Better understanding success and satisfaction of local TV news directors
By Chip Mahaney
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is Part One of a four-part series examining the role, pressures, and professional realities of local television news directors.
“If you don’t win, you’re going to be fired.
If you do win, you’ve only put off the day you’re going to be fired.”
– Leo Durocher, 46 years as a major league baseball player or manager
PART ONE: How local TV news directors are like two other types of high-profile managers
Words like these from 20th-century baseball legend Leo Durocher are well known to sports managers and coaches of any era, especially this era. The jobs of the 30 men currently managing clubs in Major League Baseball include overseeing 26 active players (plus others injured or otherwise inactive), a dozen or so coaches, and a product on the field that’s measured zero-sum, win-or-lose, every game in a 162-game season that stretches over more than half a year. Add to that managing the expectations of a dollars-and-cents-minded front office, voracious media, and a social-media emboldened fan base. Any fan can see how the job of today’s manager is a tinderbox, seemingly with little job security. Indeed, the average tenure of the current crop of major league managers is only between three and four seasons; the longest-tenured is Kevin Cash, who completed his 11th season with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2025. Stunningly, nine of MLB’s 30 clubs — 30% — will start the 2026 season with new managers.
The comings and goings of baseball managers are well chronicled in local and national sports media. Whenever a new manager comes or goes, there’s a news conference with reporters and cameras and live streams that fly instantly around the Internet. The announcement of a transaction (hiring, firing, resignation) is typically followed by sound bites from the manager and their supervisor, often the team’s president or general manager. It’s a massive public show, one that is immediately followed by hours, days, or months of baseball analysts, pundits, and legions of highly connected and engaged fans pronouncing their own judgments on the transaction.
The job of a local television news director shares many of the same types of responsibilities and pressures as that of a baseball manager. But while the comings and goings of a news director are no less exciting or traumatic inside the newsroom, they’re far less heralded or understood, especially outside the station building or industry. Indeed, many news director arrivals are announced internally through a meeting or by email, with a brief bio and generic quotes promising excitement and success. Here’s a prime example borrowed from a recent station announcement: “<Name> is a bold, forward-thinking leader who understands where local news is headed and how to connect with audiences on every platform. His passion for impactful journalism makes him the perfect choice to lead our newsroom into the future.” (The name and station have been redacted.)
Sadly, many news director departures are announced by a terse email from the general manager or the human resources leader, perhaps three sentences, that says, “<Name> is no longer with the station. We wish her/him the best in the future. <Another Name> will manage day-to-day operations while we look for our next news director.”
Because the job is similarly complex, with high stakes and high pressure, operating in a relentless 24/7/365 environment, the cost to the organization of making any change is high, especially in terms of money, morale, and momentum. Likewise, the cost to the news director is extraordinary, in terms of potential pay disruption or relocation. Because there are 210 defined Nielsen markets with local television stations, and because they may only be two or three news directors employed at any one time in any market (top 20 markets perhaps 5 to 8), many experienced news directors have moved from one station in one market to another, some many times over a career. Sometimes this is a career strategy, as moving from a smaller to a larger market often results in a larger, more experienced staff to manage, more responsibility, a city with more amenities, and a higher salary. This is another direct comparison with baseball managers, many of whom begin their managing careers leading minor league teams in front of smaller crowds, making a lot less money.
The purpose of this research
In these articles, I aim to help the profession and the academy better understand the complex position of the local television news director and the people who hold it, with the hope of identifying future ways to create greater job security and job satisfaction for this group.
Before going further with a comparison of these two professions, I’ll add a third profession into the mix: a local government city manager. A city manager is most often employed by municipal governments categorized as “council manager”, where the elected mayor and council represent the constituents and vote on ordinances, budgets, and contracts. The mayor and council hire, fire, and oversee the professional city manager, who, in turn, is the day-to-day manager of city operations, supervising department heads such as the police chief and directors of finance, human resources, planning, zoning, and maintenance.
While a local city manager (or executive) brings a different skill set to his/her position, the daily variety of the job and the pressures, as well as the impact of the manager’s success and tenure, are like those of a baseball manager or a local television news director. But there’s one crucial difference: the city manager often comes with an education that prepares them for the role in management. An entire academic discipline — public administration — is available to those seeking employment or skill development in this field. That is not the case for baseball managers, many of whom were former players or coaches without even an undergraduate college degree. Likewise, specialized education is generally not the norm for local television news directors, who might have journalism degrees but haven’t been formally trained in managing people or in running a department or a business.
Deeper connections
These three jobs — television news director, baseball manager, and city manager — are remarkably alike in many ways. Here are five:
1. These managers work primarily in the shadows of people — many of whom they supervise — who are the organization's true public faces. In local television news, the anchors and reporters are the ones showcased in the product and promoted in the community. In baseball, the players are the ones fans pay money to watch. They’re the ones who play the game in hopes of being immortalized in victory or extraordinary performance. A baseball manager, however, does play a public role, sitting in good view of television cameras at the front of the dugout, cheering or consoling players as they come off the field, and making appearances on the field when changing pitchers or arguing with umpires. City managers often sit on a dais with elected leaders during official council meetings, and, of course, their names are frequently prominently displayed on the Contact Us pages of local city websites. However, very few local television news directors play a public role. When I was a news director, I often told colleagues and friends that if they ever saw me on their television, something had gone horribly wrong, and my appearance on their screen was not part of my plan.
2. In local TV news and with most baseball teams, the manager is often paid less than the team’s stars, such as the anchors or the best players. In baseball and in some large TV markets, there have been exponential differences between the salaries of the anchors and their bosses. While in local news, those oversized anchor salaries have been significantly trimmed in the past few years, with declining viewership on the broadcast platform, in baseball, the stars’ salaries keep on ballooning. As for city managers, this may be a point of difference. In some council-manager cities, the elected mayor and city council receive very little compensation, with their work being deemed part-time. Since the city manager acts as the chief executive officer of the city government, their salary is generally the largest in the organization.
3. In all three jobs, the manager must answer to numerous public stakeholders. Baseball managers and city managers often do interviews or news conferences with journalists or appear at public events. News directors often meet members of the public at community events or forums, and most also manage a high volume of community or one-on-one engagement via phone, email, and social media.
4. In all three jobs, the manager is often the last to be celebrated when the staff or team performs well, but often the first to be blamed (or fired) when things go off track. A well-repeated line in baseball is that you can’t fire 26 players, so if you want to make a quick change, you fire the manager.
5. Each of these managers supervises multi-layered teams with diverse job responsibilities and skills. And it’s likely that, as the manager came up through the ranks, he or she specialized in only one of those skills, positions, or job experiences.
- A baseball manager must understand pitching, catching, fielding nine different positions, throwing, and hitting. If they played before they coached or managed, chances are they played only one or two of the nine positions.
- A city manager must understand the basics of all city services, including budget/finance/HR, planning, utilities, roads, and public safety.
- Today’s news director must understand the basics of field newsgathering (reporting and videography), newscast producing and directing, technical elements (graphics, audio), emerging digital platforms (including streaming or social media), plus legal and ethical concerns.
It’s also incumbent on the manager, with or without formal training, to learn how to deal with people in all areas of their lives. The manager may have authority over their employees or players only during work hours, but their influence and connections span 24 hours a day. A television news director, I learned from personal experience, is seemingly always the second person someone shares their personal bad news with (after a spouse or a parent). This goes for something like “my pet just died,” or “I just found out I have cancer,” or “our employee just wrecked one of our vehicles.” The same goes for external events, like a mass shooting for a news director, or a major water outage for the city manager, or a sudden injury or illness for one of the key players on a baseball. The people skills a successful manager must develop — often with only on-the-job training — to keep one’s head above water are critical and common to all three jobs studied here.
Chip Mahaney has more than 40 years of experience in television and digital journalism, including decades in newsroom leadership and talent development. He is currently a Media Executive-in-Residence for the Journalism Division at Southern Methodist University, where he teaches and helps build broadcast and sports journalism programs. A former TV news director, Chip has trained and mentored thousands of journalists and has long served the profession through RTDNA leadership and Murrow Awards judging.
COMING IN PART TWO: Looking for further clues and comparisons in a review of relevant academic research.