The Next Station Sinclair Sacks News?

Yesterday, FTVLive told you that WKEF News Director Becky Gulden is exiting to become the PIO of a local school district.

An FTVLive reader sent along this email, and knowing Sinclair, it certainly seems possible.

Hi Scott.

With regards to the news director at WKEF leaving--could it be possible that Dayton is the next market where Sinclair eliminates the news department?

Sinclair owns WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WSYX in Columbus--two of its stronger stations--while WKEF has been an afterthought for decades. Its not like Sinclair acquired a powerhouse like WKRC or took advantage of other station's misfortunes like WSYX did when WBNS-TV was sold to Tegna. WKEF has been the dog station dating back to the 1960s. It couldn't even take advantage of WHIO-TV having suffered due to Cox's cutbacks related to its sale to Apollo, or WDTN being a generic Nexstar station. What is the most notable news moment, when their weatherman ranted about a viewer complaining about The Bachelorette being pre-empted during a tornado warning?

This is actually a situation where Sinclair shutting down a news deaprtment actually makes sense. They've owned WKEF since the late 1990s. It's not like they haven't attempted to fix the problems there.