Lost Remote emeritus Steve Safran and the rest of the team at AR&D have published a new book that encapsulates the tremendous challenges facing the local TV industry. “Live. Local. BROKEN News. The Re-engineering of Local TV” advocates fresh, strategic approaches to reinvent the industry that is shaping up to be in a lot of trouble. I have yet to read the book, but knowing the authors, it’s a very similar message to what I’ve been writing on Lost Remote for 10 years now.
Of course, the first stage is admitting the industry is in trouble, beyond the current economic woes. Like Safran and company, I harbor a deep fear that local television is headed down a very dangerous path. For me, it hinges on these points, of which I’ll elaborate on later (and I imagine many of them are discussed in AR&D’s new book):
1. Networks and studios increasingly taking their video content directly to users. It’s only a matter of time before the network-affiliate model evaporates.
2. An increasing number of people — soon to be a majority — are getting their news from the web and mobile devices, not TV. And local TV’s cash cow is TV news, not online news, not mobile news. TV-sized dollars aren’t translating to the web. Sound familiar?
3. The high cost of producing video due to legacy cost structures is inhibiting innovative video creation, leaving local TV stations with cookie-cutter news broadcasts that typically don’t perform well in an on-demand environment. Stations need to produce highly original, exclusive, unique video content on multiple platforms at a low enough cost to drive a profit.
4. As video consumption becomes primarily on-demand, local TV loses control over distribution. (Start screens and home pages matter more than channel position. Lead-ins become irrelevant.)
5. The growing ability of cable TV to target ads down to individual households, capturing the long-tail of video advertising. Broadcast can’t target.
6. People don’t think of local TV sites when they’re looking for information for local businesses, which puts stations at a disadvantage when competing for small-and-medium business dollars. Google and other pure plays’ increasing dominance in online advertising for SMBs is quickly extending to video.
7. Local TV’s eroding dominance in key content areas on the web: weather, traffic, sports and entertainment, to name a few. National sites are out-performing local sites on local content. (See ESPNChicago.com for the latest example). And local TV has no community — Facebook and Twitter connect more local people than local TV websites.
Of course, this won’t happen overnight. Local TV is still a tremendous reach vehicle. But if history is a guide, the industry is in for a very rude awakening that extends well beyond our current economic woes IF it doesn’t aggressively work to reinvent itself.
No related posts.
I think the comment of the network-affiliate model going away is right on.
I think the ESPNChicago model is the first that I’ve seen of local content on national channels that I think really could compete, and compete hard against the locals because it’s relevant, personal and if staffed correctly, could do real well.
I don’t think the computer-generated, facts only, weather content from national providers, nor the agate-style headlines and wire story re-writes or links to TV stations that dominate Yahoo! local and Weather.com are a threat to local content among locals.
I’ve yet to see the personalization and relevance to the local market on most stories on those national sites and most national weather use broad, just the facts ‘mam style of presentation that I think loses out to locals.
However, local sites need beware.
It will be interesting to see what discussions come out of next week’s NAB. If it’s the same ol same ol from the past few years, that would be a shame. And it will show us, even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, local stations still believe they can just change the cost structure alone and they are due for a comeback. Costs are only one part of the story, as Cory says above.
If you are not providing a product people want and see value, it doesn’t matter how much it costs.
You’re on another planet. Phone home.
How about doing something different on their sidebands? There you’ve got a chance to experiment without risk. It’s filler anyway right now. Or make your main channel newscast headlines only and in-depth stories online, or the opposite. If neighborhood news works for West Seattle Blog, why not try that on the sidebands? Do a live hour for each neighborhood two or three times a day and rotate and repeat, like Headline News used to do. Do community events live with a little two or three camera truck. Use student camera people. Put it on the sideband. Do a trade with a car dealer, if the spots sell cars, the station gets a cut. Why should the advertiser take all the risk? If you believe you can sell product, then prove it.
Cory:
I think you’re on target. Why do people watch TV or read a newspaper? For entertainment and/or information. If networks stream their programming directly to consumers via their own cable channel, or the Web, viewers no longer need local TV stations to watch the latest episodes of their favorite shows.
If websites provide national and world news and information more quickly and on demand, viewers no longer need TV stations to get that kind of news. Which leaves local news as the last refuge. And if TV stations aren’t willing to go hyper-local to differentiate themselves, they’re in trouble.
I’m not suggesting that they do 24 hours of every fire and every car wreck. Quite the contrary. Local TV stations can become far more issues and community oriented. Like Dan suggests above, why not establish alliances with neighborhood newspapers and enlist these reporters’ help in covering issues that really matter to people? Why not, as I’ve suggested before, do an Olbermann/O’Reilly-style hour, with several signature long-form pieces leading into discussions from both sides of the coin?
Nah…it’ll never happen. The dinosaurs are too big to die.
You’ve got to fix the product before you worry about brand, but brand is an interesting way to look at the problem. In the broadcast world, “local TV” meant 3 stations with fairly similar news products. In the new world, most stations are not the first brand for either “local” (it’s probably a newspaper’s web site) OR “tv” (it’s cable or youtube). Smart stations will fix the product for an on-demand world and brand themselves with city.com or city.tv to make it clear that “local is their domain.”
You have some of it right. Some way off base.
Yes, local news is broken. It not due to technology, new or old. It is due to a lack of imagination. In the haiku form of local news you can create many forms,besides what you now see. Everyone folos the pattern that works, established in the late 60’s by Al Primo and his Action News crowd. The other issue, is they all are the same in content. they cover the same stories in the same important to more frivolous order and rank.
The answer is strong stories, well told. One of a kind reporters, and anchors, yes, working strong communicators.
All the domain and twitter and vod and viral stuff is extra, redundant for now, and makes no money. Until an economic model of vod emerges, the news will originate in broadcast and be reused. All this flutter over mobile etc, is just that fluffing with no lift.
Fix the broadcasts, get out of linear blocking, go for alternative stories, and find kick ass on air talent. BTW,one man bands are bull as well. The division of labor in reporting exists for a reason. Reporters break news, photogs don’t. If you want journalism to just die, force everyone to be a camerman and a reporter. Maxheadroom was a flop.
Dan, you’ve pretty much described KTVB’s 24/7 all morning plus a 24.7-only second half of the 6? and 10 pm newscasts (while ET and the Tonight Show is running)
sidebands? now there’s an idea. how far away are we from the date? <60 days?
and what plans do ANY have to make use of these?
anyone???
btw- #6, great id, still chuckling. problem there lies in the fact that newspapers moved early on these domains and the remainder are fragmented so that the idea of herding cats comes to mind.
and #7, if you wait “until an economic model emerges for vod” you’ll be in the same boat descrided in the previous paragraph. best of luck with those white knuckles.
as an aside, the once beloved polaroid company just sold in bankruptcy court for about $90M.
at the tender age of about 7, i so loved my “swinger” camera back in the ’60’s (click my id)
I don’t think the common experience will ever completely be replaced by a fully personalized on-demand world. We still need something to help us interact with one another. I agree with many of the points made above. But I also think we’re missing a big point.
So much of local news is just BAD. The tone of “fake indignation” that just tries to stir the pot of controversy — whether one exists or not — does not help me understand the news. Even the way some reporters and anchors speak/scream gets in the way. From the story select to the sets to the crazy graphics, its way too over the top.
I’m sorry to say that I think the AR&D folks (who circulate those ridiculous sweeps story ideas, come in to coach the anchors and consult on presentation help) don’t help the situation.
How much actual local news (that doesn’t get hand delivered in a press conference or release of some sort) does local TV news actually gather or report?
There is no way a local TV news story that cites generic “officials,” is at most three sentence fragments long and paraphrases a press release, is going to translate into a Web environment. That’s why local news sites rarely compete with local newspapers.
I worked in local TV news before spending years at top national news Web site. NPR is now my #1 source of news.
(Wasn’t TV suppose to make Radio pointless?)
NPR has found a way to have interesting people tell interesting stories. After I listen to NPR, I feel more informed and engaged in the world.
I absolutely cannot say that about any local TV news. If someone could be brave enough not to follow the pack and completely re-invent the concept of local TV news around LOCAL NEWS, the audience and the money wouldn’t be searching for something new.
Thanks for noticing, invited…. yes, it would be herding cats if someone wanted to roll up domain names in lots of markets. But if you look city by city, there are there are .com and .tv names that are owned by local design shops, domain parkers or passive investors – folks who probably would be happy to sell for the equivalent of a year or two of an anchor’s salary. It might cost six figures, but you wouldn’t need to worry about it jumping to another station when it’s contract runs out!
I find it highly ironic that the type of people (consultants) who cause local television news to become so bland and cookie-cutter from market to market is trying to sell us a book of cures.
What ever happened to covering LOCAL news and looking within your own newsroom for ideas? There’s people in your newsrooms who have been there forever and knows what does and doesn’t work in your market. Talk to them.
sutb,
sounds like sound reasoning. hope it works out well.
i’d ‘invite’ you to consider the larger picture… borrow a page from dr. dean’s playbook, how about a 50 state strategy?
his methods were deemed unconventional, yet the results weren’t too shabby.
remember, any one web property is merely a “pixel”. the trick might be to garner as many pixels as possible?
it remains to be seen how espn and nbc will tackle their 50 state strategy, but one thing is evidently
encroaching on some otherwise closed craniums– you’ll win locally by winning nationally (and vice versa).
invitedmedia: Not SIDEBANDS, the carrier is diveded into one main signa anssubchannels (of lower resolution) before being encoded and transmitted.
A couple of thoughts –
#1 All the buzz involves networks cutting out the affiliates, but it’s not just them. Syndies are also headed that way.
#2 — that’s the gordian knot of 21st century journalism. Fix it and everything else becomes cake. I still don’t understand exactly why an advertiser pays more for a TV car commercial I fast forward through or a Macy’s newspaper ad I ignore than for a relevant, targeted internet based ad that has a far better chance of actually working. I’m not a business guy, but it sort of feels like the kind of logic that leads to AAA-rated bonds backed by optionARM mortgages on $500,000 homes owned by immigrant farm workers in Fresno
#3 — This is personally the most frustrating problem — I work primarily on the old school linear broadcast side, and any work online is an addition or sideline thing. EVERY DAY I wish we were doing more “highly original, exclusive, unique video content on multiple platforms.”
The cost structure issue is one of the main reasons we don’t have the resources to do that — we’re covering the “must covers,” frequently the same must covers the other shops are covering.
But here’s the rub, IMHO — the front line workers reflexively view any move to change that cost structure as a way to cut costs on their back, not as a move to help the organization produce better content. The big problem is frequently they’re right. That’s a trust issue that can only be fixed by leadership both from news managers and, crucially, managers outside the newsroom.
Standard caveat: as a producer I will inevitably be overworked and underpaid no matter what “cost structure” we use. I have no dog in this fight. The only way it affects me is in a) the quality of what I put on TV and b) the prospect that changing our cost structure means I lose the gig. That would free me to go back to one of the other jobs I’ve worked, everyone of which paid better than this one (but weren’t as much fun)
#15,
thank you for correcting me.
i noticed over the weekend two of the larger 3rd party providers have redone their corp. web property. maybe j-i-t for rtnda?
one calls out one of the others in this way: “straight forward pricing that eliminates hidden costs and costly upsells”.
who could they be calling out?
which lead me to wonder, how quickly will some entity like the googeyman introduce a channel management system and offer it free of charge with hosting on world-class servers and a cut of the built-in ad revenue from their existing ad network thereby oblit’ing the third-party provider concept?
just wondering.
So the masterminds who have been directing American broadcast media for so long as CONsultants now say the model is broken and offer oh so many ideas on how to fix it???
Here’s an idea. You run a “local” news op…then report local news. Don’t cut away in the middle of your newscast to our “world wrap” or news across America… make important stories longer or have some sort of interactivity poll, email Q&A or as much as th fad is Tweets.
The CON sultants should be held accountable for leading the lemmings over the edge as much as the lemmings for taking the bait.
What’s wrong with local broadcasting is numbers drive all decisions, thus station #1 is mimicked by station #3 and station #2 looking to move up copies station #1 in Fargo.
So basically all local news is watered down and story count driven. The overnight numbers didn’t work on that series so lets do something that worked in Nashville.
This just in…the system has been broken and you broke it!
Preposterous. I wish to hell there were enough to report on in my area that they didn’t get to REPEAT IT every 10 minutes from 5-7 am to fil between Early TODAY and TODAY.
Is the HYPER-local broken also? Where are the new stories?