This post was originally published on this site
As someone who has dedicated their career to working in and leading local television newsrooms of various sizes and markets across this country, I’ve been reading with some interest Sean McLaughlin’s new series of columns here in TVNewsCheck titled “Reinventing the News.” Our industry faces some fundamental challenges to its very survival, so this topic isn’t one that anyone who cares about working in local television should take lightly. And I say that as someone who has done a fair amount of building and rebuilding of some great local television newsrooms.
But I think it may be helpful to conduct a bit of a reality check on the paths for reinvention that have been suggested, along with a look back at how we arrived at this point in the first place.
The news operations of most local TV stations came into their own in the 1970s, when many owners discovered that aside from being a long-standing FCC requirement to keep the license, successful news operations could be very significant contributors to a station’s bottom line. The cottage industry of news consulting and research quickly emerged, ready to assist in emulating whatever might have worked in any other television markets across the nation. On-air “talent” became very essential to a station’s news success, and the marketplace for talent quickly became as competitive as the free agency marketplace in any professional sports league.
There were other factors in