Comments on: Make local TV news more like TV again

By: Foxy

Foxy — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:59:26 +0000

very good point.

By: t

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:01:45 +0000

To buck a powerful trend might be too late. We have conditioned people.

By: t

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:01:26 +0000

To buck a powerful trend might be too late. We have conditioned people

By: Larry Hatteberg

Larry Hatteberg — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:22:06 +0000

Cory,
I thought your column was excellent! It’s a great springboard for other discussions on how we can save local TV.

I’ve been a video storyteller (photojournalist) and anchor for 45 years and I still do both.

Much of that time has been spent educating others on the value of video storytelling. At this point, watching local TV is painful because we have hit bottom! We tell viewers stories they don’t care about or have heard on the net. In-depth, insightful reporting is no longer part of what we do.

Simply having a reporter standing there talking to the viewer is an incredible poor use of a powerful medium. We lose the emotion of real people –people who talk from the heart–people who can ’sell’ the story to other viewers in ways reporters can’t.

We need visionaries, who as you say, can understand the power of the Internet, then link that power with video storytelling on TV and use both mediums to their fullest.

People and time and key to good storytelling. We can’t automate the process. There is no software that can take the place of great storytellers!

Your premise is good! Now all we have to do is find those brave souls in management who are willing to buck a powerful trend from the corporate office.

I’m on your side….and ready for the revolution!

By: Alyssa

Alyssa — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:10:04 +0000

And sometimes the attempt at a local angle of a national story just ends up trying to hard.
Ex:” Joe’s cousin in NJ lived near the factory that caught fire and he said his cousin said it was really scary and smelled awful…”

By: Kent

Kent — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:48:08 +0000

Hear! Hear!
It’s worth mentioning that the kind of story-telling you’re suggesting invariably costs more to produce - which flies in the face of all the cutbacks. And it’s the special-project teams that frequently get cut first i.e. the enterprise reporting staff. So it would seem that once again, broadcasters are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing.
(Shameless plug warning!) It’s also exactly why we founded NewsProNet 11 years ago…

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:03:28 +0000

“Newsrooms are afraid to cover stories that aren’t teasable. But “teasable” has a narrow definition: urgent, dangerous, unbelievable, sexy! And frankly, these kinds of lowest-common-denominator teases are repelling normal people from television to the web.”

Judging from a shallow comparison between the comments on say, Sacbee.com and News10.com, the people we’d wished had been repelled have swarmed en masse, turgid opinions at the ready.

By: Curtis Gibby

Curtis Gibby — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:30:15 +0000

I shared your column with my newsroom today and invariably got positive responses — yes, this is the kind of news we should be putting on the air. But having people say it and actually doing it are two very different beasts, I’m afraid. I think it was an important reminder of the ideal, regardless of the realities we face.

By: tdc

tdc — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:19:28 +0000

might i suggest using the link thru terry heaton’s upgrade-in-progress to ar-d where you can see steve safran making “news” with a $150 camera?

By: Cory

Cory — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:42:16 +0000

Barney, yes, TV is still the primary local source for news, but ratings are dropping steadily in all dayparts (except in some cases, the morning hours).

That’s why TV newsrooms need to act now. To presume that this decrease is just cyclical would be a big mistake. Whenever a company or an industry identifies a sustained decline in consumption of its product, it must reinnovate.

By: Barney Lerten

Barney Lerten — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:41:30 +0000

And yet… don’t surveys show TV is still a major, if not the major local news info source for a vast number of people? Are we sounding the death knell too soon?

I fear overreaction as much as underreaction. What I find myself fighting is the “always/nevers” - the “we should always do this” or “never do that” - or the swings between the two extremes (which we’ve done on issues such as repeating stories). It reminds me of when they reorganize a favorite grocery store, and figure folks won’t mind. They mind. One person’s rut is another person’s comfort zone;-)

By: TR

TR — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:01:38 +0000

I think #4 is a very good point.

However, perhaps my four months out of TV still don’t give me enough distance to be a real viewer, because I won’t sit still to watch 95% of what passes as these lovingly shot and edited features. There are the rare occasions when the story is really worth 3 or 4 minutes of my time. Very very very rare. I personally don’t think TV can be saved. It’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just that linear media have been rendered obsolete. JMNSHO.

By: El Dangeroso

El Dangeroso — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:22:03 +0000

Yes. Now, how to convince our news directors that a blogger’s opinion should carry just as much weight as that slick-haired, highly-paid consultant or puffy, multi-ethnic focus group?