Is Tegna Ending the Experiment?
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Two sources tell FTVLive that Tegna is looking to end the Joel Cheatwood experiment at their stations.
Starting in 2016, Joel Cheatwood then working for his company Red Seat Ventures, started consulting the struggling Tegna stations. Cheatwood had come up with an idea to turn TV news on its head and start doing digital first TV that included getting many stories and ideas from social media.
Cheatwood consulted Tegna’s KXTV in Sacramento and WTSP in Tampa with this idea to do news gear toward millennials done by millennials.
Tegna decided to put their eggs all in the basket and Cheatwood was hired on at Tegna in January 2018 as the VP of Content Development for the company.
Tegna proceeded to kick longtime Journalists to the curb and replace them with young and inexpensive hires that would be guided to do this new type of news that did not look very much like news at all. Talent was urged to interject their opinion and do their own thing.
It was the new way to do TV news, it was supposed to be the future of news.
But, most of you know what happened.?
The struggling stations did not get better. The one time strong stations got weaker. Stations like WFAA that was once the powerhouse of Dallas TV news, dropped in the ratings and was far from the powerhouse anymore. WXIA in Atlanta watched ratings drop enough that longtime bottom feeder WGCL was nipping at their heals.
Tegna’s stations in DC and Cleveland decided that newscasts needed comics instead of Journalists.
At one point, when the TV stations were still under the Gannett umbrella, it was one of THE station groups that Journalists wanted to work for.
Now, Tegna has become a punchline.
Some really talented Journalists crossed Tegna off the list of station groups that wanted to work for.
FTVLive has spoken to a number of people that work are still working at Tegna properties and they insist that they cannot buy Into this “Tegnafied” style of news.
A former Tegna News Director that was pushed out as Tegna was moving away from standard newscasts, tells FTVLive that they are, “disgusted with how the company honors and respects journalism. From comedians as anchors to giving viewers a gift for downloading your app, Tegna is a disgrace.” The former news boss adds, “ They “Early retired” all the veteran journalists 3 years ago in order not to get any pushback from frivolous ideas such as these. Dave Lougee should return his First Amendment Leadership award From RTDNF.”
But, now word is that Tegna might be going back to the future. Back to doing “real” news again and back to “real” newscasts.
It is clear that the 3 year experiment has not been a success and sources say that Tegna is ready to throw in the towel.
If our sources are right, this can be great news for many of the frustrated Journalists that are still working at Tegna properties. Maybe, Tegna is ready to throw out what they were doing and start doing real journalism again.
Of course, if this is true, it is going to take a number of Tegna stations time to get back to real news and then they have to get viewers to “find” them again.
But, maybe Tegna is ready to admit that they tried something new and it didn’t work. If that’s the case, FTVLive will be one of the first to tip our cap to them. It’s not often in today’s society that people will admit they were wrong or made a mistake.
Just look at our President for an example of that.
Stay tuned…
