If you’ve noticed a few familiar faces missing from your News 8 Now broadcast lately, you’re not imagining it. There have been some real departures from WKBT recently. But if social media has you convinced the whole station is falling apart, it’s worth slowing down and looking at what’s actually happened.
This article will walk you through who has recently left, what reasons were publicly shared, and why this kind of turnover often feels bigger than it really is.
Who Has Recently Left WKBT
Let’s start with the names people are actually searching for, because that’s probably why you’re here.
Mal Meyer
Mal Meyer served as a weekend anchor and led the investigative team at WKBT-TV. After about three years at the station, he announced he was leaving to move to New England to be closer to family. He shared a genuine, warm goodbye with viewers during his final sign-off and thanked them for their support.
His reason for leaving was clear and personal — this wasn’t a dramatic exit. It was a life decision that many people can relate to.
Lisa Klein
Lisa Klein co-anchored the News 8 at Six broadcast for roughly 10 years. That’s a long time to be a familiar face in someone’s living room every evening. She stepped down from that role, and WKBT posted her farewell on their official YouTube channel.
The goodbye was warm and respectful. However, her specific reason for stepping down wasn’t detailed in the public clip. Whether it was retirement, a personal decision, or something else entirely — she hasn’t said publicly, and it wouldn’t be fair to guess.
These are the two confirmed, sourced departures. You may have seen other names floating around online, but those haven’t been verified with the same level of clarity, so this article won’t speculate beyond what’s been confirmed.
What WKBT Actually Is (If You Need a Quick Refresher)
WKBT-TV is the CBS affiliate serving the La Crosse–Eau Claire area in Wisconsin, branded as News 8 Now. It’s a local station, not a big-city network operation, and it plays a real role as a daily news source for western Wisconsin and parts of southeastern Minnesota.
The station is owned by Morgan Murphy Media, a family-owned company that runs several local stations. It’s not a giant corporate chain, which is actually something many local viewers appreciate.
For a lot of people in that region, News 8 Now isn’t just background noise — it’s how they keep up with weather, local politics, community events, and breaking news. So when a familiar anchor leaves, it genuinely matters to the people watching.
Why Local TV Anchors Leave More Often Than You’d Expect
Here’s something most viewers don’t realize: local TV news — especially in smaller markets — has a pretty high turnover rate by design. It’s not a glitch in the system. It’s kind of how the system works.
Think of a small-market station like WKBT the way you’d think of a AAA baseball team. Players come to develop their skills, build experience, and eventually move up. The same is true for reporters and anchors. La Crosse is a smaller market, which means many journalists there are building their careers before moving to bigger cities or shifting into other roles entirely.
There are also very human reasons people leave, completely unrelated to the station itself:
- Moving closer to family (as Mal Meyer did)
- Wanting a change after years in the same role
- Career advancement in a larger market
- Burnout from demanding workloads
- Personal life changes that have nothing to do with journalism
That last point is worth expanding on. Reporters at small local stations are often expected to do everything themselves — shoot video, write scripts, edit the package, publish it online, and manage social media. All in one day. It’s a lot. Over time, that kind of workload can wear people down, even if they genuinely love what they do. It doesn’t mean the station is broken. It means the job is hard.
Why It Feels Like “Everyone” Is Leaving at Once
This is where things get a little psychological, and it’s actually pretty interesting.
When you watch the same anchor deliver the news every evening for years, you start to feel like you know them. You don’t, not really — but your brain doesn’t always make that distinction. Researchers call this a parasocial relationship. It’s a one-sided connection that feels surprisingly real.
So when someone like Lisa Klein, who sat at that 6 p.m. anchor desk for a decade, says goodbye on air — it hits differently than a coworker at an office changing jobs would. It feels personal, even though you’ve never actually met her.
Now add in the way these departures get shared online. Farewell segments get posted to YouTube. Local Facebook groups share them. People comment and tag their friends. The goodbye becomes an event. Meanwhile, when new anchors join the station, there’s rarely the same emotional send-up. No viral video. No comment threads. They just… show up one day and start doing the news.
That imbalance makes departures feel much heavier than arrivals. If you only ever see the goodbyes, it’s easy to think no one is sticking around.
Confirmation bias plays a role too. Once you notice two people leaving in a short span, your brain starts looking for a pattern. Every small change gets folded into the same story: “Something must be wrong.” But two departures — even three — don’t necessarily add up to a crisis. They might just be two or three people making independent decisions about their lives.
How to Tell the Difference Between Normal Turnover and a Real Problem
It’s a fair question: how do you actually know if a station is in trouble versus just going through normal changes?
Here are a few things worth paying attention to:
- Are newscasts still being produced regularly? If the station is showing up every morning and evening with a full broadcast, that’s a good sign things are running.
- Are they still covering local stories? Investigative pieces, community news, and weather coverage are signs of a functioning newsroom.
- Are credible local or industry outlets reporting on problems? If there were layoffs, ownership issues, or serious management problems, regional journalists and industry watchers would likely report on it.
- What does the station’s own presence look like? Active social media, updated staff bios, and regular content are all indicators of a station continuing to operate normally.
Based on what’s publicly available, WKBT doesn’t appear to be in crisis. Two named anchors have departed with publicly stated or implied personal reasons. That’s real, but it’s also not the same as a mass layoff or a station in freefall.
If you want to dig into broader media industry trends — how local TV stations are evolving, how they’re adapting to digital competition, and what the future of local news looks like — Flock Business covers those kinds of business and industry stories in a way that’s easy to follow.
So What Happens Next for WKBT?
Stations like WKBT don’t stand still when anchors leave. They typically promote existing staff into more visible roles, bring in new reporters or anchors from other markets, and keep the newscast going. Viewers go through an adjustment period, and then the new faces start to feel familiar. It’s happened at local stations everywhere, many times over.
Change in a newsroom isn’t always a warning sign. Sometimes it’s just change. New anchors can bring fresh energy, different storytelling approaches, and new connections in the community. It doesn’t make the loss of a familiar face any less real — but it does mean the station isn’t going anywhere.
If you’ve been watching WKBT for years, it’s completely understandable to feel a little unsettled when longtime anchors move on. That feeling is genuine. Just don’t let a few farewell videos on YouTube convince you that the whole operation is collapsing, because from what we can actually verify, that’s not what’s happening here.
Two people made personal decisions to move on from their roles. The rest is mostly the internet doing what the internet does — taking something real and making it sound a lot more dramatic than it is.
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