While major network news continues with a slide in viewers, local stations seem to have lost less viewers and increased profits.
In a 2004 report by the State Of The News Media, it states that “local news has been enormously profitable.” According to the survey the report was compiled from…local news accounts for 46% of total station revenue. Let’s say that again because it feels so good. Local news advertising revenue makes up 46% of the average total station revenue. (No wonder that local news is up from the standard hour every evening up to 2 hours) In fact, less than 10% of the stations reported that their news operations lost money.
The major question the report seems to ask “is whether the industry might be wiser if it moved in the direction of slightly lower profit margins—still usually in excess of 40% ---in order to reinvest in stronger newsgathering and experiment in new programming, as a way of attracting a younger audience.” (mmmm ... Where have we heard that before?)
So why not?
Again, according to the report, station management is playing it safe. Local news plays such a crucial role in the station's revenue that they are fearful of upsetting the golden apple cart. (Imagine that!)
So now we know why stations would be reluctant to change let alone jettison local news. “It’s the dollar stupid.” First place or last place, news still brings in the money. In any other industry when you have a leader like this, you try to protect that investment by investing more. (Ask Sumner Redstone)
In a 2004 report by the State Of The News Media, it states that “local news has been enormously profitable.” According to the survey the report was compiled from…local news accounts for 46% of total station revenue. Let’s say that again because it feels so good. Local news advertising revenue makes up 46% of the average total station revenue. (No wonder that local news is up from the standard hour every evening up to 2 hours) In fact, less than 10% of the stations reported that their news operations lost money.
The major question the report seems to ask “is whether the industry might be wiser if it moved in the direction of slightly lower profit margins—still usually in excess of 40% ---in order to reinvest in stronger newsgathering and experiment in new programming, as a way of attracting a younger audience.” (mmmm ... Where have we heard that before?)
So why not?
Again, according to the report, station management is playing it safe. Local news plays such a crucial role in the station's revenue that they are fearful of upsetting the golden apple cart. (Imagine that!)
So now we know why stations would be reluctant to change let alone jettison local news. “It’s the dollar stupid.” First place or last place, news still brings in the money. In any other industry when you have a leader like this, you try to protect that investment by investing more. (Ask Sumner Redstone)
Indeed many news operations are currently taking the plunge in to HD newsgathering. Most Cleveland and Pittsburgh stations have or are in the process of that conversion.
Now don’t get ahead of me here. I am not advocating that the local stations move toward local HD news. That will happen with time… a very long time. But what I am advocating is that they invest more not less in their news operation. As has been shown, it can go right to the bottom line.
I have to admit; I am a news junkie and have been since the early days of WJET radio. Local news and the “new” media were made for each other and stations need to project themselves in the new technology more than just a website. “There’s revenue in them micro bits.” All that is needed is imagination which seems to be in local short supply.
News Directors should be given more…not less resources. Local television can be exciting again. If it continues the way it currently is, it will go the way of local radio, bland and lacking local definition. (There’s that word “definition” again.)
According to the same 2004 study, local television has to wake-up and respond or they will lose that valuable-- profitable audience. “Commercial and academic surveys suggest that at least a portion of the viewers who stopped watching local television news have done so because they find it repetitive, formulaic, sensationalized or insipid.” (They must have surveyed Mark Guy Findlay) “Brand loyalty is weakening and more viewers, research suggests, are likely sampling stations and churn through them.”
Perhaps one of the closing paragraphs of the report is probably the most revealing.
“The question of local television is which way it turns. The biggest threat it faces now is the paradox of an undernourished product that is in oversupply…In trying to differentiate one product from another, stations have tended to emphasis branding instead of content.”
In my opinion, this report has Erie clearly in its sites. I am convinced that local news directors probably know the message…I am not so sure their superiors have the same perspective until they take their nose out of their cash registers and find out far to late that there is a hole in the bottom of the boat.
“Bullwinkle…. Start Bailing.”
Now don’t get ahead of me here. I am not advocating that the local stations move toward local HD news. That will happen with time… a very long time. But what I am advocating is that they invest more not less in their news operation. As has been shown, it can go right to the bottom line.
I have to admit; I am a news junkie and have been since the early days of WJET radio. Local news and the “new” media were made for each other and stations need to project themselves in the new technology more than just a website. “There’s revenue in them micro bits.” All that is needed is imagination which seems to be in local short supply.
News Directors should be given more…not less resources. Local television can be exciting again. If it continues the way it currently is, it will go the way of local radio, bland and lacking local definition. (There’s that word “definition” again.)
According to the same 2004 study, local television has to wake-up and respond or they will lose that valuable-- profitable audience. “Commercial and academic surveys suggest that at least a portion of the viewers who stopped watching local television news have done so because they find it repetitive, formulaic, sensationalized or insipid.” (They must have surveyed Mark Guy Findlay) “Brand loyalty is weakening and more viewers, research suggests, are likely sampling stations and churn through them.”
Perhaps one of the closing paragraphs of the report is probably the most revealing.
“The question of local television is which way it turns. The biggest threat it faces now is the paradox of an undernourished product that is in oversupply…In trying to differentiate one product from another, stations have tended to emphasis branding instead of content.”
In my opinion, this report has Erie clearly in its sites. I am convinced that local news directors probably know the message…I am not so sure their superiors have the same perspective until they take their nose out of their cash registers and find out far to late that there is a hole in the bottom of the boat.
“Bullwinkle…. Start Bailing.”
"Congress passed a law on February 1, 2006, setting a final deadline for the DTV transition of February 17, 2009. Most television stations will continue broadcasting both analog and digital programming until February 17, 2009, when all analog broadcasting will stop.." FCC http://www.dtv.gov/
