Rick McLaughlin is the news director at WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi. He has been part of Hearst Television since 2010 , having worked in Cincinnati and Orlando before his recent move to Jackson. He says he learned to look at social media differently in the aftermath …
People get weather warnings from sirens, see the text at the bottom of the screen and watch reports on television; they hear alerts over the radio, and receive notifications on their smartphones. Still, there are deaths each year not just from tornadoes, but also hurricanes, …
Audience research consistently shows weather is a primary driver of news audience in every TV newsroom. And in many markets, members of the weather team are some of the most popular people on air. At WTVA in Tupelo, Matthew Laubhan is a fan …
There is a lot of discussion in the industry right now about improving the quality of local TV news. (Full disclosure: RTDNA researcher Bob Papper and I produced a report on the state and future of local TV news with funding from the Knight …
Photo by Abbie McIntosh. Bill Anderson is a veteran in the world of broadcast news. Anderson started out about 33 years ago when he accepted his first job as a photojournalist in Savannah, Georgia. A graduate of Missouri’s Journalism School, Anderson has worked in multiple markets, …
Believe it or not, stations have been doing sweeps pieces for more than 40 years. The concept first became popular during the late 1970s, a time when stations had a virtually captive audience. The first efforts were big deals, designed to make viewers watch multiple nights. They …
Local TV newsrooms face no shortage of challenges these days in the digital era: audience, revenue, technology and more. According to eMarketer, more than 22 million US adults canceled their cable and telco services in 2017. The figure was 15.4 million in 2016. They did …
Though television remains the predominant supplier of local news in the US, online media has become a serious competitor. According to a study of the TV news industry, there are two things to consider in understanding news media trend lines clearly: One is news consumption …
Television has a bright future if it can adapt to the times and focus on its brand, its consumers and the technology its viewers have chosen, says a veteran industry executive. “The brand is not television,” Hank Price said. “Television is an extension of the brand. …
Though YouTube has been around since 2005, local TV stations have been slow to embrace the platform in any substantive way. There are exceptions, though, such as the FOX and ABC affiliates in Phoenix. Kevin Clay is the digital director for the Scripps-owned KNXV in Phoenix. …
It should be simple, right? Thousands of young people get broadcast journalism degrees every year, so why is it so hard for TV news stations to fill producer jobs? Part of the problem is that many students have dreams of anchoring the nightly newscast or …
As newspaper readership continues to decline and local TV news struggles to maintain its share of the audience, much is written about the impact on the business challenges for both. What can get lost in the conversation is the fact that local media are often …
