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Erin Kennedy and Megan Glaros are pulling few punches in Broken News, a video podcast that has become a kind of group therapy for current and former local TV journalists.
Kennedy, a former anchor at Chicago’s CBS-owned WBBM, and Glaros, a former meteorologist there, were casualties of a round of layoffs at the station just after the pandemic’s onset in 2020. The former colleagues launched the podcast as a vehicle to process their frustrations and incredulities about a business they say is rife with abuse and misogyny.
In this Talking TV conversation, Kennedy and Glaros share their thoughts on what they see as local TV’s most broken parts, the third rail experience of the morning shift and their anger at the lasting personal damage a TV news career can have.
Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.
Michael Depp: Erin Kennedy and Megan Glaros were, until 2020, very familiar faces to viewers of CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago. Erin was an anchor. Megan was a meteorologist. But a sweeping round of layoffs saw them both out at the station. The two have since regrouped with a weekly video podcast, Broken News, that pulls back the curtain on the far less glamorous aspects of working in local TV news. On it, they share their war stories and they’ve invited other past colleagues to do so as well. In the process, they’ve been steadily building a loyal audience of others working in the same trenches, eager to commiserate.