If you're a fan of your local TV news in Southern Alberta, you've probably noticed a few changes lately. A few close friends as well as acquaintances have recently decided to leave the industry and head to "greener pastures." The reasons have been varied but the bottom line seems to be relatively the same: the future is really uncertain.
None of them question the importance of locally-produced TV news, or journalism for that matter. But the medium in which it is produced and how it is carried is coming under heavy questioning, much like it has been for newspapers over the last few years. Everyone knows that change is on the horizon. They just don't know what that change looks like.
An old friend posted on Facebook recently about HOW local TV news is going to survive, especially in a world where more and more people are trading in their cable boxes in favour of services like Netflix, Shomi, Crave TV and others. Could local news outlets find a way to get their product on those services? Would you watch your local news, at your own leisure, if it were available on Netflix (for example)? Should it be an hour-long program? Half-hour? Or maybe you have a specific "channel" on these services, where you can just watch the stories that appeal to you, like you can do online?
This has been an interesting challenge for all media outlets (radio, TV and print) in recent years. I'm not sure if anyone has found that "happy medium" where they're meeting the expectations of both the traditional media and the new media, especially in the last few years as newsrooms have gotten smaller with layoffs. Either too much attention is being paid to the online side, or not enough.
What print has been battling and what TV is starting to face is the fact that the online side is immediate. No one (consumers) seems willing to wait for the paper to come out the next day, or for the supper-hour newscast on TV. So these outlets are pushing resources towards getting it online, whether it be through live-streaming news conferences or simply getting full stories up as soon as possible. Radio is facing this issue to a lesser-degree, because the expectation (at least when it comes to news-based stations) always has been and always will be that we'll have it on the radio right now (or in a couple minutes).
The result is that you're getting more news quickly, whether it be on a website, through Facebook, Twitter or any other social medium. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. How so, you ask? In the "traditional media" sense, when you had a big story, you promoted it, and your ratings would dictate whether it was a well-received story or not. In the online world (and in particular when it comes to those heavily-entrenched in that world), you're ultimately judged on how many retweets, likes, shares, impressions, click-throughs and views you get. Which is all well-and-good, but I've already seen it where a story which should be viewed as important to the population gets a couple of likes and a few views, yet a story with absolutely zero impact on the world (think cute kitten videos) gets hundreds of likes and thousands of views. By no means am I saying that journalism should be graded on this, but we do head down a slippery slope where some people will believe that it's those likes and views that are too important to avoid when you're talking about bottom lines. We're living in a world where "going viral" is more important than the actual story that is being told.
You also can't discount the fact that many people want their news delivered to them in a certain way. Politics is a great example of this. Don't agree with your perception of the "bias" of a certain outlet? Just find an outlet that more closely aligns with your views. It doesn't even have to be a traditional news organization. I've been shocked by how many friends are posting "stories" delivered by non-traditional media outlets, who haven't done their research and are missing some key facts to the story, or have their own bias. Yet those same friends say they hate the bias of what they like to call "the mainstream media." Traditional media isn't just facing off against one another, but they're also battling every blogger, commentator and guy/gal with an internet connection and an opinion, for their share of eyes and ears. The one thing I wonder about is trust. Do people trust traditional media anymore? If they don't, when was that trust broken? Who was to blame for that monumental shift in opinion? What would it take to earn that trust back? Or do some outlets want that trust back? I'll use the example of a centrist organization, where "tough questions" are asked of everyone. You'll have those on one side claiming the outlet is "obviously rooting for the other guys", yet those on the other side are ALSO saying that the outlet is "obviously rooting for the other guys." I've seen it. It's almost better for an outlet to be hated equally by everyone, as weird as that sounds.
The other challenge is already being felt by newspapers. Despite the fact they have done a great job in going online, the struggles with how to get people to pay for that product are apparent. Back in the day (I hate using that saying), you paid a buck or two to get the paper, and multiply that by a few hundred thousand, and you were able to pay for the resources it took to put the product together. But with fewer people buying an actual newspaper, they need to find ways to replace that income. They tried paywalls and that hasn't worked to the extent it was hoped, as people have found ways to get around the paywalls. Add in other online sources taking (aka stealing) that content and making it available to the public for free and the challenge is getting even harder. You can try to increase the amount of advertising inside, but with fewer eyes looking at it, the reach is declining, so advertisers are more hesitant to foot the bill. TV (and radio for that matter) is facing that same dilemma but still have a few eyes on their products. But even that's seeming to slow down.
Revenues are down, budgets are impacted, and you're starting to see the trickle down with fewer bodies trying to produce the same amount of on-air/on-paper/online content. The chances for "exclusives" or "in-depth" coverage become fewer and fewer because the reporters still there are just trying to make sure there's enough stories in the mix to fill what's needed. The idea of a "beat" (like health, education, crime, etc) is essentially gone, because there's not enough people around to break it down that far. The domino effect is quite apparent when you look at it.
What does this mean for the old TV newscast? Do you drop it down to 30-minutes from 60-minutes to meet the "content" challenges? Do you find a way to make newscasts available for consumers on "TV-on-demand" services so that they can watch that 30-minutes or 60-minutes at 6pm or 9pm or the next day? Do you get away from the morning, noon, evening and late-night casts? Do you change that structure at all? Do you focus solely on the stories themselves and getting them online as quickly as possible, with no real "schedule"? What kinds of stories are you going to push? For example, will local sports make a comeback, as that's has essentially been chopped out of local 6pm newscasts?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I don't know if anyone does. But it's definitely worth the discussion, as I believe TV news is and should continue to be an important part of our world.
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