Tears glistened in her eyes. "Battle Creek is losing a voice,"
said Michelle Edmonds, assistant news editor of WOTV Channel 41,
whose news department was abruptly shut down Thursday by its owner,
LIN Television Inc., as a cost-saving move.
Fresh from a morning meeting announcing that 24 employees were
being laid off, Edmonds and others worried not only about their
own futures but that of a city too small to keep local TV news
alive in today's market. "The more channels of local news for
people, the better the community," said Edmonds, who lives in
Kalamazoo but says she can't afford to keep her house without
a job.
The scene Thursday at the station was somber and emotional. Gone
was the bright television makeup. Gone was the usual cheerful
chit-chat. This was reality television inside a rapidly changing
industry in which the local school board race or highway accident
could not command the profits needed for new expensive digital
equipment for a 14-county coverage area.
"It's part of democracy that's being eliminated," said Tim Malone,
news director and anchor. "Whatever happened to the FCC requirement
that, to get a license, you had to provide local news because
it was a public service?" he said. "Now it's about the bottom
line. It's about conglomerates." Malone, a seven-year employee
of the station, has a daughter in Portage Public Schools and another
at Central Michigan University. He's 42. Unsure of what he's going
to do, he's going to spend a few days "decompressing" to decide
what to do next.
To Malone, local news gave people information on how the recent
blackout affected them, where the local charity benefit would
be held, or why their bus couldn't make it down the freeway that
morning. "Let's face it. It's a perspective that's being lost,"
he said. "It's a death for the community."
It also was a personal blow for most of those who lost their
jobs, even though they knew the station had been struggling. The
channel's late-night news anchor, Jennifer Broeker, expecting
her first child any day, stood at a desk nearby. "My husband and
I just bought a house in Galesburg," she said. She'll get about
60 days of pay, plus a few weeks of maternity leave now that she's
lost her job. Severance packages are based on the length of time
employees worked for the station.
Broeker got a call near midnight at work after her broadcast
Wednesday, saying she should be at the station for a 9 a.m. meeting
the next morning. "I'm nine months pregnant. I told them unless
it was very serious I couldn't come. "They said it was very serious.
"So I had to come in early to find out I'd lost my job."
In Battle Creek, many people hadn't yet heard about the closure.
"Anything that happens to limit our news is not good," said Terri
Bruce, an instructor at Kellogg Community College. "Oh, wow,"
said Deb Snowberger, who works at Kellogg Co. "Just the other
day I saw a house fire while I was driving. I said, 'Oh, my God,
I bet it'll be on the local news.' They (Channel 41) keep you
informed of activities as well as disasters. ... They're shutting
down? No way."
Richard Junger, communications professor at Western Michigan
University, said he feels compassion for former students who work
at the station and a sadness that comes from knowing there is
now one less news outlet in Battle Creek. "As time goes on, there
will be the same news coming from fewer sources with less variety
and less aggressiveness," Junger said.
Officials for LIN Television Corp., which is based in Providence,
R.I., cited a a "sluggish economy and an increasingly competitive
local media market" in announcing their decision to close the
WOTV news department. WOTV news anchor Ethan Forhetz said the
decision didn't come as a surprise, after months of cutbacks and
reductions.
Surprise or not, the news was devastating to employees such as
meteorologist Mark Pellerito. "We did what we could with what
we had," said Pellerito, who writes a back-page weather feature
for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Pellerito, 26, bent over his desk,
going through his Rolodex, calling contacts. "I know this is sudden
... " he was saying. "My wife and I just found out we are pregnant,"
he said when he got off the phone. They'd just bought a house
and a new car to replace an old one wrecked in a crash with a
deer. "This is the track I've been on since kindergarten" in Grand
Rapids, he said of his weather job. "My options now are moving
away from our family. There are only so many positions in this
field that open up. They open up so infrequently and they are
not in this area."
Pam Land, another 41 meteorologist, was sitting in the otherwise
deserted news set, talking on the phone. "I'm trying to light
a fire under my agent to get his butt in gear and get me a job,"
Land said.
