Court TV ‘Abruptly’ Replaces Boss, Telling Staffers Moments After Morning Meeting
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Court TV “abruptly” replaced its boss this week, CNN first reported and Mediaite has confirmed.
CNN’s Brian Stelter reported in his Reliable Sources newsletter that Scott Tufts, the executive in charge of the live trial network, had just been “replaced rather suddenly.”
Even wilder, a source told Stelter that Court TV staff were told about his ouster just after he led the network’s Thursday morning editorial meeting.
A spokesperson for Scripps, the parent company of Court TV, confirmed to Mediaite that Tufts had left Court TV and that Ethan Nelson was taking over as interim chief.
Court TV was initially launched in 1991 by Steven Brill, and established itself as a destination for legal news and live trial coverage with high profile cases like the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
The network was closed in 2008 and remained off the air for a decade until it was revived by Scripps under the leadership of Court TV alums Tufts and John Alleva in 2019. The network is now a main competitor of Mediaite sister site Law&Crime.
What makes the departure of Tufts particularly notable for the network is that Alleva also abruptly left the channel back in February of 2020 under a cloud of questions regarding the circumstances. Despite airing a number of high profile trials, Court TV has struggled to regain its footing since returning to air.
Tufts and Alleva were integral to the revival of the network, and together had pitched the Court TV name to a number of possible suitors. Tufts told the Associated Press in 2021 that he believed the network’s former corporate parent Time Warner, which turned Court TV into Tru TV in 2008, abandoned a good idea too soon.
“He never lost faith in Court TV as a concept and tried to convince media companies to bring it back,” the AP reported. “Katz Broadcasting, a subsidiary of the E.W. Scripps Co., agreed to try.”
The question now is what exactly led the embattled network to show him the door — just two years after the departure of his founding partner.
