It's been almost 10 years (April 2016) since Tegna offered buyouts at KING5 Seattle (luckily I retired in 2015 from the old-owned NWCN, which the company unceremoniously terminated in Jan. 2017). The people at K5 saw how bad the company was getting and talent like Dennis Bounds, Jeff Renner, Linda Byron, Linda Brill and many others took the money and escaped. They were replaced by mediocre talent hires, albeit much, much cheaper ones, but with no staying power, so the turnover in talent (and mgmt) rolled on. Not to mention the programs Tegna tried to invent to help it stay afloat around that time, like the doomed Sister Circle and Daily Blast and a talk show hosted by a Texas evangelist. They all failed, dollars were wrongly spent, and they are now distant memories.
The leaders of those efforts are gone now or are about to be, under a new boss with no broadcast experience at all. He has torpedoed all marketing staff (300 jobs) at his stations except for hubs, ended the VERIFY program (20 more) and the layoffs have cranked up at the medium-small market stations like Hartford, Nashville and Spokane. It would seem the major market stations with high-salaried talent may be on borrowed time or face more hubbing (Denver hubs Spokane weeekend weather, Knoxville hubs the same for Nashville).
At KING, only the Investigators, Sports and the 630 anchor combo of Taylor/Copeland are stalwart relative to the legacy past. I have no idea what the ratings are, all of the Seatte stations seem to avoid publicizing them because of declining numbers.
I just wanted to get on record how discouraging it is to see what has happened to a place I was so damn proud to be a part of for more than a decade. I know it is just business. And I also know this is a boatload of text for you to read, but it is all true, so take it FWIW. A company sale may also be in the works as cuts thin the workforce. As comedian Dennis Miller ended his HBO show: "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
Did Lori Matsukawa get the buyout? I know that Renner, Bounds, Enerson and Byron all left in April of 2016, and Brill left in March of 2015. Lori didn't leave until June 2019.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. Thank you. WIll fix.
ReplyDeleteBounds told me over lunch a few years back that both he and Matsukawa were offered the buyouts, but only one anchor could take it. It was simply too good of an offer to pass up as the buyout covered benefits for a year and since he was nearing the magic number 65, that sounded like a good deal. I do think Rich Mariott (who perhaps is still one of the last remaining Bullitt hires along with Joyce Taylor) is going to stay on for maybe this year before retiring, but that is just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteVery sad to see that happen to a local institution. A station whose name was synonomous with quality. Still, maybe the best set of call letters in the industry.
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