The recent Sinclair changes have hit Providence, Rhode Island station WJAR NBC 10, as news director Chris Lanni is no longer with the station.
The recent Sinclair changes have hit Providence, Rhode Island station WJAR NBC 10, as news director Chris Lanni is no longer with the station.
Lanni was told that the station is "going in a different direction."
WJAR's assistant news director Doug Lezette has been named acting news director.
WJAR has long been the ratings leader in Providence, and ratings have recently grown since the Boston NBC affiliation switched from WHDH-TV to WBTS NBC Boston.
Sinclair starting laying staff off at KOMO-TV in Seattle, Washington at the beginning of the month, and the trend continued at other Sinclair stations across the country.
A Edward R. Murrow award winning news manager, Lanni has been with WJAR since June 2005. He joined the station as an executive producer and worked his way up to assistant news director before being named content brand manager in 2010. He was promoted to news director in September 2010. He had been instrumental in expanding WJAR’s news programming, including overseeing the launch of its 7pm newscast and expanding weekend newscasts.
Prior to WJAR, Lanni spent 4 years at Providence's WLNE ABC 6 as news director.
He spent over one year as the program manager for Resort Sports Network in Portland, Maine. He's also been a producer/executive producer at WHDH 7 in Boston, Massachusetts, and at WPEC CBS 12 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Lanni started his career as an intern at WPRI CBS 12 in Providence, and was later hired there as a producer.
Lanni has helped write, produce and present some of the biggest stories of a generation. From the death of JFK Jr. while working at WHDH to the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 while at WPEC. But he has said there is nothing like covering the stories that shape the region in which you grew up.
During Lanni's first stint in a Southern New England newsroom, the credit union crisis, Hurricane Bob, Vincent Cianci's return to politics and the hunt for Joe Mollicone dominated the headlines. He returned to coverage of the economic crisis, the December snowstorm debacle, the imprisonment of Vincent Cianci and the release of Joe Mollicone. It was like he never left.
A native of Rhode Island, Lanni is a 1993 graduate of the University of Rhode Island where he earned a Bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism.
