the local news time periods. Nexstar's “News Nation” operation would likely get a boost in viewership if it appeared for a few hours each day over some of its local television stations currently with underperforming local news operations.

As we mentioned in a previous dispatch, there is no requirement for a local television station to produce any news programming. The FCC requires some evidence of addressing “local issues” as part of the license-granting process. However, that does not have to be done by producing a daily local news product. And given the current regulatory climate in the nation’s capital, station owners would likely not expect the Commission to come after licensees who don’t keep money-losing news operations on their air.

While we are certainly not hoping for it, we just can’t help but wonder if 2025 is the year when more stations that have struggled for years in the local news game decide to say that it’s “game over.” They will argue that financial viability is more necessary than operating in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity” as the Communications Act of 1934 required of all broadcasters.

We’d like to be completely wrong on this. But “necessity" in 2025 may prove that desperate times truly call for desperate measures.