From a Gray Media Insider

FTVLive reported that Gray Media has canceled some of their streaming newscasts and we showed you the internal memo.

A Gray employee reached out to FTVLive and confirmed that was happening. But, the insider claims that Gray Media is still pushing digital, despite cutting the newscasts.

We wanted to share the employee’s take:

Scott,

I wanted to reach out to you as a person that works at a Gray station as a Digital Content Manager and just express that your inclination about Gray blowing streaming and digital to the side is incorrect.

While it is correct that Gray discontinued portions of their Local News Live newscasts on their streams, there is a big reason for that and it isn’t not wanting to prioritize streaming. It’s the exact opposite.

Since early last year, streaming has been the #1 focus of our company, so much so that a major initiative was launched that every station in our company has to start taking streaming seriously or big consequences would be coming. Part of that is guaranteeing stations start producing original content and get up their in house streaming hours to equal greater than 35-40 hours plus per week.

As an initiative, it has been a major driving force for us and continues to be so, and part of that drive was knowing for a while LNL was cutting back, as they wanted us stations to be able to be self reliant and not just lean on LNL being on our streams all the time.

Other companies I’ve noticed aren’t prioritizing streaming and original content as much, but I can at least tell you Gray is taking it seriously, and the station I am at is doing so too and it is considered priority #1 in our company right now.