Local News Legends Reunite on the Set in Chicago
Kurtis, Jacobson Back in the Day
Wow. Just when I was really getting my local news is dead groove on, WBBM/Chicago has to go and pull a sweeps stunt with a touch of class and a nod to better times: reuniting the legendary Chicago anchor team of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson.
My Dad worked at WBBM in the era of "Bill and Walter," and I can recall the energy and excitement of walking through Kurtis and Jacobson's newsroom at Channel 2. It was the kind of experience that makes a kid dream of working in television news. For a taste of that bygone era, watch this awesome WBBM promo.
So I tip my hat to WBBM news director Jeff Kiernan, who had the great idea of putting the two men back together on the ten o'clock news tonight. If you're in Chicago and you have any connection or affection for the medium of television, how could you possibly not watch this? It's like hearing that tonight, Beutel and Grimsby will be back on the set at WABC, or Bishop and Lauderdale will reunite at WPLG/Miami. It's an event that reminds us of the power local news anchor teams had for so long.
The softie in me longs for those days. I remember standing silently in the studio during a newscast at WCBS when I was a kid--again on a trip to visit Dad at work--and watching in amazement as Warner Wolf did the sports right in front of my eyes. So forgive me a bit of sentimentality at this oddly satisfying bit of local newser news. Nobody's been fired, been forced to take a pay cut, or told to do two jobs for one paycheck.
Instead, Chicagoans get to watch a moment. Gimmick? Sure. But so's cotton candy. And just like cotton candy, getting some when you didn't expect it--and knowing that the taste of the spun sugar on your tongue will remind you of those magic days when television, like a carnival, was magic instead of slimy and very possibly dangerous--is an experience to behold.
Give 'em hell, Bill and Walter.
[If you could turn on the tube tonight and watch a legendary local anchor team take another swing on the set, who would it be?]
The Ticket to Web Heaven? Use Your Call Letters
A lot of the fun started seeping out of local television when call letters were foolishly replaced with cookie-cutter network/channel number IDs like ABC7 and NBC5. For a person who plays a pretty mean game of call letter trivia (wanna know what WIS, WGN, WSB, WTOC and WFTS stand for? I'm your guy), the perfectly idiotic march away from decades of history that all those call letters represented was depressing indeed.
Now I've confessed to my own local television nostalgia, and just the other night over drinks, I bemoaned the loss of the Sears Tower name for that tall building in Chicago. I hated it when South Florida's proud Joe Robbie Stadium became the decidedly lame Pro Player Stadium, and, well, you get the idea.
So here's my message to local television stations trying to dig a deep trench around their turf on the web: don't get clever and for Heaven's sake forget about your network affiliation.
Go old school. Use your call letters.
As I've reported here, lots of companies think there's money to be made by owning the dominant online news site in any given market. NBC--being NBC--bought up "NBC(YourTownNameHere)" domains from Presque Isle to San Diego. But guess what sites do the best in terms of grabbing people's attention and, more importantly, holding on to it?
WRAL: Calls as Old as Jesse Helms
Sites with call letters and obvious connections to years of covering news in any given town. Sites like WRAL.com in Raleigh. What affiliate is WRAL? Who cares. Here's what's important: the station's website dominates all others in Raleigh in terms of minutes spent reading news and, perhaps, checking out those web ads: the average total minutes spent on wral.com, according to research by Internet Broadcasting was 156 minutes.
By comparison, the minutes spent figure for ABC O&O WPVI in Philadelphia, which uses the domain 6abc.com, was a mere 5.5 minutes.
The numbers don't hold true for every market--in some places, like Sacramento, kcra.com has a low total minutes figure of 3.4--but by and large, the call letters that have juice seem to translate from television to the internet.
As Arul Sandaram at Internet Broadcasting told me, "While this is clearly just one data point, and much work still needs to be done in getting stations to fully embrace their future as cross platform content/distribution companies, I am hoping you see this data as we do: as a spot of promise for the local TV industry."
CBS Has Been Nice, But KSL Knows Those Calls Are Their Brand and They OWN THEM.
It tells me one thing. Embrace what got you this far, and don't throw it away. If you have nearly half a century of equity in an identity, why not use it? WFAA in Dallas does, and they have one of the highest "time spent" figures in the study at 30.7 minutes.
Salt Lake's KSL has a similarly strong number at 61.8. Both stations, in case you weren't sure, use their calls as their web ID. It's not the magic bullet, but I think it's a logical step, especially if you're in a market where the online competition is a newspaper with 100 years of equity in its name.
WFMY: Bring Back the Dancing Elf Guy!
So WFMY in Greensboro, North Carolina? Here's my free advice to you.
You went on the air in 1949 as WFMY (trivia challenge: what do the calls mean?). The guys over at WBTV went on the air the same year. There's a lot of history there. And the paper in town, the News and Record (www.news-record.com), has roots to 1890. So if somebody who lives in Greensboro wants to know what's up in town, what makes you think they'll sit down at the computer keyboard and have the impulse to type in www.digtriad.com?
C'mon, people. If we intend to survive as local news operations, we've got to think.
SlimeWatch, Part 3: What Local Stations Can Learn from NPR's New Website
NPR.org doesn't exactly grab you by the shoulders and scream "cutting edge!" At least, not yet. But give it time.
One thing that is clear is this: the thinking behind the radio giant's redesign is advanced, and should be studied by every local television station manager and web team--at least the ones that intend to survive as employees of viable, profitable businesses.
For NPR, the new thinking goes like this: kinda, sorta, start not really focusing so much on the "R" in NPR: "This is an organization that's in transformation into becoming a fully functional news content organization, not just a radio company," said NPR's Vivian Schiller in an interview with Newsweek. Schiller's the force behind one of the most powerful news sites on Earth--nytimes.com--but she left the Times six months ago to join NPR and get the old school org all multiplatformy and stuff.
As Newsweek's Johnnie Roberts wrote, "For Schiller, that means building on NPR's reputation as a broadcaster of national and international news, by extending its reach into local news. She plans on relying more on local member stations to fill what she sees as a "scary" void in local coverage as hometown daily newspapers fold."
Supporting local coverage is obviously something most localnewsers can get behind. Unless, of course, that means a network, like NPR, or NBC for that matter, coming in an bypassing its local station to do the local work itself. And NPR's new model, as Schiller's old shop The New York Times noted, "would make it easier than ever to find programming from local stations, (it) will also make it much more convenient for listeners to bypass local stations, if they choose."
NBCChicago: No Worries for NBC-Owned WMAQ. But Boston, Tampa, Vegas?
This is exactly the threat, as I've argued, that NBC's "Locals Only" effort poses to NBC affiliates who don't choose to accept NBC's terms to do business on a local level. GE's already laid the groundwork by buying up domains from coast to coast that would allow the network to instantly be in the local online news business (as "NBC Boston," for example) and bypass entirely another "NBC" entity in the same city. Welcome to the Wild West, folks, where allegiances may shift depending on who's got better firepower, stronger horses, and cash.
Speaking specifically of NPR's aggressive move into multi-platform news growth online, Jake Shapiro, the executive director of Public Radio Exchange, a group that supports local radio stations, told the Times, “That’s the risk. It increases the pressure for stations to offer compelling and distinct programming."
As Schiller told the Times, NPR's revamped website isn't about offering National Public Radio a presence online, and certainly it's not an effort to drive ears to NPR stations. The new model reverses all of that, taking NPR's website “from being a companion to radio to being a news destination in its own right,” Ms. Schiller said.
The Web's News Giants Smell Money in Your Backyard. You Ready to Compete?
With TV networks contributing their content to Hulu and ending the once ironclad arrangement that you see NBC shows on NBC stations, the "bypass local stations but own local advertising" model is no hypothetical threat. It's time for smart station managers and news directors to look at their own websites and ask if they can compete against their own network--if it ever came to that.
Can you? Is your site that good? Is it tied to your TV product or growing in creative ways away from the TV newscast and terrestrial station? Is your local online reporting going to be better than NBC's or CBS's or Huffington Post's?
You may not be thinking this way. But trust me. They are.
Report: TV News Job Loss Slows-But at What Cost?
The headline, surely, seems encouraging-- TV Job Losses Could Be Slowing.
For those of us hanging on to local news jobs--or hoping to find one--any sign the storm is letting up means we can envision climbing up out of our storm cellars, evaluating the damage, and beginning to rebuild.
But I question whether the study reported by MediaJobsDaily can really be described, as Rachel Kaufman suggests as "signaling good news for all who are still hanging on."
The research, by Vocus, a company that specializes in selling software to public relations companies, suggests that from January to June, "on-air TV news experienced a net job loss of 401." Great! Then, the details: "1,006 fewer TV journalists were working," (Not Great) "while 605 entered new positions."
Here's where the rainbow over the hill starts to fade, at least for me. Who lost those 1,006 jobs? From my own direct experience, I can tell you many of them were among the most talented and experienced broadcast journalists working in the country. And from reading the "Who's News" posts on ShopTalk and elsewhere, I can tell you the people who seem to be finding work are, predominantly the just out of college or just-jumped-150-markets-from Eau Claire" variety, and that means while job losses may technically be slowing, the overall picture remains bad.
Experience: out. Salaries: headed down. And there's little to suggest that will be slowing anytime soon, if ever.
Let's crowdsource this. Leave a comment below if you've had layoffs and hires at your station. Did green replace gray? Go ahead and name the vets, but let's not pile on the newly hired kids, who can't be blamed for jumping at a chance of starting in a big market. Let's leave their names out of this.
But we can tell a bigger story if we all report what we know directly from our own newsroom families.
So...are the job losses slowing? And even if they are, is this "good news?"
Sharing is Caring…Then, Firing. Fewer Local News Choppers for Gotham?
2 Stations Cover Madoff Live, Just 1 Chopper Overhead
Sure, in the beginning it sounds like common sense. It seems like good business. Why hover two choppers over Bernie Madoff when one will do? The suits at FOX and NBC were surely satisfied Thursday as the despicable Mr. Madoff made his one-way trip into court in Manhattan, a bevy of birds overhead to capture any fleeting movement that the army of stills and shooters on the ground might somehow miss.
Could the Baddest Bird in Gotham Be Grounded?
When WNBC's Chopper 4 needed to refuel, Channel 4 never lost a second of live overhead pictures--in HD--thanks to new BFF WNYW, with its sleek SkyFOX HD sharing live images with both stations. "It's a great plan to share assets and save money," a FOX spokesperson told the New York Daily News' Richard Huff. Well, yes. But talk to the local newsers who fly those birds, they'll tell you what's good for business almost certainly means somebody will lose their job.
"If the plan works out, one of the stations' helicopters would be grounded completely and the two stations would share the remaining copter's costs," Huff reports. It's exactly what's already happened in markets like Phoenix and Chicago, where "sharing" quickly morphed into "eliminating."
Time Has Told… The Era of the One Person Crew Is Upon Us
Mitch Roberts/WKRN VJ and Anchor
It's always educational to take a step back, turn around, and look at where we've been. It helps to see where we've come from, and how we've gotten to this place. In thinking about the spread of--call 'em what you will, one man bands, all-platform journalists, multimedia journalists, backpack journalists--single person crews, I looked back at the debut of the form, if you will. The early reactions to the off-Broadway version of the show that's now getting decidedly mixed reviews, but somehow selling lots and lots of tickets to news managers and corporate suits looking to find a way--any way--to cut costs and keep the profit in local news.
The first station group to go "VJ," as they called it, was Young Broadcasting, which put cameras on reporters' shoulders at WKRN/Nashville and KRON/San Francisco, copying a news-on-the-cheap model that had seen success elsewhere, notably at outfits like New York's local cable newser, NY1. Variety wrote about the "Crew Cut in News Biz" in 2005, quoting a WKRN anchor: "It's like they took the rules here and hucked them out the window."
Steve Schwaid/CBS Atlanta
A lot of rules have gone out that window, especially lately. In addition to the expansion of one man banding to stations like WUSA/DC and WNBC/NYC, WGNX/Atlanta news director Steve Schwaid recently updated his Facebook profile to read: "Steve is looking for one person bands - send dvds to me at CBS Atlanta." The whole stations, he says, won't be going OPB; he says "there will always need to be some working in teams and some can work by themselves...back to the future - we worked like this when I worked at whio in the late 70s."
The mere suggestion of one person field crews drew fire on Facebook, with one person commenting on Schwaid's profile page, "Nice BS-ing around the reality. One person does 2 times the work for less pay. That is the reality." Schwaid responded: "hey, the reality is the business model as we know it is dramatically changing...so you can be working for the last company that made the buggy whips or looking ahead...I prefer looking ahead."
Is KPIX Next?
And he's clearly not the only one looking ahead and seeing lots more reporters with cameras on their shoulders (or photographers reporting, however you want to look at it). Word is KPIX/San Francisco is bringing the one person crew into the mix, and some say it will soon show at NBC O&O's like WRC/DC, and WMAQ/Chicago as they undergo the "Content Center" transformation. (So, in DC, you'd have a Content Center competing against an Information Center?)
Is there any way to argue now that this isn't happening and won't keep spreading? Did naysayers suggest the three-person crew would never end? (before my time) And what, pray tell, is the union strategy in all of this?
As the Nashville anchor said waaaaaaay back in '05 (remember the good old days, when we didn't fear for our jobs every minute of every day?), the rules, they're getting "hucked" out the window.
WMAQ/Chicago to Get the "Content Center" Treatment
If you like what they've been doing with WNBC/NY, you'll love what's in store for WMAQ/Chicago. WMAQ GM Frank Whittaker told staff yesterday that news producers, writers and editors would be required to re-apply for their jobs; the new jobs will be "multi-faceted," with titles like "platform manager" and "content producer," and the Chicago Tribune
reports it's all based on the "content center" format unveiled in New York.
“A writer now has to write, an editor now has to edit,” Whittaker said. “These new jobs are going to require multiple skills. You’ll have to write, edit, you’ll have to know how to send a story to the Web, order graphics and design graphics for the story you’re working on," reports the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal, whose sources tell him there's plenty of worry the new multiplatform model may mean layoffs or reduced salaries: "Privately, some current WMAQ staff members expressed concern that the most experienced – and most expensive staff members – would be vulnerable in the 21st century makeover. There also are fears that someone who is particularly good with a skill such as writing or editing might not be as adept at something else with which they have less, little or no experience."
Chicago's Choppers on the Chopping Block
Chicago's air wars have gotten a lot less hardcore--with fewer birds in the air. Phil Rosenthal's Tower Ticker
WLS/Chicago's Chopper 7HD: Still Flying Solo
blog in the Chicago Tribune reports two Windy City stations have quietly teamed up--and grounded one of their pricey eyes in the sky. "Since New Year’s Day, NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5 and Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32 have been sharing a single news helicopter and whatever video is shot from it," Rosenthal reports.
The smaller air fleet flying over breaking news stories in Chicago comes on the heels of a growing relationship between NBC and FOX, with stations in Philadelphia experimenting with a video-sharing agreement to cut costs and avoid "duplication," as the news suits like to call it.
But the one chopper, two station deal has its awkward side: "Weekday mornings from 5 to 7, Channel 5 can have a traffic reporter on board. That person can be replaced by a Channel 32 traffic reporter from 7 to 9 a.m. If news breaks during that time, the other station can run the video but not the reporting," FOX's Senior VP of News Operations at the FOX Television Stations Sharri Berg tells the Ticker.
Local news air warriors look at the deal as yet another scary sign of the times. "It just gets worse and worse," says a veteran major market chopper vet.
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