Current.org - For People in Public Media / Published at American University School of Communication

A new round of layoffs at Nightly Business Report, initiated last week, pared full-time staff to 22, down by half from two years ago.

Cutbacks included shuttering the show’s Chicago bureau, where chief correspondent Diane Eastabrook has worked for the weeknight financial show since 1993. Also gone is Michele Molnar, a New York–based photography editor since 1996, and Johnnie Streets, longtime senior stocks producer at headquarters in Miami. In all, six positions were eliminated. “We had to do this streamlining on behalf of our investor,” Rick Ray, NBR chief exec, told Current.

NBR lost its sole sponsor, Franklin Templeton Investments, in August. Backer Atalaya Capital Management “is writing all the checks,” Ray said. “It’s an expensive show to produce.” He declined to provide specifics.

The past two years have been tumultuous for NBR. WBPT-TV in Miami sold the media property to an educational-video salesman, Mykalai Kontilai, in August 2010. His NBR Worldwide, backed by Atalaya, cut eight positions, including two top newsroom managers. In November 2011 Atalaya ousted Kontilai and installed Ray, a veteran media exec who built cable producer Raycom Sports.

Since then, NBR has saved on rent in New York by moving its bureau into the offices of TheStreet Inc., a financial news website. And Ray began overseeing monetization of the show’s most valuable asset, the 9,000-episode archive that spans the past three decades. Some 3,500 shows have been digitized and are available for purchase on NuRayPictures.com, a division of Ray’s Nuray Media. “It’s a nice little side business” for program revenue, Ray said.

Ray said NBR is close to finalizing an agreement with a sales and marketing company to assist with underwriting.