I've got a question:
Posted on 09/07/2010 1:08:58 PM PDT by OldDeckHand
As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents.
ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network's ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with "digital" journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
What the heck does this mean?
“be replaced with “digital” journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.”
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What it means is this: there are younger kids out there, fresh out of Journalism school, who are willing to do all the work that, at a network level, takes a PHOTOGRAPHER, REPORTER, EDITOR and ENGINEER. At cheaper labor rates...just to get their name on a major network.
Standards are in the toilet for TV news, not that they ever were REALLY very high...but more “shelf space” for news means the providers need cheaper product.
And you get what you pay for. :)
Technology today is easy enough to allow any brain dead leftist to put together their own “news” story....ever watch Al Gore’s “Current TV”? They have had layoffs, and no one watches, but it still moves on.
ABC’s advantage is that it has a huge distribution machine: the network affiliates. And ESPN. And a few other outlets. So they can hire cheaper “journalists” (I use that term very very loosely) and still spread out their liberal manure all over the nation.
Bloggers are replacing dan rathers.
“be replaced with “digital” journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.”
What the heck does this mean?
This is/has been happening in many local fishwraps that have survived the recession and crash of fishwraps. The professional photographer is rapidly disappearing, and the so called reporters are doing everything.
From a marketing and profit point of view, I just don’t understand why ABC/CBS/NBC still hang onto their news departments. Their viewship, and ad revenue, is dramatically down and never to be regained. I would think that could find some other type of programming during the news segment that would generate greater ad revenue.
Actually, your question might be, “What was ABC news?”
With the cable tv producers of shows, which are kicking ABCCBSNBC’s butt in ratings, in a couple of years, we can ask, “What was ABC?”.
Your excellent reply, brings joy to this old Grampa.
It looks like I am not that far off....
Interesting. They probably are getting paid by the piece. Considering the job the high paid prima donas have been doing the last few years, maybe not such a bad idea.
This is not my area of law or expertise, but I believe that the federal government demands that "X" amount of hours of broadcasting be broadcast "in the public interest" if these companies are to retain their broadcast license. I don't know if "news" is specifically mentioned in statute, or in case law, but I think the broadcast networks have at least some legal obligation to broadcast a "news" program".
This was reinforced at some point - again, I think - in the late 60's when the FCC gave the networks some additional time to broadcast commercials during each hour. The networks agreed to children's programming and news or other public interest programming requirements for that extra time.
Having said that, NBC still makes a TON of money off news, and ABC/CBS still make money, not just the kind of money they'd like. It's not a "loser" , yet.
You may be right but there it seems that every TV market has one or two re-run channels that never seem to show news and they have broadcast licenses. Also, is it the network that has a FCC license or the individual stations? No sure, but yours is a good point.
Remember, there are local broadcast licenses and national broadcast licenses, each with different regulations and obligations.. It's a little complicated, but wattage actually plays into it too. Some of the very low-power broadcasters are exempt from some regulation(s).
bump
“Interesting. They probably are getting paid by the piece. Considering the job the high paid prima donas have been doing the last few years, maybe not such a bad idea.”
You are probably correct. A brother of a friend in his late 50’-60’s lost his job as a sports writer in desirable area of California’s mid coast area.
He now is a free lancer working for several fishwraps in a multi county area. He may attend several highschool football or basketball games in one night, take a few pictures at each game and do summaries when his stringers, coaches, and ? get back to him with the final score and anything big that happened when he wasn’t there.
He is a good basic reporter and does special reports for the newspapers and local tv stations and usually isn’t cited nor quoted for the story.
It seems to work for the fishwraps and him. He does what several people used to do and probably got good pay for what he now does on a per job basis.
To speak of anti-trust violations in the news biz is rich, considering that the Associated Press is"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smiththe biggest "conspiracy against the public" going.
“the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington.”
Looks like the fascists are heading back to the main fort in DC for protection. Wonder how much food, candles and water they have stored up.
February 26, 2010
The story is 6 months old.
Glad to see the hope and change has worked so well for them.
“I wonder what percent of the news is simply gathered up from free sources already? It wouldn’t surprise me if the AP itself had to convert from paid subscriptions to sponsored advertisers in the not to distant future to survive too.”
Of real news, not the left wing PR BS, probably, a very large % comes individuals and free sources. That % is probably increasing each day.
A friend, who was a photographer for the Air Force and the local fishwrap before he retire a decade ago, hated AP. Apparently, they had some contractual right to whatever the local fishwrap published including any of his photos, which he didn’t get paid for nor did the story writer.
Apparently, much of AP’s so called journalism apparently comes from its customers. So as its customer base disappears, they will be more dependent on other “free/private” sources.
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