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TV Reporters leaving.....
- Thread starter Roddybob
- Start date
Niku’s husband is in the military so perhaps he has a new assignment? As for the others 2 I would assume their contracts were up and decided not to renew?
Seems like average tenure at KING these days is about 3 years (if that?). Are they just working folks to death and underpaying them?
My guess is the average contract for reporters is thirty-six months. After that, if stations can get someone from another market to work for less, the door makes another rotation.
He didn't even last three years. He'd come from the TEGNA station in Austin.
Then he was likely transferred to Seattle as a continuation of his existing contract.
His contract with King was ending and he took it as an opportunity to move to Phoenix and be closer to his GF who is also in the industry.
I would defer to KellyA on 1) and 2). As for 3), I think it goes both ways. There used to be incentives (i.e. pensions) for working at the same company for years. Over the past four decades, those incentives have largely gone away. Now, there are highly portable 401(K)'s and studies show that you get higher salaries by changing jobs frequently. (Of course, the flip side is that you might find yourself out of a job more easily and for a longer period of time than in the past).
As markets go, Seattle/Tacoma has never been near the top of the "news pyramid". As a large spread out market news has been important, but surveys over the years has shown Seattle Tacoma has an active ourdoorsey population that doesn't follow hard news nearly like large, dense populations LA, Miami, or NYC. That hasn't changed over the decades. If anything, it's gotten looser due to consumer use of smartphones and social media for news.
My wife and I were talking about this yesterday. The climate of the working environment changed thirty or more years ago. Even back in the day, very few people ever worked at a single radio, TV, or network operation for their entire career. Back when I first got into the biz the running joke was if you claimed to work longer than ten years at a particular radio station, you likely never worked in radio.
Now with any industry, nobody goes into a job out of school and works there until retirement. The current Amazon Fulfillment Center employment rules apply: Hire someone, work them hard, get rid of them after 36 months and bring in a fresh face and attitude.
New to this discussion.. but hopefully I can answer some questions about KIRO. Niku Kazori.. contract was up, wasn't going to re-sign. A lot of employees aren't interested in staying there. It's also why Holguin and Bridget Chavez are leaving/left. They opted out of Brittney Toolis' contract from what I understand, and it is widely believed by many employees, that they did that because Toolis and a number of other reporters were going to management with concerns about workload AND that all the work had to be done with no OT. Toolis was one of the reporters leading that charge. She's in Detroit now, and much happier (and better off). As for sports at KIRO.. I know both those people well. Both the sports director and sports producer positions were eliminated. Chris Francis had a year left on his contract and they opted out. Aug 2nd (today) was his last day under contract. Word is he is going to work freelance at the Fox station. Francis was at KIRO from 2009-2016.. then hired again (under a different management ND/GM) right before football season 2019. There will not be a 3rd time at KIRO for Francis, I can promise that. Chris Swanson was the longtime sports producer at KIRO, he was informed in the same meeting as Francis. Swanson was also a fill-in sports anchor there for a few years under the same former management (ND/GM) that hired Francis back in 2019. During covid, a new GM and News Director came in, and Swanson never filled in again. The station has told employees they'll still cover sports, just "differently", which is code for: we're gonna have some of our news reporters and anchors who have previous sports experience do it when we want, that way we won't have to pay a sports anchor anymore. The sports producer was responsible for the rundown and video editing, but now they just have news producers handle the sports rundowns and video editors edit the sports stuff, adding to everyone's workload. In all, there were 16 positions laid off in late June and early July. 4 of those have not happened yet, as they are merging Master Control with the Remote Command (people who tune in live shots and feeds during and before newscasts) positions. 8 people for 4 jobs.. so by October they have to decide who will be the odd half of people out there. A couple of you were talking about news pyramid in Seattle market.. and good points. It is spread out, and the clustered areas are mostly the greater Seattle portion. THAT is the group all the stations chase, but oddly enough.. those people are not watching local news. They're either stuck in traffic and miss the newscasts; go to be early (and miss the late newscasts) because they have traffic to drive thru the next morning; or they're on they're phone/computer looking at news websites that they like instead of watching TV. Many people just stream, and don't even get local TV, or if they still do they only watch for primetime shows. The actual viewers that Seattle TV stations STILL HAVE LEFT for local news, are in suburban Pierce, Snohomish, and parts of Thurston counties.. OR.. sub-rural/rural Skagit, Mason, Lewis, Kitsap, and rest of Thurston counties. However, since it's so spread out.. the stations virtually ignore those places and viewers because it's too much labor/expense to gather news from those areas. Unless, it's just too big to ignore, OR video material is given to stations by public entities like govt. TV channels, fire departments, police departments, or someone who allows their cell phone video to be used.. stuff that stations like KIRO don't have to actually physically go down and get. Hope this helps with some questions.
TV stations used to make a ton of money with local TV news too. The cost of living in the Seattle area used to be reasonable. Neither is the case anymore.
Yep, she has beem featured prominently over the past few days.