Twenty-one KGW producers will vote on joining IBEW Local 48 on Feb. 19, likely tripling the size of an existing Local 48 bargaining unit of newscast directors and broadcast engineers. But the directors’ and producers’ time together in the same unit may be short-lived.
When negotiations for a new contract started last year, KGW management told Local 48 that a new automated video production program called CUEZ would replace the seven newscast directors at the station. CUEZ is being rolled out by parent company Tegna at stations around the country.
Producers create the outline of a newscast, determining the structure and content of the program and coordinating with reporters, video and sound editors, and directors. Then directors take a producer’s outline for a news segment and code detailed technical directions, like when to switch videos or insert on-screen text. The unit seeking to join Local 48 includes 10 producers; seven digital content producers, who create new articles or videos and post other reporters’ work on KGW’s online platforms; and three content coordinators, who find potential news stories for reporters and producers to cover.
Brian Matthews has been a newscast director at KGW for 22 years. When KGW started testing the new technology last summer, the station wanted to involve producers in coding newscasts. Since directors and producers would be sharing that work, it made sense to bring them into the union, Matthews said.
Producers got on board. Management did not.
KGW argued to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that the election shouldn’t proceed because some of the positions seeking to join the unit are going to be “reorganized” soon. The NLRB regional director rejected that argument in a decision issued Jan. 29.
KGW also argued that producers, directors, and engineers didn’t belong in one unit. The NLRB regional director rejected that argument, too.
Matthews said the union is trying to preserve director jobs — or at least bargain a decent severance package. Once the new unit joins, the scope of bargaining will expand significantly to negotiate the new classifications, compensation, paid time off, and more. If producers are expected to take on parts of the responsibilities of directors, they deserve higher pay, workers said.
Matthews said directors want to stay on to ensure newscasts don’t suffer as CUEZ is implemented. Directors code the newscast before it airs but they’re also in the control room during broadcast to address any problems. In Tegna stations that have already replaced directors with CUEZ, the transition has been plagued with on-air mistakes — audio recordings interrupting news anchors as they speak, people on air with their microphones not working, and reporters standing in front of blank screens meant to display graphics.
KGW has pushed back on the union campaign, distributing anti-union fliers to producers and calling them in to meetings where workers are outnumbered by management and HR.
“I have never seen management this locked in, this focused on a goal — and it’s entirely to break our attempts to represent ourselves,” said John Tanet, a digital content producer who joined KGW in 2025. Tanet said he wants fair wages for his team, but stability and the guarantees of a contract are even more important to him. IBEW-represented workers at KGW are entitled to advance notice of layoffs, which gives them time to prepare for the financial hit.
In fliers distributed to producers, KGW management has claimed the union “is trying hard to force you to focus on everything except its own poor record representing KGW employees.” The flier points out that IBEW was unable to save the jobs of KGW workers it represented during past rounds of layoffs. To Matthews, who has watched KGW cut the bargaining unit down from about 30 workers to the 10 now remaining, management’s response felt like disrespectful bragging.
KGW has about 100 employees in all. Besides Local 48, two other unions represent KGW employees: Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which represents on-air reporters and anchors; and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents photographers and editors.
More changes at the station may be on the horizon if Tegna’s merger with Nexstar Media Group is approved by federal regulators. The planned merger, which was announced in August 2025, would make Nexstar the country’s largest owner of local TV stations and would require loosening Federal Communications Commission rules that prohibit a single company from owning stations that reach more than 39% of American households. If it goes through, the merger would put two of Portland’s TV news stations, KGW and KOIN, under the same ownership.
