A Changing Of the Guard On the Winners List
We’re a bit tardy in sending congratulations out to all of the television and radio stations that were recently announced as regional winners of the prestigious annual Edward R. Murrow awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association (aka RTDNA).
It was a broad sample of the best work of 2025 from 13 regions across the United States and a 14th that covers all of Canada. (Fortunately, our North American neighbors are still speaking to us when it comes to recognition of quality journalism.) And it sure seems like the awards are the main thing keeping the RTDNA relevant after it shut down its annual convention last October, in favor of an odd “world tour” where association leadership is now just showing up at other annual gatherings held by various journalism and industry groups. (The next appearance will be at the IRE conference later this month).
We’ve previously written here about the challenges facing the RTDNA, and we’re sorry to say that we don’t see any clear path for the association to reinvent itself, at least not in the near future. That’s a shame, because the broadcast news business could use a strong and vibrant RTDNA that advocates for the essential nature of “The Fifth Estate” and helps train the leaders it needs.
But in scoring the list of regional Murrow winners for 2026, we were struck by what seemed to be a noticeable trend. Like any current C-average high school student, we did some research (meaning we just asked Google’s Gemini AI chatbot) and had our hypothesis confirmed. There has been a sea change in who is winning more of the annual plaques bearing the name of the patron saint of broadcast journalism.
At least in the group owning the TV stations that win them.
The 2026 regional Murrows featured only one TEGNA-owned station winning the “Overall Excellence” award: KGW in Portland. The group took home a total of 50 regional Murrows, won by some 16 TEGNA-owned stations. (And of course, that’s really now correctly said as “TEGNA, a wholly-owned, but not-directly-operated subsidiary of Nexstar.”)
The usual TEGNA newsroom standouts took home their above-average haul of Murrows. KARE in Minneapolis led the group with 9 awards, KING in Seattle scored 7, and KUSA in Denver captured 6. But none of those were in the Overall Excellence category, which is still seen as the biggest prize awarded in each region. (Each of the regional winners goes on to compete for the national Murrow award in each category. Those will be handed out this October.)
One year ago, TEGNA had three stations win regional Murrows for Overall Excellence. Some 23 stations amongst TEGNA’s current portfolio of 64 stations won at least one Murrow, compared to only 16 this year. But lest we assume it was just an off year for the TEGNA newsrooms, perhaps due to the distraction of being acquired by Nexstar, the reality is that things have been changing for years.
Back in 2022, TEGNA won a record 96 Murrow Awards across the association's 13 regions in the US. Half of the regional Overall Excellence winners were TEGNA-owned stations. In that same year, 27 of the group’s newsrooms won at least a single Murrow. By the following year, 2023, the group’s total had slid to 84 regional Murrows, and in 2024, the total slid further, down to 73. Then in 2025, the total dropped to 59, before another drop to just 50—or just slightly over half of 2022’s total.
In that banner year of 2022, we may have wildly speculated to a few colleagues that there was something a tad suspect about the dominant performance by the TEGNA group in the competition for Murrow winners. To be clear, the RTDNA’s rules absolutely, positively prohibit judges from evaluating award entries from their own corporate ownership groups. So that kind of cross-promoting of sister stations within the same group couldn’t possibly have been going on.
Forgive the digression into the conspiracy thinking that is running rampant in so many aspects of life these days.
The reality is that while TEGNA’s dominance of the Murrow awards has slipped in recent years, there has been a simultaneous rise in challengers from other station groups — one in particular — that have shown the same willingness to field a large number of entries each year, and have steadily increased their total of wins.
The one in particular would be Atlanta-based Gray Media, with its footprint of 180 stations in 113 markets. In this year’s competition for regional Murrows, some 41 different Gray stations won a total of 93 awards, including 4 for Overall Excellence. That’s not a surprise, given the group’s strong focus on investigative reporting by all of its stations. It’s a playbook championed by Lee Zurik, Gray’s Senior Operating Officer for News Strategy and Innovation.
Gray’s WVUE in New Orleans collected a strong haul of 9 different Murrow awards in RTDNA Region 9’s Large Market division. Gray’s other big Murrow winner was WMTV in Madison, which won a total of 6 Murrows in the Small Market division of Region 4. Four Gray stations took home the Overall Excellence award, including WANF in Atlanta, WCSC in Charleston (SC), WDBJ in Roanoke, and WRDW/WAGT in Augusta (GA).
But the big group winner for the Overall Excellence award was Hearst Television, with 6 stations taking that title: KCRA, Sacramento; KOAT, Albuquerque; WBAL-TV, Baltimore; WDSU, New Orleans; KCCI, Des Moines; and WCVB, Boston.
And a tip of our press fedora to WCVB, which pretty much dominated the large-market division in Region 10, winning 9 of the 14 categories awarded there. It won the crown for the most regional Murrows collected by a single TV station.
Other groups to have stations cited in the Overall Excellence category included two stations each for Nexstar (KXAN, Austin and KHON Honolulu), Scripps (WTMJ-TV, Milwaukee and KSHB, Kansas City), CBS Stations (WBBM-TV, Chicago and KDKA-TV, Pittsburgh) and the aforementioned Morgan Murphy (KXLY-TV Spokane and WISC-TV in Madison).
Finally, groups with a single station winning for “Overall Excellence” included Capitol Broadcasting’s WRAL-TV in Raleigh, Griffin Media’s KOTV in Tulsa, Sinclair’s WJAR in Providence and Weigel’s WBND in South Bend.
Once again, we offer our sincere congratulations to all the Murrow winners. We could follow the lead of some online industry pundits who like to throw shade on awards like the Murrows. And yes, the audience doesn’t really care who is (or isn’t) an award-winning station.
But our view is that the Murrow awards acknowledge that there is still a body of great work to be celebrated in broadcast journalism. And that’s even if it’s true that “Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting.”
At least, according to that newly minted broadcast industry sage, Mr. Nick Bilton.
-30-