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Two well-groomed anchors sit behind a sleek news desk, a bright, high-definition screen behind them. They present the news of the hour, jumping back and forth between horrific car crashes, local crime and human-interest stories, occasionally bantering between them and tossing the news to weather, sports or traffic. Every now and then, a reporter pops up on a local street, doing a stand up.
This local news format is well known to television viewers, largely because it has barely changed since local news programs began in earnest in the late 1970s. But in the age of TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and during a time when all of this information is readily available via app of choice, this format is no longer holding viewers’ attention. If TV stations want to remain in the local news business — and they should, since it is what makes them unique — they need to rip up that blueprint and start from a new and modern perspective, said Sean McLaughlin, VP of news, Graham Media Group, at TVNewsCheck’s Local Television Strategies summit at the NAB Show New York last week.
“There’s a lot of denial going on,” McLaughlin said. “I look at metrics all day long and everything I see freaks me out. But changing this is unbelievably hard, I mean, it’s shaved years off my life. It takes a commitment, plan, strategy, research and data-backed decisions. We’ve got to get rid of this ‘get me through the day, week, month, quarter, mentality that’s happening.’”