Jennifer Rieffer leaves her mark on WXIX-TV when she takes over Gray Media’s sister station in Charlotte, N.C.
Since arriving here five years ago in December 2021, she brought the Reds Opening Day game and weekly Reds games to Fox 19, and the Bengals flagship station package that included Bengals preseason games and several weekly Bengals shows during the football season.
With the Bengals and Reds deals, she expanded the Channel 19 sports staff in 2024, adding reporters Gabi Sorrentino and Regan Holgate (who left in June). Cole McIntire, a 2022 Ryle High School alum, was hired in June as a sports reporter after graduating from Western Kentucky University.
Rieffer also hired Julie O’Neill for a new half-hour lifestyle show, NOW in the Nati, which premiered in January 2024, and was cancelled as a half-hour program in 2025. O’Neill only hosted the show for four months before being moved to co-anchor the Fox 19 NOW morning news. Four months later, in August, she was let go.
Channel 19’s vice president and general manager also had the challenge of rebuilding the weather team when veteran meteorologist Steve Horstmeyer retired in 2025 after nearly five decades on Cincinnati television. She chose meteorologist Stephanie Roberts, who had experience as a TV forecaster in Minneapolis, Cleveland, Toledo, Tampa and ABC’s Good Morning America.
Longtime morning meteorologist Frank Marzullo left in February 2025 (and resurfaced six months later as WCPO-TV’s morning co-anchor). Meteorologists Ashley Smith and Ethan Emery also left in 2025 before Horstmeyer retired.
Other high-profile departures from Channel 19 in recent years included morning anchor Amber Jayanth leaving after nine years in June 2025 for Nashville, and anchor Lauren Minor (now at WCPO-TV) abruptly exiting the morning show in July 8, 2025, a month before O’Neill left the station.
Rieffer leaves Cincinnati (TV market No. 37) in November to become general manager of Gray’s WBTV-TV, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte (TV market No. 21) on Nov. 16.
She did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Rieffer started her career at Sinclair’s WDKY-TV in Lexington, Ky., in 1995. She moved up from the traffic department to the the sales department as an account executive before becoming the station’s sales promotion manager. She also was an account executive for TV stations in Columbus, Ga., and Kansas City, Mo., before returning to WDKY as sales manager in 2006. She was named general manager in 2018.
In 2020-21 she managed Sinclair’s WSMH-TV in Flint, Mich., before hired by Gary Media for Channel 19.
Gray Media is the No. 2 TV station owner in the U.S.
