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After a year of rapid, pandemic-compelled innovation, TV news’ lasting future will lie in how effectively it’s able to hold on to the relevance and usefulness it has shown viewers.
It will also need to build upon a commitment to inclusion inspired by Black Lives Matter protests this year and make more targeted efforts to learn more about its audience, namely through initiatives like membership programs, a panel of industry leaders said Dec. 18 while tackling the notion of “News 2022: The Reshaping of Programming, Technology and Audience” at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum.
Frank Mungeam
Technologically, broadcasters went through “10 years of transformation in 10 months,” said Frank Mungeam, the Local Media Association’s chief innovation officer.
A lot of that massive change has been for the better, said Fred Fourcher, Bitcentral founder and CEO, including doubling the amount of content created and shared between stations in a group.
Lora Dennis, SVP digital at NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, said conversations in the wake of the George Floyd murder led the broadcaster to “reimagine who we interview, how we describe what’s happening.”
The change has been powerful and empowering for the journalists who now feel like they can cover stories differently, she said.
David Friend
“We have to get past the usual suspects,” David Friend, SVP of news at CBS Television Stations, said. “The information we can handle. It’s about the