A newscast without anchors? Maryland’s oldest TV station tries a new format.

No live anchors. No friendly banter between familiar newscasters. WMAR viewers on Wednesday night watched as Maryland’s oldest news station rolled out a new look to broadcasts that the station’s owners are expanding to cities nationwide. While the change to two evening broadcasts may be a minor adjustment for Baltimore area viewers, it highlights a major shift in how technology is reshaping local TV news.

WMAR-2, an ABC affiliate owned by E.W. Scripps, had a round of layoffs and is reprogramming some shows to stream prerecorded stories in place of live, on-air reporting and live anchors. The new format, which debuted Wednesday night, kicked off with a weather segment and was followed by local, prerecorded news stories and national reports from a Scripps team.

The decision to forge a new course comes as executives of the station’s parent company embrace an AI-driven, 24-hour streaming model for news. Scripps is rolling out the change in a dozen smaller markets, including Baltimore, before it’s adopted at the company’s dozens of local stations. Other broadcasts are expected to switch over in the coming weeks and months.

Local non-TV news organizations have seen dramatic drop-offs in readership, but local television remains a steadfast staple in many Americans’ news diets.

Kelly McBride, a senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, said many news networks are experimenting in hopes of finding their way to a more efficient future as audiences’ news preferences evolve.

Some stations are combining properties to be able to broadcast the same content on two different channels, essentially combining the audiences to higher profits. Others are adding airtime to sell more advertisements while keeping the same number of staff.

“When you look at the fact that profit margins in television are declining substantially because the audience is declining substantially, they’re not going to be able to maintain a high-quality newscast in every market,” McBride said.

Anchor Kelly Swoope, who joined WMAR in 2003 and has been delivering evening newscasts for years, did not appear on air for the 7 p.m. or 11 p.m. broadcasts. Instead, graphics were used to transition between clips, and brief periods of dead air filled the space before ads.

Rebecca Cochran, a spokeswoman for Scripps, said the 24/7 stream should help serve audiences better by allowing them to access reports throughout the entire day, not only during traditional broadcast windows.

Kelly Groft, WMAR’s news director, said the station has made various changes over the past several years leading up to this transition, with the intention of better reflecting how audiences now consume news.

“As we continue refining our newscasts to best serve our community, viewers may notice some differences in the look and flow of our newscasts in the coming weeks,” she said. “Our commitment, however, has not changed: providing accurate, trusted local journalism that helps people understand what’s happening in their community.”

A 2025 study from the Pew Research Center found that more U.S. adults still preferred television to any other local news sources. For WMAR, which has been broadcasting in Maryland since 1947, the switch not only changes how people in the Baltimore region will get their information, but signals a shift in how technology is changing the economics of the news industry.

At WMAR, those who lost their jobs because of the format change were a mix of anchors, producers and directors, including six members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 1200, which represents WMAR-TV media workers, said Geoff Turner, a business manager for the union.

Turner said he received a notice on Aug. 4 that six union members were going to be laid off. The reason for the layoffs, according to a letter human resources sent, was to “align staffing with evolving audience consumption” through a reduction in the workforce.

The next day, during a staff meeting, WMAR workers learned about the production changes and another wave of layoffs aimed at satisfying the second phase of a corporate mandate, he said.

Turner’s understanding is that the only live aspect of the shows using the new format will be an occasional weather personality.

For now, WMAR’s other broadcasts still feature anchors. Groft and Scripps declined to say if the new format would expand to more WMAR broadcasts.