Colleen Williams joins other anchors in departing NTV

Fellow anchor Dave Griek left the station last month, and anchor and reporter Sara Kirkley said goodbye to viewers Nov. 8.

Williams, Griek, weatherman Kent Boughton and former NTV anchor Seth Denny appeared in a Facebook video Thursday, telling viewers they’ll be back on Facebook on Nov. 21. The video may be found on NTV’s Colleen Williams and NTV’s Dave Griek pages.

NTV offered to keep at least some of the anchors at a reduced wage.

Boughton continues to do the weather on KLKN-Channel 8, an ABC affiliate based in Lincoln. He does weekend and fill-in work as a forecaster for KLKN.

KHGI and KWNB are operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“Beginning this week, NTV is transitioning to a new, reporter-led newscast with the goal of delivering more hyper-local news content. This approach will allow us to cover more stories in each newscast, with deeper reporting within the community,” said a statement from Jessica Bellucci on behalf of Sinclair.

“By shifting our resources at the station, we have increased the number of reporters in the field, with more than double the number of local reporters covering the region,” Bellucci says.

“We know change is difficult and we are still refining the process, but we do hope viewers will give our new format a chance,” Bellucci said.

“We had some technical issues in the first day (unrelated to the format change but awful timing) which necessitated us putting The National Desk on to avoid blank air, but that is not the programming viewers now see, so I hope we can stress NTV remains a local newscast,” Bellucci said. “We’re also working on a promo campaign to introduce the new local reporters — as it’s important for viewers to know all of the coverage is local and produced/delivered by local folks!”