Local television newsrooms across the United States are bracing for another round of reductions, with E.W. Scripps announcing staff layoffs in its news departments on Monday, March 3, 2025. The Cincinnati-based media company, which operates 61 stations in 41 markets—including KMGH in Denver, WXYZ in Detroit, and WTVF in Nashville—delivered the news to employees, signaling a deepening crisis for an industry already reeling from shrinking budgets and shifting audience habits.
The layoffs, detailed to Axios by a source familiar with the situation, will hit newsrooms at roughly a dozen Scripps stations, with local management tasked with deciding how to enact the cuts. The company also plans to leave vacant positions unfilled, further thinning newsroom ranks. Exact figures on affected staff remain undisclosed, but the move aligns with a wave of downsizing across the sector.
“The media industry is in a state of continued disruption and, while difficult, these changes are part of Scripps’ ongoing commitment to adapt through this disruption and ensure we can continue providing our communities with essential services well into the future.” A Scripps spokesperson said to Cord Cutters News.
Also this week, Tegna has laid off staff at some TV stations, including KENS5 in San Antonio.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Local TV news has been hemorrhaging jobs as companies adjust to declining ad revenue and competition from digital platforms. Tegna cut its fact-checking team in February, Nexstar announced a 2% workforce reduction in December, and Gray Television revealed staff cuts during a November restructuring. For Scripps, the latest layoffs follow a September decision to shutter its national Scripps News channel and eliminate about 200 positions, a move CEO Adam Symson attributed to advertisers shying away from national news programming.
Financial pressures are a key driver. Scripps delayed its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report on February 27, citing ongoing refinancing talks for its term loan and credit facility. The company has been chipping away at debt, paying down $115 million in Q3 2024 and aiming for $300 million by year-end. Yet, these efforts haven’t spared local newsrooms, which remain vital for community coverage but increasingly costly to sustain. The next earnings report, due March 11, will offer more insight into Scripps’ fiscal strategy and the scale of its belt-tightening.
Local television stations across the United States are also grappling with a steady decline in advertising revenue, a trend driven by the rapid shift of viewer attention and marketing dollars to digital platforms. Once a primary source of income, traditional TV ads have lost ground to targeted online campaigns on social media, streaming services, and websites, where advertisers can reach specific demographics with greater precision and lower costs. According to industry reports, local TV ad spending has been dropping annually, with a noticeable dip in recent years as cord cutting accelerates and younger audiences abandon cable for on-demand options like YouTube and Netflix. This erosion has forced stations to slash budgets, cut staff, and rethink programming, threatening the viability of local newsrooms that rely heavily on ad revenue to fund operations.
For ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC the cuts threaten to erode one of the last options for local journalism. Viewers are already seeing national news segments being used more often in local news broadcasts. Industry observers see this as part of a broader trend: local TV, once a bedrock of American media, is fighting to stay relevant in a streaming-dominated era. As Scripps and its peers trim staff, the question looms: how much longer can these newsrooms hold the line for their communities? For now, employees and audiences alike await the fallout from Monday’s grim announcement.
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