Adam Symson

We are in the midst of a shift in the media industry in which many companies are pursuing business models that have yet to be proven and may never pan out. As consumers shift to an on-demand approach to television viewing driven mostly by digital delivery of video, many of the biggest media companies, far bigger than Scripps and our peer-group broadcasters, have taken steps to break their content out of the exclusivity of existing bundles that have served the industry so well for the last 50 years.

Local broadcast station groups plummeted in value this week after Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced they will be launching a new joint venture focused on sports fans. However, according to EW Scripps CEO Adam Symson, says Wall Street is overestimating the new product’s popularity, saying investors appear to be pricing in that local ABC and Fox affiliates wouldn’t be part of the new skinnier bundle. They will be included, he said, citing assurances he’s been given in conversations with Disney executives. “Affiliates are going to be compensated for being carried along,” Symson said.

E.W. Scripps CEO Adam Symson and NewsNation anchor Connell McShane told a NewsTECHForum audience Tuesday that TV news needs a more durable model based on more consistent community engagement and more room for conversation and discovery around subjects. (Image: Symson, left, and McShane)

News leaders from E.W. Scripps and NewsNation will confront the high stakes the industry faces in a pivotal election year, the journalistic and technological resources they’ll bring to bear against it and the repercussions for American democracy itself in a keynote panel at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum conference on Dec. 12 in New York. Register here.

Its execs tells analysts to expect more sports deals and more new CTV networks. CEO Adam Symson says his company is “leading the broadcast renaissance in live sports” with deals impacting results with both advertisers and MVPD distributors. Pictured: WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Scripps CEO Adam Symson.

E.W. Scripps President-CEO Adam Symson has laid out a bold way forward for local TV news to reengage with substance, backing it with investments and more reporters. Will the market let him stay on that path?

CEO Adam Symson today announced a “news initiative,” in which the company will “invest nearly $10 million to increase compensation where needed to ensure we can attract and retain the best journalists” and “add about 250 on-the-ground resources to our local reporting teams.” It says it will also “rethink” its approach to local news coverage and content, “and the way we talk to our viewers/audiences through branding and promotion.”

After landing a deal to broadcast WNBA games Friday nights nationally on Ion, the E.W. Scripps Co. is looking for more sports leagues and teams to put on its national networks and local stations. “If we found another league that was the right fit and intersected so well with the demographics that we have on Ion, there’s room for more,” Scripps CEO Adam Symson says. And Scripps is also monitoring the regional sports networks situation.

The E.W. Scripps Co., TVNewsCheck’s Station Group of the Year, has a seasoned journalist and “person of mission” in Adam Symson, its president and CEO. His long-term vision for a sustainable company and commitment to news percolates into nearly every facet of its operations. Above, Symson at a Newsy editorial meeting. This is the second installment of a three-part series. Part one appeared yesterday here and part three will appear on Wednesday.

The leadership and employees of The E.W. Scripps Co., TVNewsCheck’s 2022 Station Group of the Year, are guided by a devotion to impactful journalism and the long-term sustainability of the group. They’re not averse to bold moves and risks that will deliver it. This is the first installment of a three-part series. You can read part two here and part three here.

The new pact runs through 2027.

E.W. Scripps CEO Adam Symson told a Deutsche Bank media conference Tuesday that the proliferation of streaming subscription channels, coupled with internet access costs, are driving many younger consumers to “discover” free TV once more.

With no ownership cap relief in sight from the FCC, broadcasters look to pick up ones and twos along with pursuing other avenues to grow their businesses. Meanwhile, the industry waits to see if Tegna will be sold. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

E.W. Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson says the company will be very flexible about work from home hybridity after the pandemic abates, seeing multiple advantages to the new way of working on both the station and corporate levels. Read part one here.

E.W. Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson weighs in on the company’s streaming and diginet strategies, ad tech’s performance, Newsy’s overhaul and the ever-present threat of ransomware attacks against broadcasters in part one of a two-part exclusive interview.

E.W. Scripps is moving from new-school distribution to old-school to expand the audience for its Newsy channel: On Oct. 1, the news offering that’s available today via OTT apps will go on the air in Scripps’ 41 broadcast markets, reaching some 80% of U.S. TV households. in a Zoom video interview, Scripps President-CEO Adam Symson explained what the Cincinnati company hopes to get out of OTA — and offered a few suggestions about how the industry could upgrade one of its oldest mediums.

The technology behind the distribution of television has evolved with time, from the antenna to cable to satellite, and most recently to streaming. Now, according to E.W. Scripps Chief Executive Officer Adam Symson, the time has arrived for the next frontier of TV viewing: The antenna.

Symson is an investigative journalist turned digital content strategist who took over as CEO in 2017. Since then, he’s aggressively expanded Scripps’ TV station holdings, growing from just nine four years ago to 61 outlets in 41 markets. Buying more broadcast TV stations — as Scripps did in January with its $2.65 billion acquisition of Ion Media — would seem counter to a modernization push. But Symson said the view of local broadcast stations being outmoded by internet-delivered signals is unsophisticated.

E.W. Scripps Co. and its CEO Adam Symson are taking National News Literacy Week seriously. The company’s local local and national outlets are running public service announcements that aim to fight back fake news by urging viewers to be well informed by raising their news literacy fitness.

Leaders from Sinclair, E.W. Scripps, Graham Media and Entertainment Studios will share their outlook on a momentous year and its implications for revenue prospects, M&A, NextGen TV and an evolving relationship with the networks at TVNewsCheck’s virtual conference TV2025: Monetizing the Future on Oct. 21. Register here.

E.W. Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson feels the audience increase its stations have experienced since the pandemic will endure through to the other side of the crisis. For now, he says, the company is on a firm financial footing and jobs are secure, “but the real questions that we have to wait and see on are how deep this goes and how long it lasts.”

He will continue to serve as the company’s president and CEO for three more years.

Adam Symson, president and CEO of The E.W. Scripps Co., says leading the company isn’t a quarter-to-quarter proposition, but rather about taking a decades-long view. From that vantage, he sees a growing marketplace for podcasts and multicasting, along with a deepening the OTT sales business and ATSC 3.0’s longer-term potential as crucial fronts to buttress the company’s core broadcast business.

Six years after acquiring the digital news upstart, E.W. Scripps is nudging Newsy closer to profitability and wider audiences. The largely millennial viewership sees Newsy’s “anti-partisan” approach as a balm to the louder polarities of its larger digital and cable peers.