Tough Times Hit TV Reporters, Anchors

Newsroom broadcasters took notice last April when CBS pink-slipped veteran meteorologist Paul Douglas at WCCO as part of a layoff affecting 100 staffers across the station group.

Douglas was among the most popular TV personalities at the top-rated Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., O&O, having had spent some 22 years in the market, the last 11 at WCCO.

If Douglas could get the ax, anybody could.

Douglas believes it was strictly economics that led to his ouster.

"The model is changing and the era of the high-priced anchor persons is slowly — maybe not slowly — is rapidly coming to an end," Douglas says from the suburban-Minneapolis offices of WeatherNation, a new weather services company he started.

"Even if you're No. 1 ... if half as many eyeballs are watching your newscast as were watching five years ago, that's a problem," he says.

"Management must maintain a TV station's profit margins even as viewers, not waiting for the evening local news to come on, turn to the Internet for news."

Douglass's dismal assessment is seconded by the news agents who represent the anchors and reporters.

The slumping economy and continued erosion of broadcast audiences are combining to produce unusually tough times for news talent, they say

It's takes longer to place clients in news jobs and salaries are not as generous, they say. And experienced and accomplished reporters are finding — for the first time in their careers — that they are expendable.

Some of the agents feel that even when the current economic downturn ends, TV newsrooms will have undergone a fundamental change with the survivors those workers who can work multiple jobs on multiple platforms.

"I'm still moving the same amount of people, [but] it's taking a little longer than in the past and it's not at the money it has been in the past," says David Brunner, president of DB & Associates in Neffs, Pa.

Agents with No Whining Talent, the NWT Group, in Dallas, believe the market is undergoing a fundamental change and will require a much different set of skills than in the past.

Linda Levy and Jan Allen, NWT principals, agree that the hiring process has slowed as news directors are lopping money out of their budgets.

"It depends on what type market you're looking at," said Allen. "The lower your salary, the more jobs there are."

The situation is the same on the West Coast.

"We've seen a lot of job openings filled this year," says Mendes Napoli, president of Napoli Management Group, Beverly Hills, Calif., "But some of the higher-end salaries have definitely been downgraded."

Napoli says mid-level and lower-end people have largely been unaffected.

"I think it's getting slower because stations have more people to choose from," Allen says.

Agents say people entering broadcasting looking for their first jobs are being joined by job seekers who have had their jobs eliminated by stations.

"Usually a lot of behind-the-scenes people are cut first," Brunner says. "Second are people who have been with the station a long time and have huge contracts.

"The luxury of a five-day weather person — a person who is on the air two days and comes in three days to produce [forecasts]) — and a three- and four-man sports department is over," Brunner says. "Those jobs are falling by the wayside."

In many markets, veteran personnel have been fired or have gone into early retirement, Napoli says.

But some proven performers, even those who draw top salaries, do stay, he says, citing Sue Simmons and Chuck Scarborough who were retained by WNBC New York when other positions were cut.

"I think anybody who's still important, they're still trying to hang on to," Napoli says. But often, stations will try to negotiate a lower salary or lower raise, he adds.

Allen believes there is more than just budget cutting involved when long-established talent is let go.

"Those high-priced talent were being paid to bring in eyeballs and they weren't doing it," she says.

"I think that good people will always get jobs," says Rick Gevers of Rick Gevers & Associates, Zionsville, Ind. "It's just a lot tougher these days."

Some of his clients have resigned at lower rates of increase than they have in the past, he says. "I've not had anybody lose a job yet."

Stations should be cautious about cutting loose well-known anchors, says Robert J. Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

"It's is like reverse branding," he says.

"The one thing that [network] affiliated stations can do, that nobody else is going to do, is cover their local news," he says. "The question is: If everybody starts getting their programming from other sources, are they still going to be around to do [local news]."

Levy says sports jobs are not available.

TVJobs.com has eight sports jobs open in the entire country," says Levy. "Most of the people that we have, that have done sports, have switched over to news."

But the lack of sports jobs in nothing new, counters Napoli.

Few jobs exist because sports people don't move much, he says. While three has been a de-emphasis of sports, he notes, "very few stations have actually eliminated their sports departments."

On the plus side, he says, demand remains high for weather persons, especially meteorologists in areas prone to severe conditions like tornados and hurricanes.

Bob Papper of Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, NY, suggests that the agents may be overstating the severity of situation.

He says he has heard the stories about the slowdowns in hiring and layoffs of top-salaried news personnel, too. But, he says, it's not showing up in his research. "I hear the stories and I read the accounts, but as far as I can tell, at this moment, this is more interesting anecdotal stuff."

Papper, a journalism professor and associate chair of Hofstra's department of Media Studies and Public Relations, has been surveying television industry trends yearly for the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

"There is no question that there are stations, which have let higher priced talent go," Papper says. "But in the scheme of things, that doesn't show up in the salary numbers."

In the last two or three years, Papper says salaries have increased "relatively modestly," right around the rate of inflation. They have not been going backward.

Papper say he is trying to determine if the latest round of personnel cuts is a "blip on the radar or a more meaningful trend."

In any event, he says, there has been no cutting of news by stations. "That's really an important barometer," Papper explains. "Even if you cut people, if you don't cut news."

The surveys have shown an increase in per diem hires at TV stations, he says. And because stations have not reduced their product, cuts in personnel may be temporary, he adds.

Papper surveyed "one-man bands" or "backpack journalists" two years ago and says there is more talk about reporters shooting and editing their own stories than implementation.

"There are a number of stations trying it out on a limited basis and looking more and more at it," he says. "The numbers don't back up the notion that there's a wholesale change to that."

But Levy says that, when the dust settles, those who keep their jobs will be the ones who are adaptable.

"A reporter should be able and willing to shoot and edit their own stories, even though that may not be the general practice at a particular station," she said.

"I think a person who can do more and is willing to do more is always going to have options."

The same goes for off-camera personnel. While good producers are worth their weight in gold, the producer who is going to get the most gold is one who knows how to edit, to be able to do more inside that newscast to get it on the air, Allen says.

"The landscape will be different," Levy says.

And some are taking advantage of the that fact.

Douglas's new company, WeatherNation, supplies customized HD weather forecasts to stations via broadband Internet technology, eliminating the need to hire local forecasters.

Twenty-seven years ago, when he originally had the idea for WeatherNation, he says, the technology was too expensive to make it work.

WeatherNation meteorologists will also supply custom forecasts to Web sites of TV and radio stations, newspapers and other information providers.

With audiences continuing to shrink, stations will need to outsource weather, he says. "It's going to become more of a challenge to maintain the high-priced anchormen, sports anchors and, yes, even the lowly meteorologists."