CBS 3 anchor Jessica Kartalija departed the station this month after six years at 16th and Spring Garden. She posted this on Facebook:

That line about having “many of the same questions you do…” jumps off the page and slaps you right in the face. She did not choose to leave. And the timing of the departure was obviously suspect because TV stations don’t just move on from main anchors at the start of the school year, with football season beginning and the uber-important November sweeps just around the corner.

I reached out to a bunch of people at CBS 3 in various corners of the building, plus some regional industry sources, and came up with the following details:

  • Kartalija’s contract was expiring in October, so CBS will pay out the remaining contact length plus whatever severance was negotiated. She worked in Philadelphia for six years, but spent the 12 prior in Baltimore and has been with the company for 18 total, as noted in her Facebook post.
  • People weren’t sure why management pulled the plug at this particular moment instead of just letting the contract end. From what I was able to gather, negotiations for a new contract or an extension never took place.
  • This is being described internally as a cost-cutting measure and was not performance-related. Apparently the plan across all CBS owned and operated stations is to go to single-anchor newscasts in the evenings, so in Philadelphia it will be Ukee Washington solo at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.
  • Staff had no idea what was happening and didn’t catch on until management started informing them of last-minute anchor changes in planning meetings.
  • Station morale naturally took a hit. Folks always wonder if they’re next when someone is let go.

That’s the crux of it. It was a company decision to lay off Kartalija with something like 4-8 weeks left on her contract.

We’ve seen this happen many times at channel 3 over the years, across various regimes. When they’re done with you, they’re done with you. They’ll pay you to go away, the most notable example when Chris May, Kathy Orr, and Beasley Reece were all axed on the same day in 2015. They were met in the foyer on a random Tuesday and told their time was up, or at least Chris and Kathy were. Beasley went in through the back door and they failed to intercept him, which made for a bit of unintentional and sad comedy at the same time. But the joke was really on everyone else, because Beasley took the money and retired to Texas. Orr wound up at FOX 29 while May returned to his home state of Arkansas.


What’s interesting is that the Monday-to-Friday anchor lineup now heavily features black men and women. That’s a total 180 from 10-15  years ago, when Washington, Natasha Brown, and Reece were the only black talent on the anchor desk. Now the company has Washington, Brown, Don Bell, Janelle Burrell, Siafa Lewis, and Aziza Shuler all in the mix. Jim Donovan is the only white male anchor who is a consistent presence on a main daypart show, and it’s probably the most diverse anchor group the station has ever had.

A couple of people also said that they feel like female talent has it harder than the men at channel 3, and even at the network level. They noted, that in addition to Kartalija being dismissed early, that Tori Woodill quit, Lesley Van Arsdall was laid off, and Kate Bilo was moved to a different shift. This was explained to me as especially curious due to the fact that the general manager and news director are both women.

The other thing worth pointing out is that Skydance and Paramount (CBS owner) are working on a merger in which the latter has publicly said it’s looking to trim costs. There are examples of this at other stations. Marshall Harris, who had a long run in Philadelphia with NBC Sports, left CBS Chicago over the summer, which resulted in that station filling his role with a news anchor who had previously moved out of the sports department. Essentially it was a departure without a replacement, so $$$ savings. There was also a round of layoffs when CBS and Viacom merged almost five years ago, which saw more than a dozen CBS 3 employees lose their jobs, so it’s somewhat standard to make cuts as part of these big reorganizations.

Editor’s note: We did not reach out to CBS for comment because corporate television never says anything anyway. They just refer you to some PR flak in New York who only responds maybe 15% of the time. Nothing personal against PR flaks, it’s just a pointless exercise for a story like this one.