When I started in television news...the news programs at tv stations were never expected to truly make a profit. This is pre CNN, pre Reagan, pre...stone age, I guess.
My point being, the only reason so many stations started doing news was because management realized there was a profit potential. Newsrooms expanded, lots more jobs, more money spent trying to compete, fewer sales department directed news coverage...make it non profit again and the layoffs we've seen over the last few years will be a drop in the bucket to what would happen to newscasts.
Be careful what you wish for!
Well, you may be right. However, I remember a few years ago, when a
major car manufacturer was doing the 'Onstar Giveaway'. They had like 5
or 10 cars nationwide (unsure on the exact number) that were going
to be GIVEN away. All you had to do, was go in to a local dealer, and
push the 'Onstar button' and the person on the other end told you if you
won a car or not. Obviously, this increased traffic at dealers of this
particular brand of car, plus it pushed awareness of the Onstar system.
(I think this event may occur every year now, but this was the first
year they did it.) Anyways, in my little remote town there were
THREE people that won cars.....with only 30 thousand people in the
area. And to make it even more amusing, our town is cut off by land,
no roads in or out, so these winners could drive their cars over the
same 50 miles of roads over and over...LOL. Anyways, I was contacted
by a news station and asked how much I would charge to 'freelance' this
story as the station didn't have a shooter in my town. I had got out of
staff positions at TV stations for many reasons, but sometimes would get
hired as freelance for a day or two by TV stations around the state because
no stations really keep a staff of any type, in my part of the state.
It seemed like a funny little 'fluff' piece, so I gave them a quote and they hired me. (That should have been a warning as this particular station was not exactly known for putting money into their news product to put it kindly)
Now as it turns out, this car dealer was also a client of mine for it's
local TV ads. I went in to interview the winner, and the manager and so on. While talking with the manager, I found out that the news station had told him
it would cost 'X dollars to get this story on the news'. The amount was the
exact amount I had quoted the station to hire me for the day...