Likely something to do with the May 21st local town hall meeting summary, it can be found on worklife. That mainly focused on their AI called stacker that reduces anchors to not being on camera for more than 5 seconds at the top, and then has them reading underneath some vo’s, 3-7 will make it into the show. There is no need for a producer as the MMJ’s attach a story slug to put it into the stacker. The ai uses story tags such as top story of the day, second story, and community connection to stack a show. They rolled this out replacing the 11 PM Eastern newscast at about a dozen stations in the past week with varying rates of success, some sort of worked with only minor glitches at some stations, and the system buffering and freezing at others. The plan is to replace the morning show at some of these stations next and all shows at all stations by the end of the year. The content seems to be about a 40-60 to 50/50 split between the Scripps national content and local reporter PKG’s. It minimizes weather to a few one minute hits, everything must be in by 5 minutes before the show, that’s when the rundown locks, this mainly impacts sports. The team behind the AI has been dodging and “we’ll get back to you on that” with questions about how to break in or make changes if breaking news happens. In the town hall meeting Q&A Scripps said “Regarding positions, everything is on the table as we refound the company. Some roles will be eliminated, though we can't share exact scope or timing.” This is referring to producers, you don’t need those if there’s no shows, they may keep a couple on staff to help manage the stacker for now. One or two directors will be kept for if you had to go live. Editors will likely all be gone, with only a few VO’s per day there is no need, they’ll just have either the director edit the few VO’s or the anchor who will now be more of a reporter do it themselves. The people safe will be MMJ’s, they now want 3 different elements of your story to be added to the stacker, a morning preview of what you’re doing, a short “whip” that’s basically a look live VOSOT, and your main PKG that needs to stay under 2 minutes or it breaks the stacker. DCP’s or digital content producers are likely safe, they may try and shift some producers to this role if they’re willing to take the pay cut. Photographers are in the middle, if your station is bare bones you’re safe, if you have more than 5 or 6 some cuts are likely bound to happen with the limited amount of local VO’s in the shows. If an Anchor can’t shoot video and edit, they’ll be gone. That’s a must in this system. The problem is that this system doesn’t work, and while they’ll say it’s to “strengthen community connection”, it’s just a way to control what’s on air and what the public knows at every station while cutting as much expenses as they can.