Norm Van Ness, WNWO-TV, Channel 24’s longtime chief meteorologist, was brief and devoid of emotional sentiment in his farewell to the station and its viewers.

“I truly enjoyed being part of the Toledo television market, the market I grew up in for so many years,” he said as he closed his weather forecast on the Dec. 16 late-night newscast — less than three weeks after he learned he was losing his job, and two months past his 13th anniversary at Channel 24.

“I hope,” Van Ness said, ending in an optimistic tone, “to see everyone back on the air very soon.”

Whether that comes to fruition is still unknown.

The 48-year-old was among the first wave of drastic newsroom staff cuts — approximately 80 percent in all — as Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., parent company of WNWO, outsources the bulk of the station’s news operation to its CBS affiliate WSBT-TV, Channel 22, in South Bend, Ind.

Other than a general outline of the move in a late-November news release, Sinclair has offered no details of the cost-cutting measure to a news hub at WSBT, and station management has not returned repeated calls and voicemails.

What is known is that in early March, Channel 24’s only true local on-air presence will be two of its meteorologists, Kimberly Newman and Allison Peters, and a handful of reporters and crew to cover a metropolitan community of nearly 608,000.

According to Nielsen’s Local Television Market Universe Estimates for the 2015-16 television season, Toledo is the 77th-ranked market in the United States with 397,620 TV-watching households, with South Bend-Elkhart the 96th ranked market with 310,170 TV homes.

Even for a long-struggling NBC affiliate known for low ratings and meager budget — Channel 24 is a perpetual laggard in the Nielsen’s and the only local newscast not broadcasting in high definition — its fate as a gutted newsroom experiment in a smaller market seems cruel.

It was also, perhaps, inevitable, Van Ness said.

“I think that whatever this thing that we call broadcast news is going to become in the coming years, that Sinclair is going to be one of the major players,” he said. “But at the same time, a company and business that size that is publicly traded has to make good financial decisions. Whether or not those financial decisions are good for someone personally, like me, you still have to separate yourself from that and then understand and deal with the consequences of that reality.”

The consequence, at least for Van Ness, is a career paradox: The journalism graduate from Bowling Green State University wants to stay in the midsize media market where he was born and raised along with his wife, that offers few, if any, opportunities for a TV and/​or radio meteorologist.

“So if that means a TV or radio job in this market, awesome,” he said. “If that means I move on to some other career field that would still allow me to serve the public in some capacity, then that would be the logical next step.”

Van Ness left his TV meteorologist gig in Tyler, Texas, in 2003 to join Channel 24 when it was owned by Raycom Media Inc., and in a photo-finish for second-place in the local ratings race with WTVG-TV, Channel 13. Three years later and with a new owner, Barrington Broadcasting and a significant shake-up in newsroom management, Channel 24’s ratings collapse began, a major contributor to its present state, as well as sizable cuts in staff.

“Once we shifted to Barrington, that’s when the axes started to fly,” Van Ness said. “We went from a fully staffed newsroom to bare bones in two-and-a-half years,” with most of those layoffs to “veteran and higher-paid talent,” while those hired were mostly younger and less experienced, “which essentially equals lower salaries.”

Van Ness said he understands the business side of local television: “Station groups are going to do what they think is best for their bottom line,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you come into work every day wondering if that's going to be your last day. You essentially walk about feeling like you have a target on your back.”

When Sinclair bought WNWO from Barrington in 2013, though, Van Ness said the initial feeling was positive. “At the time everyone thought this was a good thing. We could have done much, much worse.”

Rumors occasionally floated of the impending sale of the station or perhaps a newsroom merger with another local affiliate, and gained more traction when a major newsroom presence such as when veteran anchor Jim Blue was let go and never replaced in late 2015.

A mandatory WNWO staff meeting just after Thanksgiving, the Monday after Thanksgiving, with its handful of corporate representatives in attendance, ended the rumors as Sinclair’s plans for the newsroom hub were announced during what Van Ness described as “the gloomiest five minutes of my career.”

“It was pretty obvious even before they started speaking that by the end of the meeting everyone working [at WNWO] would be staring at some very big changes in their careers,” he said.

The station’s chief meteorologist, along with everyone in the WNWO newsroom, learned their Channel 24 employment status in one-on-one meetings in the following days.

Van Ness was to be let go, but with weeks of banked vacation time he was allowed to set his own last day, for which he is grateful, and make his exit much earlier than most.

He also wishes WNWO, in particular his former meteorology staff, Newman and Peters, well in the station’s endeavor.

But it’s not going to be easy.

“I think the problem there is the curtain has already been pulled back on the wizard,” Van Ness said in likening the public’s awareness of the station’s not-so-local newscast to that of Dorthy in The Wizard of Oz discovering the not-so-grand identity of the wizard.

“The general public already knows who is pulling the levers pushing the buttons and screaming through the microphone,” he said. “I’ll have to leave that to the public and the viewership to decide if they’re comfortable with that scenario.

“I do like the fact that they have decided to keep their weather content locally produced,” he added after a brief pause. “I’m just disappointed that I wasn’t seen as being part of that plan.”

Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.

First Published January 18, 2017, 5:00 a.m.