After finishing his Feb. 3 shift, KUDL-FM morning man Dan Hurst was called into a manager&#8217;s office and told he was being let go. He had seen it coming.</p><p>&#8220;I was told over a month ago by upper management that they were looking for a way to get out of my contract,&#8221; said Hurst, an avuncular disc jockey who presided over a mix of news, traffic and feel-good entertainment for nearly two decades. &#8220;There&#8217;s no point being bitter about it. I started grieving months ago, and I&#8217;m sort of over it.&#8221;</p><p>Hurst&#8217;s departure is just one among scores of such stories in a wrenching chapter in local media annals. Slumping advertising sales, combined with a tightening credit market, have produced waves of cutbacks.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not sure this is something I&#8217;ve seen in my lifetime, and I&#8217;ve been in this business 35 years,&#8221; said C. Wayne Godsey, general manager of KMBC-TV and KCWE-TV. &#8220;Where this is all going to end up, I don&#8217;t think anyone knows.&#8221;</p><p>So far, local television executives have avoided droves of layoffs, but the volatility in the economy means that few media companies, including newspapers and magazines, are immune. And industry observers say that&#8217;s not likely to change until 2010.</p><p>And beyond the recovery, evidence mounts daily that younger media consumers are turning to digital devices, which offer more control and fewer commercials than traditional media.</p><p>&#8220;Radio is over, and I say that with great sadness,&#8221; said Jerry Del Colliano, who founded the publication <em>Inside Radio</em> in 1975 and writes and advises on new media. &#8220;The next generation has very little love for radio, and radio has done very little to win them over.&#8221;</p><p>Cumulus Media, which owns 101 The Fox and other radio stations in Kansas City, last week announced another round of nationwide layoffs.</p><p>The first round was in October, about the time Entercom was letting staff go at KMBZ. Even at stations that haven&#8217;t trimmed payroll as much, employees are bracing for the worst. Advertising forecasts for radio stations range from an 8 percent drop to double digits.</p><p>At TV stations, estimates are worse. At least a 13 percent drop from 2008 levels is projected, with some forecasts as high as 30 percent, largely because spending by automotive companies &#8212; the largest buyers of advertising in the world &#8212; is expected to plummet by as much as 70 percent, according to Moody&#8217;s Corporate Finance.</p><p>&#8220;A lot of these companies were structured in a way that didn&#8217;t contemplate the severe downturn in advertising sales, especially automotive,&#8221; said Neil Begley, a senior vice president with Moody&#8217;s.</p><p>New York-based Young Broadcasting filed for Chapter 11 on Friday to restructure its debt. It owns 10 TV stations, none of them in Kansas City.</p><p>Moody&#8217;s recently downgraded to junk status the credit rating of the company that includes WDAF-TV, reflecting the belief that Fox 4&#8217;s new owner will not be able to generate enough revenue to avoid defaulting on its loans.</p><p>WDAF and several other stations, including the Fox affiliate in St. Louis, were purchased in July by Local TV LLC, a privately held company, in a deal that included more than $400 million of debt.</p><p>The company could stave off bankruptcy for a period of time, but if the economy doesn&#8217;t turn around, Begley said, the chances of a Chapter 11 restructuring go up.</p><p>Executives at Local TV LLC did not respond to inquiries for comment. However, Fox 4 news director Bryan McGruder confirmed that cost cutting was behind the recent disappearance of longtime consumer reporter Carrie Coogan. The station cut its entire freelance budget in January, and Coogan had been freelance since leaving the station for a morning radio shift.