Elizabeth Jensen of the New York Times reports Friday afternoon that “Nightly Business Report,” the daily business news show on PBS stations across the country, has laid off eight people on Friday, or about 20 percent of the staff.
Jensen writes, “The layoffs at the half-hour daily program included several on-air faces, but not the anchors Susie Gharib and Tom Hudson, according to employees who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“Gary Ferrell, executive vice president of operations and chief financial officer of NBR Worldwide, declined to say whether any on-air employees were included in the layoffs.
“‘These kinds of things are not ever fun and I wish that we didn’t have to do it,’ Mr. Ferrell said in an interview from Miami, where the program is based. He added that, ‘This is really not about cutting costs as much as it is repositioning resources,’ both topically and geographically.
“The program this week announced the opening of a bureau to cover Silicon Valley, in partnership with KQED Public Media, which owns KTEH, the public television station in San Jose, Calif. Mr. Ferrell said the program is in talks with several other public television stations to open similar bureaus throughout the country.”
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