No news is bad news (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

As a top anchor in Los Angeles, John Beard worked during the heyday of local TV news -- covering earthquakes, riots and the occasional celebrity on the loose.

Beard was a familiar presence on L.A. TV screens for 30 years, via lead anchor roles on KNBC and then KTTV. But three decades after arriving on the West Coast from Buffalo, Beard is back where he started, anchoring a morning newscast in that small western New York community.

Beard had a great run in the nation's No. 2 market -- but his exit is indicative of how local TV news is changing across the country.

If you think local TV news is irrelevant and has long sacrificed real news coverage for flash and trash, just wait until stations have no money to even pretend they're covering the important stuff.

Despite their obligations as inhabitants of the public airwaves, cash-strapped stations may find it even more difficult to properly inform the public.

Once upon a time, local TV stations were a license to print money -- and were frequently the most profitable link in a media conglom's portfolio.

Those stations' newscasts were a great business (and continue to generate nearly half a station's revenue) -- even if news purists scoffed at the medium's time-consuming "happy talk" and focus on sensational crimes and inane human-interest stories.

But stations don't generate the kind of major profits they once did. And as the biggest expense at most TV outlets, news operations are feeling the pain.

The once-proud operations are slashing costs and, in the process, downsizing news coverage and dumping highly paid and experienced talent.

This aspect of the industry had been facing viewership erosion and the impact of consolidation/cost-cutting when it was smacked hard with a new threat last year: the recession and advertising slowdown.

As local and national spot advertising dries up, profit margins have shrunk to lows not seen by stations in modern times.

In some cases, local TV stations are facing the same problems as local newspapers: fewer advertisers (as department stores vanish and auto dealerships struggle) and dollars shifting to other platforms, like the Internet.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008 was "a difficult one for local television and its newsrooms on almost every front," and 2009 looks "even grimmer."

It's not all gloom and doom: KCBS/KCAL prexy-general manager Patrick McClenahan says he's encouraged by an uptick in automotive advertising this fall, and has just relaunched his news product with the backing of a major marketing campaign.

First it was consolidation, which in several markets merged or took away some formerly separate news operations. In Los Angeles, for example, seven English-language stations used to maintain newsrooms; after the KCBS-KCAL and KTTV-KCOP mergers, that number has decreased to five.

Some station groups took to combining efforts like weather reports and some news coverage all from one hub -- most infamously, Sinclair Broadcast Group's "News Central" setup, in which viewers in spots like Oklahoma City might not have realized their weathercaster was standing in a Baltimore studio.

Then came the massive cutbacks in some operations across the country. In Los Angeles, KTTV/KCOP recently slashed 100 jobs, cutting its operation to the bone. The Washington Post reported that Fox-owned WTTG may have its anchors operate their own TelePrompTers, via their hands and feet.

Other stations have made do without sportscasters (or sports staffs), and several outlets across the country have cut loose their multimillion-dollar anchors.

As the New York Times noted last year, legendary anchors in Boston, Houston and Denver were axed last year. Earlier this year, Broadcasting & Cable heralded the dawn of the "Post Star Anchor Era" in TV news.

This year, the tally of ex-anchors included L.A. vet Paul Moyers, who was upset enough about the circumstance that he declined to show up in the newsroom to give a proper farewell. (KNBC was forced to send a camera crew to the country club where Moyer was playing golf, in order to extract an on-air sign-off.)

Stations also have increased their use of per-diem staffers, who essentially work for hire, without any benefits.

"The biggest problem as I see it, and I admittedly have a built-in bias," Beard says, "is that news division cuts disproportionately hit more experienced and higher-paid personnel. That means you lose reporters, anchors and producers who know their craft and know their city.

In other parts of the country, news operations have folded up altogether or downsized newscasts. A battle is raging in Honolulu, where the owner of the NBC affiliate is taking over operations of the station's cross-town CBS rival -- and will begin simulcasting via just one news operation on both stations.

In markets large and small, stations are using fewer people to shoot, edit and produce news video (as reporters increasingly double as videographers). Gannett's D.C. outlet WUSA already has replaced news crews with what it calls "multimedia journalists."

Even engineers are out, replaced by automated computers that control audio and video. (Visitors to a news set might be taken aback by the robotic cameras, as camera operators have long since been replaced by joysticks.)

In another recent change, rivals in markets across the country are banding together to form local news alliances in which they share resources, such as camera crews and helicopters.

In Chicago, for example, Fox's WFLD, NBC's WMAQ, Tribune's WGN and CBS' WBBM now share resources (while ABC's WLS decided to keep going it alone).

These partnerships save money, but also mean fewer stations with crews at various news events.

"In some ways that's not bad: fewer live car chases and fewer needless live shots at a location where something may have happened hours ago," Beard says. "But it also means news conferences by government, public safety and elected officials will be covered by fewer and less-experienced reporters, and sometimes no reporter at all."

Adds one news exec: "You're giving up too much in terms of your ability to determine what the key stories are."

Some stations are reacting to the challenge by pulling back on newscasts all together. New York's WNBC caused a stir when it recently dumped its long-running "Live at Five" early evening telecast for a lifestyle-driven feature show.

That's a shift from recent years, when stations -- looking to boost revenues -- added newscasts in several dayparts, including early mornings."

If all of that isn't enough, stations are also contending with fewer eyeballs, especially as the broadcast networks deliver smaller auds to their 11 p.m. newscasts.

According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 52% of the public say they watch local TV news -- down from 64% in 1998.

NBC affiliates in particular have been stung this fall; due to its low-rated "Jay Leno Show" lead-in at 10 p.m., Los Angeles' KNBC has seen its late news drop 25% so far this fall in the adults 25-54 demo (the preferred measurement for local news).

But ABC also struggles at 10 p.m., and in L.A. that's trickled down to O&O KABC, which has experienced a 17% drop for its 11 p.m. newscasts. The only station to see a gain -- third-place KCBS -- is up 20%, perhaps in part because of parent CBS' strong primetime performance.

KCBS has also been helped by a major marketing push for its combined KCBS/KCAL news operation.

"We've taken a real proactive approach to what we're doing with news," McClenahan says, noting that the duopoly has decided to focus on a hyperlocal newscast (airing reports from more far-flung locales than it has in the past).

McClenahan and KCBS-KCAL news director Nancy Bauer Gonzales tout the fact that, as a duopoly, they have a larger staff to cover major events. KTTV-KCOP went for a different approach, completely eliminating a KCOP news team. That duopoly's recent major downsize left some wondering how it could still run a functional newsroom.

"I wonder how deep these cuts have to go until the FCC begins to take a real look at broadcast license challenges for failure to fulfill 'community service' obligations," one TV news vet says.

Some news observers also fear that stations, in an effort to increase declining revenues, will continue to sell newscast segments to sponsors (a practice that is already on the rise, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism).

McClenahan says he believes the biggest challenge facing local news operations is their method of distribution as stations figure out the best way to stream to PDAs and phones, not to mention how to properly utilize websites and digital subchannels. (NBC's owned stations, for example, have de-emphasized news content in favor of lifestyle coverage on their local sites.)

"The content is the priority," McClenahan says. "There still has to be an emphasis on quality talent, quality reports. We're always going to need talented people in every level of putting the product on the air. There have certainly been ramifications from a down market. But we're positive the market is going to come back."

Beard, for one, is worried that local TV news has "worked hard to lose the public trust" over the years, spending too much time using its limited resources to cover inconsequential news. And he believes the industry "will get worse before it gets better."

But speaking from his new job in Buffalo, the long-time anchor says he still believes local TV news can be relevant.

"I've always said if any station in L.A. would commit themselves to producing a professional product and would assemble a topnotch team of veterans to do it, they'd be No. 1 in short order, and might force the competition to follow suit," he says. "But then I've always been an optimist."

"Beard had a great run in the nation's No. 2 market -- but his exit is indicative of how local TV news is changing across the country."

Y'know, abb?
I get it, I do.
But in the example used here couldn't the dislocation also have been due to an aging old goat who overstayed his welcome by 30 years, too?
I mean the demographic in LA has to be largely Hispanic, *enlightened* albeit guilty left-wing whites, and let us not forget the Royce Da 5'9"-ish crowd, all probably under 25.

I use 25 & under deliberately because really, WTH could watch the tabloid crap "news" has morphed into anymore, except the near brain-dead and the official brain-dead?

No wonder he wound-up back in Buffalo.
Sweet Jesus WTH wants to go there? While it's career purgatory, a stop before virtual hell?
It's also probably an aging demo, possibly majority Caucasian blah blah who'll *connect* with a Hollyweird libtard.

I really have to wonder about the conclusions being attributed to the shift. Hailing a symptom without regard to the disease means they're really dead since there's simply no hope of 'em fixing that which is killing 'em.
It that respect it is *indeed* similar to the Rag industry. LOL

"If you think local TV news is irrelevant and has long sacrificed real news coverage for flash and trash, just wait until stations have no money to even pretend they're covering the important stuff."

BWWWWWWHAAAAAAA!!
Hey, is the weasel threatening us? LOL!
*How*, pray tell could one possibly make news casts any worse than they already are? It ain't possible. Not unless they prop up cheaply painted mannequins to read or running Ginsu infomercials during normal news cast hours.
Methinks the slide began some time ago. As they incrementally slid so went the product & the audience followed.
Sound like it'll hit rock bottom soon enough, how couldn't it?

"In some cases, local TV stations are facing the same problems as local newspapers: fewer advertisers (as department stores vanish and auto dealerships struggle) and dollars shifting to other platforms, like the Internet."

While *no* part of the tank's due to banal synthesized & extruded *personalities* reading pap, ad naseum to people who really don't like them????
They're delusional, truly adrift. LOL

"The Washington Post reported that Fox-owned WTTG may have its anchors operate their own TelePrompTers, via their hands and feet."

Oh, the horror.
Could the TOTUS be far behind? Then he could literally tap dance his way through speeches.
How Green is that? :o)

Tell you one thing about that "may have" scenario.
There'll be new mandatory 3 credit courses in "Digit Care & Welfare" in the JSchools required of wannabes to compliment the obligatory broadcaster prerequisite.
Good grief. LOL

I could've parsed every paragraph, but, cocktails have been mixed & poured and waiting. Besides, *I* have had enough laughs for a day thanks to Variety.
Don't want to hog 'em all, y'know. ;^) LOL

As usual, thanks for posting this stuff abb.

Now this is an intriguing subject I have on my “to study” list. There is a movie about to come out on the subject that is being promoted on TV.

http://www.filminfocus.com/article/ahoy__pirate_radio

Ahoy, Pirate Radio
By Simon Frith

These days, forty-five years on, the idea of pirate radio is irresistible. Those toothy, louche young men, defying seasickness and the law, clambering up the sides of converted forts and ferries, playing young people’s music to young people otherwise ignored or patronised by British broadcasters, have taken their place in the mythology of the Swinging Sixties. Those pirate stations, anchored just outside British waters, provided, it seems, the soundtrack to a social revolution.

The reality was a little different. 60s pirate radio was a European (not just British) phenomenon and it was driven by the familiar logic (and established capital) of US radio. And while it had a significant effect on the subsequent sound of British broadcasting, it had little influence on the history of British music. It’s a great story, but one that needs to be understood in a much wider framework than the pirates’ brief life between 1964-7.

The real story starts when radio starts, in the 1920s, when Europe and the USA chose different models of radio finance and regulation. In the US radio was a commercial enterprise, its history was shaped by private companies competing for a profitable return on their investment. Their income came not from radio listeners themselves, but from the value of these listeners to sponsors and advertisers. Music radio, American style, evolved as a way of getting and keeping an audience for advertisers. Listeners came to take it for granted that music was always there at the touch of a dial. Their attention therefore had to be grabbed, by deejays and offers and jingles; they had to be cosseted or they would switch their attention to someone else.

In Europe, by contrast, radio was financed directly by the public (in Britain’s case via a license fee paid to entitle one to use a wireless receiver) and radio programmes were provided by state owned monopolies. “Public service broadcasting” meant a way of radio listening that for US visitors must have seemed bizarre. When I grew up there was one broadcasting company, the BBC, with three nationwide stations: the Home Service (talk), the Light Programme (entertainment) and the Third Programme (high culture). The BBC had no British competition for radio listeners. To meet the perceived needs of all license fee payers it therefore provided different music programmes at different times of day for different listeners. Listening to the radio meant turning it on at the right times. “Youth music” was confined to youth programmes, such as Saturday Club, when, for an hour or two, we were addressed by avuncular presenters faintly amused buy the latest teen fads.

There is no doubt that by the 1960s British teenagers were deprived of what US teenagers already took for granted: radio’s attention. But what was less obvious to us then was British radio’s peculiar relationship with the record industry. Under British law, broadcasters had to obtain the rights to broadcast records and record companies (in alliance with the Musicians Union) had historically succeeded in restricting the amount of programming using records (as against live performances or radio studio recordings). The “needletime agreement” meant that the BBC’s broadcasts of teenage music in the mid 1960s were more likely to mean studio bands’ cover versions of the latest hits than plays of those hits themselves.

Even in the 1960s, though, the people most frustrated by British radio regulation weren’t listeners (who didn’t really know what music radio could be) but advertising agencies, which couldn’t exploit what was potentially a hugely profitable medium. Would-be commercial broadcasters had long sought ways around European wireless regulations––plans for an radio station broadcasting from outside British waters were first floated in the 1920s)—and they were quick to seize the opportunities offered in the one or two European countries in which advertising on radio was legal. Radio Normandie and then Radio Luxembourg transmitted English language programmes from the 1930s. Radio Luxembourg became particularly significant in the late 1950s as a source of rock’n’roll and other US sounds.

The first of a new kind of unauthorised of offshore radio station also appeared at this time. Radio Mercur, broadcasting into Denmark, was soon followed by Radio Veronica, targeting Holland, and Radio Nord, beamed at Sweden. Radio Veronica started an English language service in 1961, and this inspired Rohan O’Rahilly, a London based music agent, to raise the finance to purchase and refit a ship off the British coast. Radio Caroline was launched on March 29 1964 to be followed by Radio Atlanta (the two services soon merged to become Radio Caroline North and South), Radio Sutch (which became Radio City) and Radio Invicta (which became King Radio), which were sited on old wartime offshore forts, Radio London, Radio 390, Radio Essex and, finally, Radio Scotland.

Rohan O’Rahilly, blonde, personable, with an ex- actor’s charm and an Irish way with words was a persuasive front for pirate radio PR but his insouciance distracted attention from what the pirates were really about: the Americanisation of European radio. As historian Erik Barnouw has described, by the 1960s: “The music-and-news station, backed everywhere by American advertisers, was a world-wide phenomenon; disc-jockeys calling themselves the Good Guys erupted even on ‘pirate’ stations operating from ships around the British Isles—almost all financed by American capital. Along Madison Avenue in New York girls in pirate costume drummed up business for this novel form of international freebooting; which for a time earned small fortunes.”

And what pirate radio offered to fascinated British listeners was something we’d never really heard before, even on Radio Luxembourg, the full on noise of Top 40 radio. What defined this was not the records played but the surrounding sounds, the jingles, the station idents, the deejays’ slangy matiness, the sound of people selling things! Add to this the continuous musical flow, the novel possibility of switching from station to station and public ubiquity of these stations along Carnaby Street and the Kings Road it becomes obvious why pirate radio is remembered as the sound of swinging London.

What should also be remembered though is that pirate radio was illegal. Its glitzy street front concealed not just American capital but also a very British seediness, a cast of station managers and airtime sellers familiar from post-war Ealing comedies: ex-military men, spivs and chancers. The 1966 trial of Major Oliver Smedley (founder of Radio Atlanta) for the manslaughter of Reg Calvert (owner of Radio City) provided the public with a seamier account of what piracy really meant. And even as broadcasters the pirate stations often came across as only semi-competent versions of Top 40 radio. This was in part because of the gap between the freewheeling glamorous life style claimed by the pirate deejays and the actual squalor of their workplace, and in part because none of the ships were run with the discipline of a US station. In his memoirs of working for Radio Caroline, Emperor Rosko, for example, recalls his resistance to the station’s opportunistic play-for-pay deals with record pluggers. Rosko would intercept the record boxes when they arrived on deck and toss them overboard.

Pirate radio on this model came to an end following the passing of the Marine, Etc., Broadcasting (Offences) Bill in August 1967. Their legacy was immediate. The BBC accelerated its plans to reorganise its radio broadcasting, and launched a dedicated pop music channel, Radio 1, which employed many of the same deejays the boats had and, more surprisingly, commissioned programme and deejay jingles from the pirates’ US suppliers. Radio 1 didn’t carry ads, though, and the needle time agreement, limiting the free flow of record based programmes, continued for years to come. Commercial local radio stations were soon licensed too, though it was another 30 years before anything like competitive American top 40 radio became a national listening norm.

In retrospect the pirates had little impact on the mid-60s emergence of British rock. The Beatles’ success predated the pirates (and was in many ways shaped by BBC rather than commercial broadcasting norms), and the pirates always represented mainstream rather than adventurous pop taste—John Peel would later remark that he was much more restricted in what he could play by the pirates’ than the BBC’s playlist policies.

If, in the end it was the pirate stations’ disc jockeys, rather than owners or backers, who had any sort of long term radio impact, but John Peel was one of the few who had much interest in music. More typical was the first deejay to be heard on Radio Caroline, Simon Dee (who died earlier this month). Dee (real name Cyril Henty-Dodd) was a public school boy who’d got his first radio experience serving in the RAF and used his pirate exposure as the basis of a meteoric if short lived career as first an easy listening BBC radio deejay and then a TV chat show host. A surprising number of the pirate deejays were like Dee, ex-public school with a slightly cloying charm and not much pzazz. As Radio 1 deejays, from 1967, they became the sort of radio voice that all true rock fans despised.

Simon Frith marries his experience as a rock critic and sociologist to explore the culture of popular music. Currently holding the Tovey Chair of Music at Edinburgh University, Frith is the author of such books as The Sociology of Rock, Sound Effects, Art into Pop and Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music.Frith recently edited a four volume set entitled Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media & Cultural Studies, and also has chaired the judges of the Mercury Music Prize since its inception in 1992. His writing can be found in a number of popular journals from the Village Voice to The Sunday Times.

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