Atlanta-based Court TV’s chief, Scott Tufts, left the company with no explanation on Thursday.
Mediaite, a site that covers TV news, was the first to write a story about his departure after it was reported in a CNN newsletter.
Court TV Friday confirmed his departure with a statement from Jim Weiss: “I can confirm that Scott is no longer with Court TV. We thank Scott for his work on Court TV and wish him the best on his future endeavors.”
The interim head of Court TV is Ethan Nelson, an executive at Court TV’s parent company, Scripps.
Steven Brill launched Court TV as a cable network in 1991 and it became a popular go-to home for high-profile court cases, from the Menendez Brothers to O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson. Time Warner in 2008 scrapped the network in favor of truTV, which maintains some operations in Atlanta.
Scripps revived the operation in 2018 as a free 24/7 broadcast network. Tufts, a CNN alum, left the Weather Channel to join Court TV as managing editor.
Tufts was promoted to a senior vice president in early 2020, then as the head of the entire operation in April of last year.
He spoke to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last April when the Derek Chauvin case was beginning. Court TV ran gavel-to-gavel coverage of that trial in which the former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd.
“We feel this is an opportunity for viewers to find us again, for those who know us, trust us,” Tufts said.
At the time, Court TV had about 85 people in its editorial force, most based out of Atlanta.
The network recently joined Nielsen, which measures viewership but said it cannot yet release viewership figures. It’s currently available on broadcast TV for free, on its own website and on many cable networks. You can also find it on YouTube TV, Pluto TV, SiriusXM, and the Court TV app for Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android and Apple devices.
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