Comments on: Local TV and defining ‘quality’

By: RW

RW — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:55:13 +0000

One of the biggest problems with the WNBC attempt is that they are truly the last person in.
New York City is ringed by local cable news outlets. Each of the five boroughs [counties] comprising the city itself has local cable news … competing companies in two of them – with multiple platform availabilities and superb channel placement on any mode of cable tv [like 1, 8 or 12]. What will be the big, unique selling point for WNBC?
What’s on channel 4 for the most part will still be NBC network programming, syndicated shows and the usual morning, 5,6, 11 deal. All sub-channels are banished to the channel boonies on all cable boxes, and are non-existent on DirecTV or Dish. Not a big market for converters here. High cable penetration … even in the ‘burbs.
This experiment in television will be closely watched – especially as WNBC itself is a highly unionized, rather inflexible outfit, on- and off-camera.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:37:41 +0000

The future isn’t in a 3 inch window in a 17″ CRT picture either. It should be obvious to anybody that when you sit down in you home to view all this so-called convergence, you want it on something the size of your TELEVISION SET…not some dopey toy with a 1.5 year useful lifespan.

By: Rick Ellis

Rick Ellis — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:01:26 +0000

Painful as it might be in the short term, the move towards “content centers” is only going to accelerate. In three years, I suspect almost all newsrooms will have made that transition. Tearing down the walls between TV, web, mobile and other platforms makes sense, but it’s tough to make that happen logistically when you’re dealing with a lot of legacy media issues.

As for WNBC, a lot of the problem there seems to communications and the overall flailing around at NBC’s station group. They’ve went through three or fours cycles of “reinvention,” each one almost at odds with the last great idea. It’s no wonder that their employees are scared, confused and a bit defiant.

If you’re going to make wholesale changes, then you need to preface it with the explanation of why it needs to be done, and why it help ensure the quality of the ultimate news product. When you start the conversation with “hey, the ad market sucks, we need to cut jobs,” and then introduce the newsroom changes, you’re going to get serious pushback from employees who see the changes as more about saving money than reinventing the newsroom.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:19:34 +0000

Local media will ride the Titanic down to the ocean floor before they concede the need to invest beyond the next news cycle in the future of their business by putting more quality resources into their web initiatives to find and exploit each and every content and revenue opportunity from the community-wide level down to the city block level.

Because of that TV and Newspapers will continue to be the primary ‘decider’ of “quality” while the web, now more than a dozen years into it, will continue to be called “New Media” and be treated as a lark at the local level, freeing up pure-play Internet sites from outside the local market to swoop in and grab the eyeballs and revenue share traditional sites continue to blow off.

By: tdc

tdc — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:36:07 +0000

even in vp picks

By: Brink

Brink — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:16:44 +0000

Popularity does not equal quality.

Even on the web.

By: tdc

tdc — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:14:07 +0000

and in piggybacking what dave said about the user being ‘the decider’- i recently heard a highly respected (means highly paid) director on a corporate board say the digital switch is all about ‘quality’.

that should come as no surprise,that seems to be the industry line

the kicker was that person he was saying this to was one of their longest running (means highly paid) female anchors who said “but it’s only a picture”.

people ain’t buying the ‘quality’ thing just like they didn’t buy the ‘content is king’ thing.

By: tdc

tdc — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:54:06 +0000

funny you should cite nbcnewyork as your example.

it might be good to re-read the nytimes article from may 8th, i just did.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:33:53 +0000

Quality takes a backseat to relevance…
Today, relevance is decided by the user, not the newsroom.

By: Tracy @ WSB

Tracy @ WSB — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:25:22 +0000

No apologies needed, we don’t pretend to be art. And fwiw I did win three Emmys, which are gathering dust over the washing machine, three feet away from the laundry-room newsroom nerve center, so I’m not totally Awardless in Seattle.

To your point, though, even in my days as a TV newsroom manager, as much as now, my definition of quality included ACCURACY and CLARITY, FIRST AND FOREMOST. And even reporters who toiled over a script for days (OMG, the sweeps pieces …) didn’t always achieve that – and even beautiful NPPA-quality photojournalistic creativity sometimes got in the way of the clarity of the storytelling – so I agree that the handwringing over quality can be misplaced.

Worry about being correct and clear before you worry about being creative. The three traits can go together, but the first two are VASTLY more important than the third.