Bad news day for local media

And the big story tonight on WYOU News is that the station is no longer in the news business.

The CBS affiliate, owned by Mission Broadcasting, announced Friday that it had laid off 14 employees and starting today has replaced all local news programs with entertainment shows. The announcement was made to employees during a 2 p.m. mandatory staff meeting at the Wilkes-Barre headquarters for WBRE/WYOU.

Another area media outlet also announced layoffs Friday. The Times-Tribune in Scranton informed 18 employees that they no longer have jobs.

Dennis Thatcher, chief operating officer for Mission Broadcasting, said that he was sad to see the end of the WYOU news programming but the money and resources couldn’t continue to be poured into the effort.

“The numbers unfortunately speak for themselves. We’ve been slugging away at this for all 12 years (since Mission Broadcasting purchased the station). We’ve been throwing a lot of money and resources at this. Honest to goodness nothing seemed to work,” Thatcher said from his Brecksville, Ohio office.

In a release, Lou Abitabilo, general manager for Nexstar Broadcasting Group Inc.’s WBRE, which had been providing operational and sales services for WYOU, said, “By offering a broad range of popular entertainment choices to our Wilkes Barre/Scranton viewers, WYOU can provide additional attractive business solutions to our advertisers and as such we believe this is a win-win situation for our entire community.”

Thatcher said the decision was a mutual one between the two companies. “It just wasn’t economically feasible,” he added.

Richard Crew, chairman of the Communications Department at Misericordia University, said the announcement doesn’t come as a surprise to him for a variety of reasons, including the economy and WYOU’s long-held third-place ratings in the news department. He called the decision “a wise programming move” and said the “counter programming” will likely gain more viewers and advertisers than the news broadcasts had been recently.

Crew said on the downside, the region loses an independent news voice, but he said it’s occurring across the nation. “It’s a general trend that both traditional broadcast outlets and newspapers are suffering from the proliferation of electronic news sources,” Crew said. “That traditional appointment with a news broadcast, whether it’s at noon or 6 or 11, people don’t have to keep it anymore.”

Thatcher said the market’s viewers spoke loud and clear. “They just didn’t want to watch our news,” he said. He said it has been disheartening in recent years when CBS prime time shows have been among the highest rated shows each week but for some reason when the 11 p.m. newscast started, they often changed the channel to WNEP or WBRE.

With WYOU out of the picture, only WBRE-28, the NBC affiliate and WNEP-16, the ABC affiliate, provide their own self-produced news broadcasts. WOLF-56, the Fox station, airs a 10 p.m. news show but uses WNEP talent, studio and personnel.

Erik Schrader, the news director at WNEP, said the station would not be issuing any comment on the announcement that its local television news competition pool has been cut in half. Messages left with station General Manager Chuck Morgan were not immediately returned.

Crew said he believes this is the first time a market this size or larger has seen a station affiliated with CBS, NBC or ABC drop its newscasts. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market is the 53rd largest in the country.

The 14 positions were cut from the station’s news, production and promotion departments. Among those informed they’ll be laid off were on-air talents Lyndall Stout, Eric Scheiner, David DeCosmo, Dave Kuharchik, Mike Conigliaro and Dia Wallace. A source that was in the meeting said it’s his understanding that those under contract will be kept on in some capacity until their contracts expire. Those without contracts, including some behind the scenes workers, were let go Friday.

According to the source, the 2 p.m. meeting was held in the WYOU studio. Abitabilo read from a three-page prepared letter then left without taking any questions. Some managers then went through the studio handing out envelopes to those employees who will lose their jobs. Messages left for Abitabilo Friday were not returned.

The news comes the same day word broke that The Times-Tribune newspaper in Scranton has laid off 18 employees because not enough workers took the buyout offered a month ago by parent company Times Shamrock Communications. In a news story published on the paper’s Web site Friday, publisher William R. Lynett said, “We regret having to take this step. We believe this action and other cost-cutting measures will position our company to weather this economic downturn and position us for growth in the future.” Times Shamrock owns several others area newspapers including the Citizens’ Voice, The Standard Speaker, and the New Age Examiner. According to the story, about 30 Scranton employees with at least five years’ service accepted the buyout.

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WYOU-TV ends newscasts. Times-Tribune newspaper will lay off 18 employees.

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