Facing a challenging financial ad environment, E.W. Scripps is shuttering its over-the-air news network Scripps News, based out of Buckhead offices in Atlanta, next month.
About 200 people are going to be laid off by Nov. 15.
Scripps News, with a scaled back crew of 50 — mostly out of Washington, D.C. — will continue offering news to streaming and digital platforms on weekdays and serve Scripps’ local news operations.
In 2021, Scripps purchased Newsy, which had been around in some form since 2008, and launched as the first American all-news operation available as a free, over-the-air broadcast network. Scripps combined Newsy, its local news operations and its Washington bureau to create Scripps News, sharing office space with sister station Court TV in Atlanta as a full news operation competing in a very crowded space.
During its brief run, Scripps News won multiple awards, including two national news Emmy Awards, two National Edward R. Murrow Awards and a Peabody Award, among others. But consumer and ad demand failed to materialize.
Scripps CEO Adam Symson, in a memo to employees Friday, said “the prospects for the necessary revenue growth haven’t materialized.”
“Amidst an already difficult linear television advertising marketplace,” he noted, “many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the polarized nature of this country, no matter the accolades and credentials a news organization like Scripps receives for its objectivity.”
The media environment remains grim. Earlier this week, Paramount Global announced massive job cuts with CBS News laying off several veteran correspondents and anchors such as Jeff Glor.
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