Job losses, big changes coming at NBC News

Hazinski predicted that viewers would eventually notice “even more redundancy than there is now” as the same reports popped up on multiple shows.

“We just don’t have as many people in the streets collecting information, creating a differentiated product,” he said. “So this trend will mean more processing, more in-studio things, probably more star celebrities to get people to watch based on the personalities, and less real news.”

Sherrie Mazingo, a former news editor of “NBC Nightly News,” said “the most frightening aspect” of the changes would be not in what viewers saw, but in what they wouldn’t see.

“When these cost-cutting measures are taken, it’s often hard to see on air what the real effects of such cuts are,” said Mazingo, who is the Cowles Media Fellow at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism. “Those people who work behind the scenes, they know what the impact is. They know what the viewers are not getting and are not seeing.”

Capus challenged that assessment, saying: “I’m not going to hurt the ‘Today’ show, and I’m not going to hurt the nightly news, and I’m not going to hurt MSNBC.”

“We’re still in the news business,” he said. “It has to stay fresh. It has to stay relevant. We intend to continue to do as we do, to break news, to advance stories.”

Dominant everywhere but in cable
Most of the network news divisions don’t report their specific revenue and profit in their parent corporations’ financial statements, but figures compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism indicate that NBC News is significantly more profitable than its rivals at ABC and CBS. Its flagship programs, “NBC Nightly News,” “Today” and “Meet the Press,” have led the ratings in their categories for many years.

Not so, however, in the cable world, where MSNBC’s estimated $250 million in 2005 revenue lagged that of CNN and its sister channel Headline News (nearly $1 billion), and Fox News Channel (nearly $600 million).

But Capus insisted that MSNBC’s financial value to NBC was secondary to its usefulness in newsgathering and reporting. Besides giving NBC an outlet to report breaking news ahead of the competition, the channel also airs repackaged NBC material, allowing the network to spread its costs over multiple advertiser-supported broadcasts.

“I’ve said any number of times one of the things that differentiates us is we have MSNBC[.com], the No. 1 Web site, but we have the same thing with cable,” he said. “We have a very successful 24/7 news cable channel. We believe that has made our division stronger.”

Moreover, while ratings for cable networks’ prime-time schedules have fallen significantly at CNN and Fox this year, they have held essentially steady at MSNBC, bolstered by two hours a night of long-form taped programming.

That doesn’t mean MSNBC will be getting out of the live news business any time soon, said Capus, who dismissed industry speculation that NBC would eventually move coverage of breaking news to CNBC and repackage MSNBC solely with taped programming.

“We’re doing this to ensure the future of MSNBC,” he said.

MSNBC.com expansion not affected
As for MSNBC.com, a joint venture of NBC News and Microsoft Corp., it will not immediately be affected by Thursday’s announcement, said Charlie Tillinghast, the Web site’s president and publisher. MSNBC.com has expanded its staff by 25 percent in the past year, and Tillinghast said it was authorized to expand by about 10 percent more by the end of fiscal 2007.

Editor in Chief Jennifer Sizemore said the revamped news structure would play to MSNBC.com’s strengths in multi-platform reporting.

“We’ll be able to move our staff into one location sitting with our NBC News colleagues, which we’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Sizemore said. “We’ll be able to more tightly coordinate on core reporting, ensuring we deliver the most effective reports online.”

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