Local TV news is in trouble. For decades, 24/7 cable news and digital news sites have chewed away at its audience base. Younger audiences have little interest in tuning in at 6 or 11 p.m. to catch a traditional local newscast.
“If local TV news is going to survive,” one industry veteran said, “they’re going to have to totally break the model and try something totally different.”
In the latest episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast,” Elliott Wiser, a journalism professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and former executive at local TV stations and a 24-hour cable news channel, suggested some sweeping changes that could give the medium a fighting chance.
Wiser’s prescription is to transform the 5 or 6 p.m. news slot into more of a visual “talk radio type thing,” with guests talking about the topic of the day. Acknowledging the death of appointment TV, he would eliminate the staple 11 p.m. newscast altogether.
The morning news, Wiser said, should be pared down to just an hour, focused primarily on weather and traffic, with some headline news.
The real shift, however, would be in redirecting resources away from TV and toward digital platforms. Wiser believes local stations should make TV a secondary medium and redirect the majority of their staff to work online, on social media and in other digital spheres.
“Local TV has done it to a small extent, but they haven’t fully committed,” Wiser told podcast host and Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones.
Wiser, who is also an executive producer of “The Poynter Report Podcast,” acknowledged his ideas would sacrifice advertising revenue from traditional TV newscasts. But he said the long-term payoff could be substantial.
Such a dramatic shift would require bold leadership and a willingness to buck industry norms. So far, Wiser said, local TV executives have been reluctant to take a leap that big.
“People are talking about it, but they’re not willing to take this,” he said. “There’s a walkway. You just can’t see it, and people are afraid to do it, because it’s big. But someday someone’s going to be a visionary.”
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Previous episodes
- Episode 6: Associated Press media writer David Bauder details how Trump’s relationship with the press may affect his attacks on it
- Episode 5: Poynter ethics chair Kelly McBride and managing editor Ren LaForme grade the press’s election coverage and forecast a bumpy road ahead
- Episode 4: PolitiFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders predicts a long road ahead for election fact-checking
- Episode 3: NBC News and MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki on the state of polling and America’s election systems
- Episode 2: Poynter president Neil Brown on a new report that highlights some bright spots in the business of media
- Episode 1: NPR TV critic Eric Deggans on what the media gets right and wrong about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump
Credits:
The Poynter Report Podcast is produced by the Department of Journalism and Digital Communication at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
- Host: Tom Jones
- Executive Producers: Elliott Wiser and Ren LaForme
- Producers: Madilyn Siner, Noah Chase and Tom Jones
- Director: Christopher Campbell
- Special thank you: Neil Brown and Dr. Mark Walters
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