SAN FRANCISCO, CA (April 3, 2008) - The layoffs at CBS owned and operated television stations continue around the country this week, with 14 newsroom employees - including five on-air veterans - shown the door at KPIX-TV CBS5 in San Francisco.
In the meantime, a Denver station that laid off people last week is this week encouraging citizen journalists to help them cover the news with "YouReport."
This month's television layoffs come at a time when media industry employment has now hit a 15-year low, according to Advertising Age magazine.
A story this week in the Baltimore Sun about cutbacks taking place in television newsrooms around the country carried the headline, "Local TV Is No Longer A Cash Cow."
Those who've lost their jobs in the past weeks can attest to that fact.
And at KCNC-TV CBS4 in Denver, where last week the CBS O&O laid off at least nine employees, including NPPA member and Video Editor of the Year Shawn Montano, the station is this week heavily promoting their new feature called "YouReport."
Going beyond the "VJ" or "one-man-band" new wave of video journalism, "YouReport" urges viewers to use their home video cameras and cell phone cameras to shoot spot news when they see it and then deliver their citizen photojournalism to the station, as as quickly as possible, by uploading it to the KCNC-TV Web site. They've even written and published a "YouReport Users Guide" to help citizen journalists.
"It's funny, the heavy promotion for 'YouReport' came just before KCNC started laying off people," a viewer in Denver told News Photographer magazine.
From a fatal traffic pile-up on Interstate 70 near Vail Pass that involved as many as 70 vehicles on April 1, KCNC-TV aired "YouReport" video by citizen journalist Kim Vieira from Aspen that was shot through the car window as the photographer slowly rolled through traffic past the accident, tow trucks, and firefighters. The video quite clearly included the natural sound from inside the car: rap music playing on the photographer's car radio. KCNC-TV had staff news photographers covering the crash as well, but also used the "YouReport" video in the coverage and promoted "YouReport" in the process.
While citizens get in on the TV news act, the layoffs of professionals continues. In San Francisco, veterans Rick Quan, Manny Ramos, and Bill Schechner, representing five Emmy Awards between them, lost their jobs. Reporters Tony Russomano and John Lobertini, also Emmy winners, were also let go. The station's Sacramento bureau was also closed as part of their budget cuts.
CBS also owns the CW affiliate in the Bay Area, KBCW-TV, and the layoffs impacted them as well.
KPIX management said the layoffs were "purely a business decision" and not disciplinary.
A spokesperson for KPIX-TV said "It was our decision in these economic times to try to go forward and do the best as we could with our stations."
To the south CBS owned and operated stations in Los Angeles are following the trend of what's happening at all 29 of CBS's O&O stations by laying off about a dozen news staff at KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV. Reports say longtime Los Angeles anchors Ann Martin and Harold Green will leave when their contracts end.
Employees at the CBS O&O in Boston, WBZ-TV, called the beginning of this week "Black Monday." That's when the layoffs and job cuts, which claimed 30 WBZ-TV staffers, began.
The CBS O&O in Chicago slashed 18 jobs at WBBM-TV including anchor Diann Burns, who reportedly was paid $2 million a year, and NFL quarterback turned sportscaster Mark Malone.
In Pittsburgh, CBS's KDKA-TV and WPCW-TV have laid off or eliminated about 10 positions.
And at WCBS-TV in New York City, a Sunday night sports show and two reporters were cut from the network's flagship station.
At CBS11 and TXA21 in Dallas, up to 20 employees may be cut between the two stations.
One industry analyst said the CBS News cutbacks represent about 2 percent of the new division's workforce nationally. But The New York Times reported that the cutbacks would impact only 1 percent of the 1,200 employees. CBS News is also closing their bureau in Paris, a move that's been long discussed due to the size and proximity of their larger bureau in London.
CBS revenues declined 14.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, and the cuts are also in reaction to the network's poor performance so far in the first quarter of this year, the Times reports. CBS O&O stations began making staff cuts last week and have continued with layoffs at other stations this week.
At ABC News in New York City last week, more than 20 employees in the finance and operations department had their jobs eliminated in a move the network said was part of a larger restructuring. It began last summer when the news division's Washington, DC, bureau and their graphics department were downsized with layoffs.
