Meredith owned KMOV in St. Louis is making another cost cut.

The station has decided to end their deal to have a news chopper. “We decided we had other priorities to allocate our resources to,” said Scott Diener, KMOV News Director to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We just didn’t feel we needed it that much anymore.”

KMOV shared the news chopper with Tegna’s KSDK and when KSDK’s learned that KMOV was backing out of the deal, the Tegna station was not going to pick up the full tab.

KSDK General Manager Alicia Elsner said KMOV told her station they were opting out of the helicopter pact, and so the Tegna station did as well.

“With breaking news, it’s helpful,” Elsner said. “But in the age of COVID, there has been far less need from a (motorist) traffic standpoint.”

She says that the station will revisit the chopper when the COVID pandemic is over. In other words, they are not getting their chopper back.

The only station left with a news chopper is KTVI.

A sign of the times.