LocalNewser dispatches from the frontlines of local news

And So It Begins: The “Leno Effect” Gives Way to “Leno Blowback”

You knew somebody would stand up and call NBC out for the Jay Leno fiasco.  But would you have guessed it'd be Gray Television COO Bob Prather?

Prather, whose company owns local NBC affils in Omaha, Madison and South Bend, throws down the "ego" card in his comments about NBC and its losing Leno strategy, telling Media Daily News "The Leno experiment is not working so far.  I'm sure they'll stick with it longer than they need to...their ego won't let them probably get rid of it soon enough."

Prather tells Media Daily's David Goetzl confirmed what many station groups are feeling when it comes to Leno:  you're killing us at eleven.  The late news losses come amid an overall revenue drop of 20% in the third quarter, with Gray reporting a loss of $10 million.

Interestingly, Prather has reportedly not yet expressed his concerns directly to NBC, but according to Goetzl, "will make (Gray's) feelings known."

Am I to believe that NBC is somehow not getting its ear burned off by stations that used to be number one in late news--or fighting a good fight for number two--that have slipped out of contention thanks in large part to Jay Leno?  Can anyone explain why that would be?

If you'd like a look at Gray's operating results--and how the company's efforts to drive local online seem to be showing results, have a look here.

A “Rebound” That Won’t Change Anything

Hey great news from the folks who brought you big bonuses on Wall Street!  It's more corporate recovery that will not be trickling down to you.

TVNewsCheck reports "since the end of the first quarter, Belo shares are up over 500 percent; Gray, nearly 500 percent; Nexstar, more than 300 percent; and LIN, nearly 300 percent."

And station group owners are, as you'd expect, encouraged by those numbers.

That's not to say this "rebound" has put the station groups anywhere near where they once were.  As TVNewsCheck's Price Colman writes, the stock prices that may have been upgraded from "dead" to "critical" aren't quite ready to be released from ICU: "That's probably going to have to wait until the second or third quarter of next year. And even then, it's likely to be up so little as to be nearly invisible."

But here's one thing you can take to the bank:  just the way Wall Street took all that bailout money and padded their own pockets with it--what?  you thought we'd use the government's money to ease credit for consumers? where'd you get that idea?--any recovery for station groups will absolutely not translate into real recovery in hard-hit newsrooms.

Overtime will remain a rarity.  The scaled-back staff size will stay scaled-back, and that means yep, you'll still be multi-tasking your way through long work weeks.  Outdated equipment?  You know we were forced to invest in HD.  Well, that's basically the last new spending you'll see in your lifetime.  And those switching errors coming from the dialed-back staff in the control room?  Cost of doing business, my friend.

Some of you will undoubtedly do furlough days in the weeks and months after corporate stock shows signs of "recovery," which should really give you a few hours to think about the new lay of the land.

Am I wrong?  Is your company passing along every penny of recovery to the people who do the day in and day out work?  Please share your story.

Winging It? Are You Kidding Me?

The headline of the RTNDA (they're the Association of Electronic Journalists now--please make a note of it) report is notable and irritating:  "Many Stations Struggle with Working Across Multiple Platforms."

Oh, for God's sake.  Seriously?

I could handle that a lot more if the study had been done in 2001.  But no, this is a 2009 study focusing on local television and radio websites and multiplatforming.  And hey, good news?  Plenty of you are still working like it's 1999.  Not good, folks.

Bob Papper writes, "Only 38 percent of news directors say they're comfortable that their stations are really on top of new technology and where they're headed."  Oh, man.  38 percent?  That's the kind of number that gets an incumbent politician put on the endangered list.

According to the RTNDA/Hofstra report, "many news directors still do not" know web traffic. Wow.  That's basically like saying you don't really know the way out of your burning building. "Web traffic?  Who has time to focus on minutiae like web traffic?  Don't we have a web team or something for that?"

And yes, in this business that dragged its feet on HD is clearly in no rush to stay on top of technology, even as technology threatens to turn local television's longtime business model into something akin to Vaudeville.  As the report puts it, "Most commonly, the responsibility for staying up to date on new technology falls to the news director, but it's also clear that there are a lot of fingers crossed and winging it going on out there."

Fingers crossed and winging it.

When asked what percentage of the TV newsroom staff was trained, educated and interested in producing news across multiple platforms, 38.2 percent responded "on top of it."  48 percent said they had a "long way to go."  And 13.7 percent confessed they were "mostly winging it."

Way to stay ahead of the curve.