At Nexstar’s WPIX (NYC) Nicole Tindiglia is out as the News Director, but she’s not out at the station.

The staff received an internal memo from GM Chris McDonnell, informing them that the station was going “digital first”. Now, you may remember 4 or 5 years ago, Nexstar told stations that they were going to go “digital first”, and I guess this time it’s for real (or, maybe not).

Here’s the memo sent to staff and obtained by FTVLive. It also adds that they are looking for a new News Director.

Greetings everybody,

As you know over the past several months all of us have been very focused on building our Digital Culture as our industry continues to rapidly evolve and expand. While the challenges to retain and grow our linear audience are ongoing, our expansion of our digital offerings are in full swing and require our full attention. Collaboration amongst departments, and within each department, will enable us to meet the needs of our viewers/users/clients – however they consume our content.

We continue to add locally-produced programming on PIX11+ with the benchmark being to remain uniquely local, relevant and useful to our audiences – wherever they are.

By the end of June 70 additional markets within the Nexstar footprint will have launched their own local streaming platform. And by year end plans are to have every market running their own stream - all populated with locally produced programming.

Sales continues to focus on multi-platform revenue and each sales person has specific goals, as well as team goals.

Marketing and promotions are being challenged to find new opportunities to promote beyond traditional radio, cable TV and our own broadcast air. We need to increase our base of viewers and users from social media and CTV platforms – and while we have found some early success in this arena we need to go further.

We also need to be structured appropriately to meet these challenges.

In this pursuit, Nicole’s role will be centered around Digital to provide laser focus on our expansion of PIX11+. We have essentially launched an additional “Digital Station” that she will oversee and be responsible for expanding our unique programming to 24/7.

In the meantime, we will begin searching for a new News Director to run the day-to-day operation .

“Digital First” is our Mantra

If you have any questions please stop by or you can see your manager.

Thank you
Chris

Chris McDonnell
Vice President and General Manager
Nexstar Media Inc.’s New York City operations