The revolving door at WXIX-TV continues to spin.
Amber Jayanth, named co-anchor of the Fox 19 Now morning news 13 months ago, is leaving WXIX-TV after nine years. Her family is moving to Nashville, says Jennifer Riefer, Channel 19 vice president and general manager, in a note to the Channel 19 staff.
Jayanth was paired with Julie O’Neill in May last year as main morning co-anchors, bumping Dan Wells and Lauren Minor off the anchor desk. Then O’Neill abruptly left Fox 19 on Aug. 8, 2024, and eventually Wells returned to the morning anchor desk with Jayanth.
Big changes also are coming to NOW in the ‘Nati, the half-hour lifestyle show built around O’Neill’s return to Cincinnati television in January last year.
Riefer has told staffers that NOW in the ‘Nati will no longer exist as a stand-alone program at 12:30 p.m. weekdays. Instead segments by ‘Nati’s Abby Urban and Larry Deal will be integrated into the Fox 19 News XTRA 9-11 a.m. weekdays.
Local TV veteran Amy Seng Holtzman, O’Neill’s former WCPO-TV coworker hired to produce the daytime show, is leaving Channel 19 along with associate producer Sophia Glaser, Rieffer says.
Holtzman will return full-time to Villa Madonna Academy, where she has been communications director since 2015. Glaser, a 2025 Northern Kentucky University graduate, is losing her job on June 13, Reiffer says.
Katie Kenney, who replaced O’Neill as Urban’s co-host last July, soon will leave Channel 19 to become a community relations specialist for Centerville City Schools. She’s a 2000 Centerville graduate.
By my count seven staffers will have left Channel 19 in six months: Jayanth, Kenney, Holtzman, Glaser and meteorologists Frank Marzullo, Ethan Emery and Ashleigh Smith. And chief meteorologist Steve Horstmeyer says he’s retiring in August, after having delayed his exit twice. Read more about Emery, Kenney and Marzullo in my May 30 story, "Add Craig McKee to list of May TV exits."
Jayanth, a St. Louis native, was hired by WXIX-TV nine years ago from Dayton’s WRGT-TV and WKEF-TV (Channels 22 and 45). She was a Channel 19 reporter and weekend anchor until promoted to co-anchor the new 5:30 p.m. weekday newscast with Rob Williams in January 2020, when the station added the 5-6:30 p.m. local news block.
Jayanth earned a degree in broadcast media from the University of Central Missouri in 2005, and a master's degree in digital communication and media/multimedia in 2008 from Lindenwood University in Saint Charles, Missouri. She interned at Chicago's WGN-TV (2007) before working for KPLR-TV in St. Louis (2007-08), WMDT-TV (2008-2011) in Salisbury, Maryland, and the Dayton stations (2011-2016).
In a staff memo, Riefer said “the team of Abby Urban and Larry Deal will be bringing their spin on lifestyle to Fox 19 EXTRA . . . (in) sponsored segments sold by the sales team, and air as many as three times per day starting in mid-July.”
She also thanked Holtzman: “Amy helped launch NOW in the ‘Nati and created a lifestyle show platform that has been very successful. NOW in the ‘Nati and Amy’s vision for the show helped us get to the point we are today.”
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