Tri-Cities dissolved into three MSAs

The Northeast Tennessee/Southwest Virginia area that used to be one metropolitan statistical area of some 480,000 has been split into three MSAs by the federal government's Office of Management and Budget, with the result, as stated in this Kingsport Times-News article, that "[i]f the data continues to be published on an MSA basis, which is the tradition, we've disappeared," quoting a local economist.