Alan Pergament: WUTV's 10 p.m. newscast ending Jan. 27, eliminating four jobs in Buffalo (via: buffalonews.com)

The news came to light when one of WUTV’s two Buffalo-based reporters, Emily Girsch, posted on LinkedIn that the news department at her station “is closing in two weeks and I am therefore in need of finding new work immediately.”

WUTV station manager Tamara Walter confirmed the end of the newscast Wednesday morning in an email that added Sinclair is replacing the newscast with its national program, "The National Desk."

"While we are very proud of the work produced by our FOX29 local news team in covering some of the most significant stories impacting Buffalo over the past year, the move to program 'The National Desk' will bring something uniquely different to our community," wrote Walter.

Sinclair started the 10 o’clock newscast in July 2021 after ending its relationship with NBC affiliate WGRZ-TV(Channel 2), which had produced a half-hour newscast at 10 p.m. on the station.

The final 10 p.m. newscast will be Friday, Jan. 27. “The National Desk” starts  Monday, Jan. 30.

The end of the local newscast appears to be a cost-cutting move and means four people based in Buffalo will lose their jobs – news director Kelly Holland, Girsch, reporter Kevin Jolly and photojournalist Tyler Weber. Jolly previously worked at Spectrum News and WKBW-TV (Channel 7). Holland was a former news director at Spectrum. 

The news department has been down from four to two reporters recently.

The low staffing here didn’t help things, nor did the fact that the primary anchor, meteorologist and sports anchors weren’t located in Buffalo.

The primary anchor, Mike Benny, is based at Sinclair’s station in Syracuse.

The WUTV news team also included Rochester meteorologist Scott Hetsko and Rochester sports anchor Mike Catalana.

The newscast didn’t even hit a 1 rating during the recent November sweeps competing with a newscast on WIVB-TV’s (Channel 4) sister station WNLO-TV (CW 23).

During the November sweeps, WNLO’s newscast averaged a 2.7 rating representing 17,150 households to WUTV’s 0.6 rating representing 4,067 households.

The rating actually was lower than the 0.8 representing 4,082 households that WUTV averaged a year earlier in the November sweeps when WNLO averaged a 4.4 rating that represented 23,061 households.

A rating point now represents 6,375 households in Buffalo, up from 5,278 a year ago.

During the last sweeps period in May 2021 when WGRZ was supplying WUTV with a 10 p.m. newscast, WIVB’s newscast averaged a 3.8 rating on WNLO, while WGRZ’s newscast on WUTV averaged a 1.6 rating. And WGRZ’s anchors were based in Buffalo.

After Channel 2 no longer supplied a 10 p.m. newscast to WUTV, it started a new 9 p.m. newscast on the digital channel 2.2 where Antenna TV is carried over the air, on cable and via streaming. The experiment didn't last very long. It is no longer carried.