If I ramble and wander, forgive me. Typing this after taking some painkillers for dental work...
Is modern technology and communication at odds with Television News Broadcasting as we know it? Internet newscasts, youtube, facebook and twitter.... It's how many people today get their information and entertainment. But how many are turning their backs on Broadcast Television? The ratings books would seem to prove that there are as many people as ever watching TV. While the viewership has fragmented to the hundreds of channels available to them, they are still watching TV. Why is it then that there is a general sense of "the sky is falling" in the TV News game in particular?
The sudden rise in social media coupled with the collapse in advertising dollars due to the slumping economy. Social media seems to be something tangible to point fingers at and place blame upon.
Remember most stations nowadays are owned by investment groups in it solely for the money and to squeeze every dime out of their properties and not individual families who quite often also view their respective stations as part of the communities in which they are licensed. As I have lamented more than once in the past, there may be other Ancil Paynes out there, but there are no more Dorothy Bullitts.
I have a long rant about social media and how stations are eff'ed if they don't participate, but I'll save that for another day...
The internet so far has NOT proved to be THE COMET to the current day TV NEWS DINOSAURS.
Network and local stations battle to be the first to get their stories and information onto the web, scooping their own big local news shows in the process. Where will it all end up?
The Internet I don't perceive as a threat to broadcast television news, at least not in the foreseeable future. Its more of a threat to newspapers as television news was to the theatrical newsreels in the 50s and 60s. Television is passive, you can have it on in the background as a multitasked activity while doing other things, whereas both the Internet and newspapers are something you have to participate in actively as the single thing you are doing at that time.
Granted the gutting of newspaper newsrooms due to competition from the Internet I fear greatly since internet operations do not have the broad resources to dig into major stories. Instead of typing out my thoughts, I'll just link to this
Nieman Journalism Lab article and
this one since Clay Shirky basically says what I want to. And most TV newsrooms are too small and overworked to take up the slack either.
What I consider the greatest piece of advise I was ever given in my career about this silly business of television came from an old-school KXLY/KAPP/KVEW manager I came to know long after he retired from commercial broadcasting. People will watch the local news only when they have a stake in the communities in which they reside. In other words, chasing after the latest easy story in order to attract younger crowds is a waste of time since they are not going to watch and you are better off to focus on gathering news that affects and interests your communities as a whole.
The Internet isn't going to kill television news. Rather its the push for more stories in a show covered as shallowly as possible - basically turning newscasts into superficial headline services that are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Yes I'm going to take this opportunity to slam the wholesale conversion of entire newsrooms to OMBs, MMJs or whatever the current consultant term du jour for them are. I do think they have their place in a newsroom, but not as complete 100% replacements of the traditional reporter/photog crew. Unless your idea of journalism arrives in your inbox via a press release or over a scanner, relying solely on OMBs to fill a newscast is a recipe for burnout, shallow stories and lost newsroom institutional knowledge as older reporters and photogs get driven out.
And putting stories online? Do remember not everyone is home at 5PM - or 6PM for that matter like they once were. Suzie Q. Homemaker who once was a large chunk of the audience for those timeslots is now Suzie Q. Working Mom who is stuck in rush hour traffic at 5:15PM trying to get to her kids daycare center. Unless your plan on having all your newscasts being repeats of each other, put the stories online for the benefit of those who can't watch the newscast - and if the figures I saw for one station I worked for are any indication, your station is making pretty good dough off those clicks anyway.
Okay, time to get off my soap box before I dive further into an incomprehensible rant.
