In this articleSSPFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTFILE PHOTO: E.W. Scripps Co. signage is displayed on a monitor on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, June 3, 2016. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesE.W. Scripps is setting into motion what it calls a transformation plan for the broadcast station company — intended to generate growth for both earnings and its local TV stations. The company announced Wednesday that it’s targeting growth of between $125 million and $150 million in annual enterprise earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by 2028. In order to get there, Scripps will go through a number of cost savings and revenue growth measures that lean on technology, namely artificial intelligence, CNBC can exclusively report. “This will essentially be a reorienting of the entire company … with a much more agile and efficient cost structure,” CEO Adam Symson said in an interview with CNBC. “We have to act like a media startup. We’ve got to act like the company E.W. founded, because the marketplace cannot bear the legacy pace or legacy thinking.”The company plans to outline more details about its efforts during its next earnings call with investors on Feb. 26, but Symson described making changes to the newsroom to alleviate journalists from administrative tasks and to focus more on gathering and reporting the news. The company declined to comment on specific impacts to staffing as a result of the cost cutting, saying potential effects to jobs would be determined over the next several months. “Everything is on the table, but our goal is to always preserve the journalism and the sales, the two things that make up our customer relationship,” said Symson. Scripps owns more than 60 local affiliate broadcast stations across 40 markets, including Ion, which has become a broadcaster of the WNBA and other pro sports games. The company’s stock has dropped 70% in the last five years, a decline not unlike many of its media peers. The revitalization for the almost 150-year-old Scripps comes as the company — as well as the broadcast industry at large — finds itself at a historically challenging moment. The broadcast station industry — which also includes publicly traded companies like Nexstar Media Group, Tegna, Sinclair and Gray Media — faces the same challenges as its cable and content studio peers, namely the defection of pay TV bundle subscribers for streaming alternatives. As a result, the industry has been in pursuit of consolidation as it awaits key regulatory changes. Scripps itself has been an M&A target, with Sinclair recently making a hostile approach to merge with the company. Scripps has rejected such overtures. Meanwhile, media outlets across print, digital and TV have been in the midst of massive layoffs in the last year. Paramount Skydance has cut thousands of jobs across the company, including at its CBS News, and most recently The Washington Post reportedly told staffers it would eliminate a third of its newsroom jobs. The rise of AI has also fueled fears about mass layoffs, especially in newsrooms. In 2024 Scripps announced the creation of an AI team that would report to Laura Tomlin, Scripps’ chief transformation officer. Symson said her first order of business has been to “consolidate technology from across the company.” Symson said Scripps’ move to implement new technology is not meant to replace journalism jobs with AI, but instead help newsrooms work more efficiently and ensure a long runway for local news. “This cannot be a co …
