Tegna Anchor Dumbfounded by Firing

KSDK (St. Louis) Meteorologist Anthony Slaughter showed up to work, was called into the office and walked out a few minutes later Unemployed.

Slaughter has worked at the Tegna station, on and off for over 15 years. “I’m pretty much as dumbfounded as you are,” Slaughter told St. Louis Magazine. “I just got called into an office one day, and they just said we’re parting ways…It was a three-minute conversation.”

Word is that Slaughter butted heads with News Director Morgan Schaab about the work load on the morning newscast.

“There’s only a certain amount of hours in the day, and there’s only a certain amount of things you can do in a shift, and we were doing so many things on our morning shift, you know, doubling up, recording things, just so we could do something else—I mean, it was getting to be a little absurd,” Slaughter said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they’ve got a new brand called ‘Weather Impact,’ and they want you to say it a thousand times every weather hit,” he says.

Tegna suits also wanted him to make his weather segments longer, thinking that would bring up their low ratings in the morning. “It’s like, bro, nobody’s watching the weather for 5–10 minutes,” Slaughter says. “The company wants content. It’s all content driven. Everything’s content. How much content can you produce and put out for us?” 

It’s the Tegna way or the highway.