Nexstar Broadcasting has laid off staffers at its newly acquired Salt Lake City stations KTVX (ABC) and KUCW (CW).

The Salt Lake City Tribune put the number laid off at 15.

“That’s probably a good guess,” said Dan Metcalf, KTVX’s now-former film critic and executive producer of online media to the Tribune. “I was No. 5 this morning, and there were others behind me.”

The Tribune also reports the station’s accounting, research and traffic departments had been eliminated and will be handled by other Nexstar sites.  A Nexstar spokesman also said they will be hiring a new station manager to replace Matt Jaquint.

“This is a reduction in force we’re making here,” Brian Jones, co-COO and executive vice president of Nexstar told the Tribune. “We’re going to operate the station at the highest level, and we will move forward.” Read more

Robert Jordan, anchor for Chicago’s WGN 9 p.m. news, mistakenly referred to the Windy City’s German holiday market as ‘Kristallnacht’ during his Sunday night broadcast.

Kristallnacht was a series of Nazi pogroms, or attacks against Jews, that took place in early November 1938, while the current Chicago holiday market is known as Christkindlmarket.

Tossing to the newscast’s first weather report, Jordan and co-anchor Jackie Bange were talking about the unseasonably warm weather with Jordan saying, “and Chicagoans took advantage of the rare weather today,” he then stumbled as if trying to remember the name of the market viewers were seeing on screen.  “Shopping at the…uhm…is that the Kristallnacht center there in Dailey Plaza?”

A number of tweets popped up after the anchor’s flub with viewers asking if they heard what they thought they heard.  One such tweet was answered by the station saying, “we reviewed the tape..sounds like a jumble of both. Bob is a student of history, certainly knows the difference. Just a mistake”  You can see the screen grab of the tweet after the jump. Read more

WGN news director Greg Caputo has some explaining to do after the CW affiliate’s Friday morning newscast, when anchors Robin Baumgarten and Larry Potash spent several minutes reporting on a staged plane crash as if it were breaking news. Caputo talks about the incident with the Chicago Tribune, which like WGN is owned by Tribune Co.:

Channel 9 news director Greg Caputo said the station’s helicopter “was close by and was the first news helicopter to arrive on the scene. Based on police radio traffic, several officers in the area were similarly alarmed that there was a plane crash.  We contacted Chicago police, Chicago fire, and the FAA seeking information.  All of those public agencies said they had no knowledge of a plane crash.  But none of them said that it was a scene from a movie.

“Our previous experience with movies and TV shows filming in Chicago is that they inform the community that something is happening,” he added. “Since we had no such advisory, our news team began to describe the scene they could see from our helicopter shot.  Other major stations in Chicago were on network news at that time.”  Read more

Chicago CW affiliate WGN spent a few minutes during Friday’s morning newscast in breaking news mode, reporting on a small plane that had crashed on King Drive in Chicago. The only problem: the plane crash was actually being staged for the filming of a television show and was not breaking news at all.

After spending a few minutes ad-libbing the aerial shot of the crash — “can you imagine, you’re driving down King Drive and a plane just comes down in the middle of the road?” Robin Baumgarten said — the two anchors paused briefly as they were informed via IFB that the station had been fooled (video above).

“We are just getting word that this is being shot as part of a TV show,” Larry Potash said. Read more

After two years at WPIX, Jodi Applegate will step down from the anchor desk at the Tribune-owned CW affiliate in New York.

Applegate announced today that she and her husband, Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, are expecting a daughter in January via gestational carrier. Her final broadcast will be December 19. In a statement, she said she looks forward “to returning to media in the future.”

“After years of putting my career first, I’ve decided to step back for a moment and enjoy this new role,” Applegate said. “It was a difficult decision to choose to step away from a full-time anchor position but I want to take this time to enjoy being a new mom and focus on the baby.”

Applegate is a former anchor of “Good Day New York,” the morning newscast on Fox O&O WNYW. She joined WPIX in October 2010 as the anchor of its 10 p.m. newscast. She now also anchors the 5 p.m. newscast, which was launched in 2011. Read more

Jack Walsh will step into the role of vice president and general manager at WUPA, the CBS-owned CW affiliate in Atlanta.

Walsh joins WUPA from rival WGCL, where he has been the local sales manager since 2009. Prior to that, he was the general sales manager at Atlanta’s WATL.

“Jack is one of the most highly regarded local television executives in the Atlanta market,” CBS Television Stations president Peter Dunn said in announcing the hire.  “His deep roots in the advertising community, relationships with local business leaders and reputation as a skilled manager and great motivator will serve us well as he takes on the responsibility of overseeing one of the top CW affiliates in the country and our talented team of employees in Atlanta.”

Walsh replaces Tom Candeo, who was recently named general manager of WWJ, the CBS O&O in Detroit.

Read the full release from CBS after the jump. Read more

Trinity Broadcasting Network has purchased the Jackson, MS CW affiliate, WRBJ from Roberts Broadcasting.

Trinity will use the station to broadcast its Christian programming.  “We know that the Greater Jackson, Mississippi region will welcome the Trinity programming,” Steve Roberts, president of Roberts Broadcasting said in a statement released by Media Venture Partners, who represented Roberts Broadcasting in the sale.

WRBJ was one of the four Roberts stations that filed for bankruptcy last year.

CBS Money Watch reports the sale is pending approval from a St. Louis bankruptcy judge.

[Broadcasting & Cable]

With WPIX news director Bill Carey‘s recent departure, our sister blog, FishbowlNY, took the opportunity to look at the state of the station before the next news director has a chance to put their stamp on it.

FishbowlNY spoke with Queensborough Community College professor Eileen White who said she thinks the next news director should be given a blank slate to work with.  “For that new person, that’s going to be the carrot,” White said. “You can do what you want, take a failing thing and turn it around.”

One of her suggestions concerns the news at 10 p.m.  “Especially if you don’t have a sports department, come on, cut it down to an half-hour,” White told FishbowlNY. “And then people can get to bed… because I think Fox strings you along, way too long. I think a half-hour is perfect.”

Read more

Using the memory of her mother, Jean, as motivation, WPIX‘s Magee Hickey tells our sister blog FishbowlNY, she’ll run the New York City Marathon as her first marathon.   Hickey’s mother died of colon cancer five years ago.

“She would love that I’m doing this in her memory to raise money for other people, because her life was always about doing for other people.”

According to Fishbowl NY, The WPIX reporter got the idea to run when then assistant, now interim, news director John Houseman assigned her to a series of profiles on cancer survivors running the half-marathon.

That’s when it hit the veteran broadcast journalist. She was a cancer survivor, who suggested going through the rigors of training and ultimately running. But a cautious Houseman wasn’t pushing her to participate. He just wanted his reporter to keep her mic in hand, meeting with the cancer survivors regularly for updates on their training. Hickey wanted more, and she got permission to run. However, she was told that her inclusion wasn’t “the story”.

Read more

FishbowlNY is reporting WPIX assistant news director John Houseman has been named interim news director, signaling the official end of Bill Carey‘s run at Tribune’s flagship station.

In an email to staffers, obrtained by FishbowlNY, WPIX vice president and general manager Eric Meyrowitz said,

While we conduct our search for Bill Carey’s replacement, John Houseman will be interim News Director. During this time, please see John or me with any questions.