Categories: OLD Media Moves

"Nightly Business Report" makes layoffs

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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Richard says:
February 28, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Nightly Business Review has been destroyed. I used to watch it religiously every evening for years from Florida during the winter and from the UK during the summer. It was like visiting one’s club at the end of a busy day and meeting up with old friends who would chat about what had happened in the business world.
That is all gone.
First there was the retirement of Paul Kangos (who has been dubbed the Walter Cronkite of business reporting). At the same time the whole thing was jazzed up with silly music. I became tired of pressing the mute button. Now I learn we have lost Jeff, Stephanie and Scott, all of them good, sound reporters with pleasant personalities.
At least they still have Susie Gharib , Darren Gersh and Diane Eastabrook. I wonder for how long. That is not enough.
The membership has changed. The club is not the same. I cannot take the new man. His voice annoys me and does he have to wear the same colour lipstick as Susie?
Goodbye, Nightly Business Report. It was good knowing you.
Richard
Richard Savoy says:
August 31, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Is there even the slightest hope of NBR'S being returned, in even the smallest way, to something in the nature of the fine program it once was? To watch it now, and to compare the content, delivery, and format it once displayed to what is passed off now is to feel, in an instant, how the managers and owners of White Star Line must have felt upon learning of the loss of Titanic.
The program is filled with tiresome and odious "bumper music" [whoever invented "bumper music" belongs in the prison where Papillon was interned and whoever decided to insert it into NBR belongs in the cell next to him.] NBR's stories and interviews are the light, fluffy kind of nothing one would expect on commercial TV.
I'm an in-house trust counsel with a private bank, perhaps the sort of person NBR no longer wants as a viewer, as I've seen it written that the new format was designed for the "21st century viewer". I'm among NBR's "20th century viewers", the ones with an attention span longer than that of a gnat...the ones who have contributed to the support of PBS since the 1970's. See if you get a dime from your 21st century gnats.
After 28 years, I stopped watching when Paul Kangas left in December 2009. I'd tried to watch in the last two weeks, but can't bear the pain.
As was the case with Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser, NBR was geared to the interests of the ordinary investor. Neither Rukeyser nor Kangas was afraid of his guests, due to the fact that each knew as much about the stock market as did any guest. Having that kind of knowledge and having that kind of guest is what made the former NBR great.
At any rate, I'm certain that you know exactly what I mean about the great fall of NBR. I’m not alone in this thinking; you have but to look on the internet and see how others view the “new format”.
I imagine there is little to no likelihood of there being any changes made to NBR and that I shall have to content myself with accepting the powerful and lamentable truth of the words of the 1960's song about our never knowing what we've got 'till it's gone.
This is a long note, but NBR was a good program and its passing ought to be observed.