Out of Our Main Market

OK this here will be our last update of the week.

We received this from Friend of TSMW Rich Emery earlier this week, but, due to illness, hadn't commented on it.

Kentucky.com (aka the online arm of the Lexington Herald-Leader) reports that media outlets down there are making widespread cuts. All of the following comes from this ONE article, so keep it open!

WTVQ: Starting at the ABC affiliate WTVQ-TV 36/Lexington, where they won't renew three reporter contracts and are cutting 2 full-time news producers.

The station has also trimmed back their morning news, slicing the 5 AM half-hour off, making that newscast from 5:30-7 AM.

And, says the Herald-Leader:

In a separate move, the station will not be renewing the contracts of reporters Michelle Rauch, Tony Hensley and Cheryl Glassford over the coming months.

WDKY: Next we head to WDKY-TV 56/Danville, which has eliminated three traffic staffers.

No, we're not talking about those who report road conditions around the city (such as WKYT's "Officer Don" Evans or WKRC's Bob Herzog).

We're talking about the division of a TV station that schedules commercials, programming and promotion for air.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group owns WDKY and is streamlining that entire division for every one of its properties, says the Herald-Leader.

Sinclair also owns WSTR-TV 64/Cincinnati in the home market of this blog. It's not clear how the move affects WSTR-TV. We'll dig for that information.

WKYT: Our final stop, at least on the TV side of media in Lexington, is WKYT-TV 27/Lexington.

That station has eliminated the position of a business manager who oversaw the finances of WKYT as well as sister Gray Television station WVLT-TV 8/Knoxville.

Quoting once more from the article:

"They've just moved the accounting functions for all of the Gray stations," said Chris Baker, general manager at WVLT. "It's been an evolution. The accounting functions are coming out of Tallahassee and slowly folding other stations in."

Lexington Herald-Leader: When we said that WKYT was the last stop on the TV side...you knew there had to be more.

And - surprise! - it comes from the people who PRODUCE Kentucky.com!

Quoting one last time:

The Herald-Leader announced earlier this month that its employees must take an unpaid week off before the middle of December.

The newspaper announced during a period of layoffs in March that it might require an unpaid week off should the economy, which is ravaging print advertising revenues, not recover quickly.

The unpaid week off applies to all employees, including union-represented newsroom employees who approved the possibility of one before the March layoffs, which saw 49 full-time and four part-time employees cut.

There's a running gag that our friends at OMW use about one of the local papers there..."We hope they keep their AP bill current."

We hope we never have to start thinking that way about any newspaper in our area...but fear that those days may not be far off at this rate...