I'm not in that business but to me it would seem to make sense to produce new shows in a somewhat hierarchical fashion, from global to local.
The idea would be to produce enough national or international news to fill an entire show but place the more boring parts of it together such that they could be replaced by local segments. Then a local affiliate could run the entire show or add their own local news if they happened to have any.
This would maintain the economy of scale at the top layer(s) but allow more competitive local stations to still spend varying amounts of money on their own news local operations as appropriate for the availably of either money, audience, or interesting news content.
It's easy to imagine this being done with a 3 or 4 layer scheme from international down to local, with segments being replaced along the way by anyone who had something useful to display.
At the low end local stations could choose not to bother, just passing on regional or national news.
Do they currently do any such thing now? - Tom Craig Birkmaier wrote:
At 9:13 AM -0800 1/6/07, John Willkie wrote:> -----Original Message-----From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]I suspect that this is a major factor in the "deal" between WESH and NBC. Taking it a step further, all "local" TV news is moving to a regional basis as viewership declines and costs continue to increase. The same thing that happened to newspapers is now happening to TV news. There's simply not enough audience to support three or four local news operations.Pshaw on both counts. I'll let you know when San Diego/Tijuana local news is served out of Los Angeles (120 miles away), and/or when LA local news is served out of San Diego/Tijuana.Apples and oranges. San Diego is a huge market (#27). What I am talking about is the trrend to consolidate news operations around smaller markets - e.g importing news from Jacksonville and Orlando to serve the Gainesville market. That being said. the issue of loss of audience and too many news operations is affecting ALL markets. It is likely that San Diego will have one of two local news operations for many years to come. But the 3rd, 4th and smaller operations are going to disappear in the next decade.The newspaper situation isn't informative or relevant. First, TV was free and readily available in the afternoons and evening, the former prime marketof PM papers. PM papers also had their issues with suburbanization, automobility and the traffic patterns when they were distributing to 'newsboys' and rack-boxes. All except the very largest cities always had more TV stations than newspapers.You are right about there not being audience to support three or four localnews operations. Here are the San Diego/Tijuana local TV news operations (non-duplicated) TV XETV Fox 4 hours daily KNSD (NBC operated but not fully owned) 3.5 hours daily KFMB-TV (-AM, -FM) CBS 3 or more hours daily KUSI (Independent) News briefs each hour of the day, and about 5 hours daily, plus plans to have an all-news virtual channel in short orderKGTV / etc (ABC in English/Azteca America in espanol) about 3.5 hours dailyin English, and about 1.5 in Spanish KPBS-TV (PBS) 1/2 hour m-f XEWT Televisa (same owner as XEWT; non duplicated news) 4 hours daily Newspapers San Diego-Union Tribune Frontera (Tijuana) El Mexican (Tijuana) Union-Tribune's circulation is flat or declining for a decade, somethinglike 250,000. Frontera is less than a decade old, and I can't remember allthe TJ dailies. However, total newspaper circulation in TJ is something like 50,000 (city of 2.5 million)That's just local news. There are more local newscasts south of the border,but I think they're duplicated. Maybe, just maybe, your area -- or is it the whole state of Florida -- is just lagging )-:maybe the situation in your area is somewhat unique, as you are combining TV operations from two countries, not just two adjacent markets. And MAYBE it has something to do with the huge Spanish language audience in your area. What i said stands. Half of the stations on your list will be out of the news business within a decade.Regards Craig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
-- Tom Barry trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx Find my resume and video filters at www.trbarry.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.