Is this in our future?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that managers at Clear Channel’s KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa will be asking people in the community -- independent filmmakers, college students and professors, civic leaders and others -- to provide programming for the station.. "There will be a loss in local coverage, I'm not going to lie to you," says KFTY exec Steve Spendlove. "But there are a lot of other places to get most of that information."

Another story in the Healdsburg Tribune reported earlier that KFTY had laid off 13 staffers and cut the evening news programs.

The drastic reduction in the TV50 News department announced suddenly last Friday has created a void in the county's news gathering industry and has critics bemoaning a continued decline in local and national news organizations, Tribune managing editor Barry W. Dugan wrote..

Twenty six years after its founding, KFTY TV50 last week announced 13 layoffs in its news department, eliminating its nightly news programs and telling viewers it would now depend on them for programming content.

TV50 General Manager and Vice President John Burgess said the layoffs were “a business decision we had to make. I certainly understand the concern of the public but it's a decision that just had to be made.”

Read the story by reports Joe Garofoli in the Chronicle

Read the story by Barry W. Dugan in the Healdsburg Tribune

Larry Froelich, who called our attention to an item in Poynter on Line, asks “Is this in our future?”