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]."

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