Our outpost in the New York City market asked a provocative question we have been pondering over the weekend. Why are some local television stations as consistent across each day and time period–as an order of fries at McDonald’s? (Great nearly 100% of the time, in our humble opinion.) While others are as schizophrenic as slot machines in Las Vegas?

The consistent performers in the nation’s largest market are pretty apparent. And then there are the inconsistent performers. Stations that deliver newscasts that can range from just “meh” to being surprisingly good when least expected. This kind of station isn’t just in market number one. You can find an example of a local TV station that may be a perennial underdog anywhere. Perhaps they were at the top once upon a time. Or maybe they never have been. But they can still produce the occasional newscast that can make you check the on-screen graphics just to make sure you know which station you are watching.

We see this often with weekend morning newscasts. Stations frequently have their up-and-coming on-air talent getting their reps at the anchor desk on Saturday and Sunday morning. These newscasts are usually less traditional in how they are produced. The pace is better matched to days when the audience isn’t trying to crash out the door to get to school or work. These morning shows often have more opportunities to develop interesting interviews and other segments you wouldn’t typically see during the week. In short, they are willing to take chances and try new things.

One example of achieving this is the KTLA Morning News, which has long been an example of a local morning newscast that delivers differently. Since its debut in 1991, KTLA’s mornings have featured a roster of top-flight camera talent matched with a style aligned with the station’s long-time branding of being “LA’s Very Own.” It smartly plugged into the fact that Los Angeles is, by and large, a “company town,” with the “company," in this case, being the entertainment business in all its various aspects.

KTLA isn’t alone in producing a morning show that matches its market’s sensibilities. In Chicago, WGN also has a local morning news outlet that resonates differently from other stations. We don’t believe it is a coincidence that these two stations started down an alternative path. When they first launched, KTLA and WGN did more traditional morning newscasts, and both stations struggled to find an audience. Both stations had experienced talent and producers, but that didn’t make any difference. They were doing a standard morning newscast. Neither station had recognized that their strength might be in the people creating the product.

Reportedly weeks away from cancellation and unemployment, the broadcast’s producers and talent figured they would try being themselves and having a little more fun while they could. It is important to note that each station never abandoned its basic mission of covering the news. But they began to realize that they were creating something genuinely different.

KTLA and WGN had management that let the morning news production teams develop this different kind of newscast. The look and feel of both stations in the morning differed from those seen in the evening and nighttime time periods. The morning talent played to their natural instincts as people who could genuinely talk with each other, and the audience began watching.

Every station must consider how it can make a different impact, remembering that while content is still king, emotion matters as well, and so do people. This is just essential human nature. Almost everyone likes to be around genuinely interesting people, whether in a social setting or on a television newscast.

Watch enough newscasts over time, and you’ll conclude that one of the most significant differences between stations is how the people who appear on camera relate to each other and the audience. Much has been studied, researched, and speculated about this aspect of television news. The so-called “likability factor” is a key aspect that the people who lead news operations spend a significant amount of time trying to decode and enhance wherever it may be possible to do so. At best, achieving it comes from being willing to experiment, along with some gut instinct and, if we are honest, a bit of luck.

Great coaches and leaders recognize this combination and aren’t afraid to change their lineups. Shaking things up is sometimes necessary to help move a would-be contender into the position to play for a title. Sometimes, that’s when players come off the bench and make it possible to win. (Cue that NCAA Tournament theme music here.)

Be aware of the ‘likability’ that occurs off-air in the newsroom and control room. Generally speaking, if the on-camera talent is comfortable and likable, so are the people who produce the newscast. In a station fighting for market position, just doing the same old thing probably needs to be replaced. And no, that doesn’t mean “innovating” by removing the anchors or hubbing local weather from someplace else. That’s just making budget cuts to prop up a sagging bottom line on a spreadsheet.

We suggest looking at times when something might be working and building on that. We bet there are people in your newsroom who can help if given the opportunity and encouragement to try something different.

Given the current state of the local television business, the game clock is ticking down faster than ever. There may be no better time to try something different.

Imagine this: Your television station runs a thirty-second promo teasing the stories ahead in the next newscast. Standard stuff, you’re probably thinking. But in this imaginary scenario, the promo is immediately followed by thirty seconds of airtime with anyone saying anything they wish about what was in the promo, with no filter or editing of any sort. In other words, every promo on your station would be followed by thirty seconds of “vox populi.” Seem a bit crazy to you?

That’s why we find it harder to justify why a local television station should be on social media these days. Read any post from a TV station’s newsroom–and then read the comments that follow. Spoiler alert: it is usually not an exercise for the easily offended.

There is no better example of how divisive speech in this country is right now than on social media. And while you will find no bigger supporters of free speech than us, we’ll remind you that social media is anything but free speech. It is speech “moderated” by computer algorithms specifically designed to hold your attention by feeding you contrarian content to enrage you or similar content to affirm your opinions, whatever they may be.

It’s called “optimizing engagement,” and the major social platforms have been chasing it ever since Mark Zuckerberg discovered that coding a webpage that allowed college students to vote on whose pictures were “Hot or Not” created a firestorm of traffic to his nascent website then known as “The Facebook.”

We’ve heard several broadcast journalists argue that they “have to be” on social, especially X/Twitter because that is where newsmakers post first. And that is true to some degree. We’ve seen the platform become the mechanism for everyone, from politicians to local law enforcement to send out messages before using any other way to communicate. Writing, editing, and sending out a press release takes some time. But it takes seconds to tap out a couple of sentences and hit the send button.

Lest there be any confusion, we are not suggesting that local television stations give up their online presence. A robust website and mobile app are critical distribution platforms for every news outlet. But rather than having a dashboard on a screen in the newsroom tracking who has posted the most on social media in the past 24 minutes or hours, why not channel all of that energy into first posting content on the platforms the station controls? It is probably worth also considering that those same station platforms might be making a dollar or two that will likely help pay your salary.

While we are on this point, we need to address the issue of local television journalists who believe they are also influencers on social media. If you want to be respected and taken seriously when you are on the air, please don’t post content like dance videos from the studio or get ready with me reels. And a post that pushes a product or service is just a commercial. We don’t know of any station that has news anchors doing commercials, so why would it be acceptable for you to do that on social? That also goes for putting a business on “blast” because you didn’t get the service you believe you deserved. If you wouldn’t go on the air and say, “XYZ business is bad to its customers,” then you shouldn’t say it on your publicly available social media.

The RTDNA held an online seminar today on “Protect Yourself: Online Harassment and Mitigation Response.” The mere fact that this session was necessary should give every working journalist pause about how much they want to be publicly available on social media platforms. If you want to be on social media to share with friends and family, you should seriously consider making your profile and content private and only available to those you know and trust. And you should consider having anything you might post professionally go on the station’s branded social media rather than one in your name.

We would urge every newsroom to seriously discuss how they want to be represented on each social media platform going forward. We’re unaware of any verified data suggesting that being on social media equals more viewers or a station growing its business in any meaningful way.

However, we believe that using social platforms without a very specific plan and discipline to that plan can hurt the credibility of both a station and, perhaps more importantly, the individuals who work for it.

A reminder: We also now have a newsletter targeted to broadcast journalists with practical advice on working in the field. It is called tvnews.coach and you can see it by clicking here.

Our long-time friend and industry observer Rick Gevers noted in the last edition of his excellent newsletter at rickgevers.com that there are some 45 local TV stations with openings for the position of news director. He notes that that might be a record in his memory, and it certainly seems like a high number to us.

That being said, we’re not surprised that at present, it might take some stations longer to find the right person to fill those positions. We’ve noticed a few trends lately that the broadcasting business might want to pay more attention to in seeking the next generation of news leadership. At the same time, we have seen folks applying for these positions have had to adjust their thinking about what being an “upwardly mobile” newsroom leader in 2025 is.

Let’s begin with Edward R. Murrow’s proviso, which perhaps started this kind of message best when he said: “This just might do nobody any good.” (Fortunately, George Clooney found a way to turn the great man’s words into a Broadway production.)

A person would be forgiven for not seeing the position of becoming a local television news director as the opportunity it once was. The business has been going through a fundamental transformation for years now. It has forced news directors to be “agents of change” almost constantly. The diminishing business metrics have forced every newsroom to be more efficient (the great corporate speak for “doing more with less of everything.") And running the business aspects of a news department means that news directors get far less time today to actually direct the news product.

That reality has made it more likely than not that a current news director will make decisions about life/work balance focused more on the quality of where they are and who they are working for (both individuals and corporations) than might have been the case in the past. Climbing the corporate or market-size ladder doesn’t have the automatic appeal that it did in years past, and often, such a move doesn’t come with the bump in compensation necessary to offset the higher cost of living that is the case in almost every city or market of significant size.

Another factor we’d point out when considering the position of News Director is that there is less creative fulfillment in the position these days. Larger broadcast groups have worked to create a McDonald ’s-like franchise model for local news operations across their enterprises, so the ability to affect meaningful change in many stations is limited. Chances are that as news director for a larger group, you will be following a “playbook” from the corporate office and thus it will be much harder to try anything truly different–at least in any meaningful way.

And, of course, in terms of actual compensation, news director salaries haven’t kept up with the pace of the rising cost of living any more than any other salary in a newsroom. We just had a conversation with a news director in a medium market who pointed out that they couldn’t make a move even if they wanted to because they are holding a 2% mortgage on their home and wouldn’t be able to afford a new position in a different city because they wouldn’t be able to buy a house with mortgage rates now just over 6.75%. So much for a salary increase in a new job equaling a better quality of life.

On the other hand, we see fewer opportunities for aspiring news directors to get the training and experience needed to be truly equipped to handle the broad responsibilities of the position. We will continue advocating for development programs like The Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism, which wrapped up its latest training conference in Austin last weekend. The Poynter Institute is another source of some great training opportunities for newsroom leaders. We have benefited from participating in both programs and highly recommend them.

We would like to see either the NAB or the RTDNA or perhaps both team up to create a version of the NAB’s Broadcast Leadership Training program for newsroom leaders. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the NAB’s “BLT” program is an Executive MBA-styled one-year program designed to equip individuals with the fundamentals of purchasing, owning, and running successful radio and television stations. This intensive course turns out many future general managers. Given that it is an expensive investment, including monthly travel to sessions in Washington, DC, perhaps the year-long training of a news-centric “BLT” type program could be done on a state or regional basis in conjunction with state broadcast associations.

Television urgently needs its next generation of qualified news department leaders. This is especially true given that shrinking newsroom staffs have curtailed on-the-job learning opportunities, preventing many in the current pool of experienced news directors from identifying and training their successors. If our industry wants to have a pipeline of qualified managers to lead the largest departments in almost every station (at least in terms of expense and employees), this kind of investment in training and development is needed. And it is needed now more than ever.

Or, to quote Murrow again–from later in that same famous 1958 speech: “If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.”

It’s a big day for us here at TVND.Com. Two weeks into our initial foray into online publishing with “The Topline,” we are launching a second online venture today, and we’re calling it “tvnews.coach.”

In “The Topline,” we have been writing about the local television news business from the proverbial thirty-thousand-foot level. Over on the new tvnews.coach, we intend to offer more practical observations and advice targeted explicitly toward working broadcast journalists looking to “up their game” just like any good coach would offer. (We’re sorry, but we are coming off four days of consuming a lot of college hoops, so the coaching reference is stuck in our heads.)

In all seriousness, one of the things that we enjoyed the most about leading TV newsrooms–and candidly, one of the things we got to spend much less time on than we wanted to–was coaching our colleagues. Being an effective coach is time-consuming at best, and it requires almost a singular full-time focus. Given all of the demands of being a news director these days, including managing budgeting, HR, legal, and being a firewall between the newsroom and the opinions from every corner of the building on how every facet of the news operation could be done better–well, time for coaching often gets swallowed up by the demands of the day.

So, we thought offering the same kind of coaching we would do (at least what we always wanted to do) when we were in a newsroom each day might be helpful. And so we are very proud to debut tvnews.coach and we hope you find it worthy of your time.

Some houskeeping–we will be publishing on an alternating schedule between The Topline and tvnews.coach. Analysis of breaking industry news will always appear on The Topline. One note to current email subscribers of The Topline, you will need to subscribe separately to have tvnews.coach posts sent directly to your email. That’s because each site has its own email list, so people can choose to subscribe to either site or both as they may prefer.

Finally, we intend for tvnews.coach to be more than just a digital offering. We’re developing plans to offer personalized coaching services to stations and individuals in the near future. If such services might be of interest to you or your station, please reach out, and let’s have a conversation. Drop us an email to kirk@tvnd.com.

Click here to visit tvnews.coach

We know the dust hasn’t settled from yesterday’s big announcement in Miami that the ABC network is going to leave its current and longtime home on WPLG-TV and move on August 4th to become “ABC Miami” on subchannel 7.2 of WSVN, the market’s FOX affiliate known as “South Florida’s News Station.” The intrigue over how this all came to be and what it means for the television landscape, both in South Florida and across the country, will take some time to unravel.

However, being the kind of project-oriented people we are here at TVND, we immediately began thinking about the size of the opportunity/challenge ahead for “Local 10” in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market. After all, the station has a little over four months to pivot from being a network-affiliated station, which it has been for its entire history, to truly living up to that “Local 10” brand promise as a pure independent television station in the nation’s 18th largest market. It’s a market with several unique challenges, seemingly as all 210 markets will have in one form or another in 2025.

It isn’t a completely unchartered path. A few stations have moved from affiliate to independent over the years. One of the ones that stands out to us is in Phoenix, where KTVK lost its ABC affiliation in the great network shuffle of 1994. That’s when the upstart FOX network began building out its owned and operated group by buying cross-town rival–and then CBS affiliate–KSAZ (once charmingly named KOOL-TV) as part of the acquisition of the New World Communications Group. Even though KTVK was at the time one of the strongest ABC affiliates in the country, the ensuing network shuffle would leave it without a network when ABC found a new home on Scripps-owned KNXV in the market.

The similarities between the situations at KTVK and WPLG are more than just being left by ABC. In both cases, they were single stations rather than being part of a larger television group. Groups have more power and influence with the networks, as witnessed by Scripps bringing pressure to bear on ABC to move to its Phoenix station. Doing a “one-off” affiliation move is far easier than dealing with multiple stations in various markets. Both KTVK and WPLG were/are strong local news operations at the time of losing their affiliations–though it would be essential to note that thirty years ago, KTVK’s strength was far more significant because of the strength of broadcast television stations in the media marketplace back then.

Another way these two stations are alike is that both decided to double down on their local programming, which largely focused on ramping up their news operation. In KTVK’s case, the station had already made a sizable investment in local news nearly a decade earlier. In 1984, the family interests that owned the station had poached a dozen employees, including the team of Bill Miller and Phil Alvidrez from rival KTSP-TV (later renamed KSAZ.) Miller and Alvidrez had led the news department at KTSP and would move to KTVK and build a news juggernaut at the station. With Miller as Station Manager and Alvidrez as news director, the duo rebranded KTVK as “NewsChannel 3” and built a news operation that, by the time of the ABC move in 1995, was the dominant local television news operation in Phoenix.

The station would continue its strength as an independent, as the owners would spend millions on syndicated programming, news expansion, and a new studio facility to keep the “NewsChannel 3” juggernaut going. It would do so until 1999 when the family owners of KTVK sold the successful independent to another family-run company, Dallas-based Belo Corporation. In 2014, the station changed hands again from Belo to Meredith Corporation, merging the operations of KTVK and CBS affiliate KPHO-TV. Then, in 2021, Meredith Corporation was acquired by Atlanta-based television group owner Gray Media, who now owns and operates the duopoly of KTVK and KPHO.

KTVK still operates as a news-heavy independent branded as “3TV” locally. The station airs over 13 hours of local news each weekday from a shared newsroom with KPHO under the banner of “Arizona’s Family.” KTVK also airs a schedule of Phoenix Suns basketball games, giving it a local sports audience in primetime leading into its late newscasts. When not airing basketball, KTVK airs local news from 8pm to 11pm in primetime.

Turning our focus back to Miami, what the leadership of WPLG is now busy figuring out is how much of the KTVK blueprint it might choose to follow. And unlike Phoenix in 1995, there is already a station in Miami producing a daily schedule packed with local newscasts, that being the market’s FOX affiliate (and soon also the home of the new “ABC Miami”) WSVN. It is no overstatement to say that WSVN’s history of losing its NBC affiliation and success in pivoting to being an independent, uber-aggressive local news operation forever changed the way newscasts would be presented on television.

Under the leadership of then VP of News Joel Cheatwood and later Alice Jacobs in that role, WSVN’s newscasts feature a heavy emphasis on breaking and celebrity news, wrapped in bold graphics and music to match, all presented by a staff working in an on-camera newsroom called “the newsplex” that features a dazzling display of video screens that looks like something a viewer might see in NYC’s Times Square. The format was ridiculed by critics and dubbed as “tabloid” when it debuted. Still, with aggressive marketing and a willingness to “smother a big story,” the station’s “7 News” grew a younger audience quickly enough. Before long, every news director in Miami and those in the business nationwide began paying attention and working to make their newscasts more like what was airing daily on “South Florida’s News Station.”

That included WPLG, which had always been a more contemporary local news station in the Miami market before WSVN’s transformation. In 1976, Channel 10 was the first station in the market to feature a co-anchor team, in which anchor Ann Bishop would be the first female to anchor weeknight newscasts in a major market. She would be later paired with Dwight Lauderdale, the market’s first Black anchor, in 1986. Bishop propelled WPLG’s “Eyewitness News” to be the most watched in the market for almost two decades. WPLG would also innovate with the market’s first helicopter and a heavy emphasis on weather coverage.

So, against that backdrop, WPLG now has about twenty weeks to implement its plan to compete as a station without a network to fill a good portion of its daily program schedule. The station has already stated that it will expand its news operation, but how it goes about doing so will be watched closely by many. As we have previously noted, the station doesn’t have a group of other stations to draw upon, as it is the lone station to be owned by Berkshire-Hathaway, the highly successful and followed investment company led by Warren Buffett. Expanding news hours on the program schedule will come at a cost. WPLG’s General Manager E.R. Bert Medina said yesterday, “Instead of sending our money to New York, we will keep it in our community and use that money to finance a massive expansion in local news and other local programming."

Just how “massive” that expansion will be and what the price tag might be isn’t known yet. For comparison, when KTVK went to being an independent station in the mid-1990s, it spent a reported 100 million dollars in the effort, adding dozens of new hires in the news department and buying syndicated programming such as the still popular “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” to air in primetime.

Another example of a station making the transition from network affiliate to independent can be found by going from Miami Beach up the Florida coast to Jacksonville Beach, where WPLG’s one-time sister station WJXT made the same move back in 2002 when CBS moved its affiliation to another station in the market. That came after WJXT balked at moving from the business model where the network paid local stations to carry their network’s programming to the station paying the network for that same programming. That idea, known as “reverse compensation,” came about when local stations began making significant revenue from the payments they received from cable and satellite companies for “retransmission consent.”

“The Local Station,” as WJXT is known, went all in on that idea, moving its airing of the then-popular “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to primetime and boosting its local news production to nearly 60 hours a week. However, that is still less than WSVN’s current total of 63.5 hours of news produced each week. By comparison, WPLG currently produces 54.5 hours of news weekly on its own station. It has also been producing an additional six hours of news each week, with a 10pm newscast on Miami’s CW affiliate, WSFL-TV, since 2021.

Another question is, how will WPLG transition over the next few months? When KTVK made the transition to independent in late 1994, it chose to shed the ABC programming in stages rather than all at once. First, it dumped ABC’s “Good Morning America” to expand its own “Good Morning Arizona” out to four hours, staying local when other stations were airing their network morning shows. However, rival WSVN already airs its local morning news, “Today in Florida” (a name dating back to its days as an NBC affiliate), for a whopping six hours each weekday, from 5 to 11am each weekday.

No doubt, there are a lot of factors to consider in making the move from affiliate to independent. And we’re sure that the team at WPLG is already deep in the project. As the old adage reminds us, “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.” Given the proximity of that large swamp known as the Everglades, it is a reminder that the challenges that “Local 10” may be facing are not insignificant.

Our initial report on the “Seismic” news out of Miami (that description first used by our friend, Rick Gevers) has more on how the news unfolded on Thursday. Click here to read it.

So much for a Thursday on which most people would have been focused on the first day of the Madness known as the NCAA College Basketball Tournament. Except maybe for people working in the television business.

Thursday afternoon, just as the second round of games was tipping off, the surprise announcement out of South Florida that a local television station was dropping, or losing–depending on whose account you believe–its network affiliation. It’s been over a decade since the last major market affiliation switch. 2014 was when CBS announced it was moving from its longtime home in Indianapolis at WISH-TV, which was being sold by LIN Media to Media General, over to Tribune Broadcasting’s WTTV, effective January 1st, 2015.

More than a decade later, the breaking news from Miami was that the ABC network would be leaving WPLG, its home for nearly 70 years, dating back to when Channel 10 in Miami signed on the air as WPST. But this August, ABC’s new home in South Florida would be…cross-town rival WSVN. The Sunbeam-owned Fox affiliate on Channel 7? Well, not exactly. The new “ABC Miami” as it will be called, will be operated by Sunbeam, but seen on channel 7.2. That is a digital “sub-channel” of the primary Channel 7 signal (which is actually on the frequency of what is technically Channel 9, but don’t get us started on the weirdness of stations broadcasting with their legacy branding but on what are different channels.)

The news of ABC moving was labeled as “seismic” in some quarters. And in this industry, that wasn’t hyperbole. It’s just because affiliation moves are pretty rare, especially in a major market like Miami. Though to be fair, over the years, the market has seen its share of station and network moves. More unusual for the current day was that a “big four” network would willingly move from being on one station’s main (or .1) signal–to another’s “subchannels” that were made possible by the 2009 transition to digital television. On the current DTV standard, local broadcasters use digital encoding technology to “multiplex” their feeds onto a single signal, which allows for multiple channels to be broadcast by a single transmitter for each station. Most local TV stations now carry so-called “digi-nets” on these subchannels. Smaller networks such as MeTV, Living Well, H&I, CourtTV, and a long list of others. Today, WSVN carries the Black audience targeted “365BLK” network on its 7.2 subchannel.

Typically, a television station with a primary ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC affiliation on its main channel typically doesn’t have another of the three remaining major networks on a digital subchannel. In the larger, major markets, each network affiliate would be carried a stand-alone, full-power station.

That was before Thursday.

The expected press releases were issued from both WPLG and WSVN. WPLG pointed the blame at ABC and its parent company, Disney. The station’s General Manager, E.R. Bert Medina, put it this way: “Our job is to serve this community with news and local programming, that’s why we have an FCC license. If we agreed to the ABC terms, that mission would have suffered." Medina went on to say that a big reason that WPLG couldn’t reach a deal was because the exclusivity of ABC programming is disappearing. Meaning more of the network’s shows also now appear on streaming services like Hulu and Disney+, thus impacting the value of what the station has been paying to be the exclusive home to. Medina spellied it out in no uncertain terms: “We no longer feel we are getting what we pay for.”

But within an hour after WPLG’s release that it was going to no longer be an ABC affiliate come August 4th, the proverbial second shoe dropped when Sunbeam’s WSVN announced that it had landed the new “ABC Miami” and it would be on digital channel 7.2. WSVN has been a very successful Fox affiliate, but perhaps an even more successful local news operation in Miami, which would undoubtedly be supporting, at least in some fashion, the new local newscasts on ABC Miami.

The questions about how all this came to be would spin up faster than a late-season hurricane threatening South Florida.

Our friends at TheDesk.Net reported that WPLG’s network contract had expired at the end of 2024, but both sides had continued negotiating towards securing a new agreement. That’s reasonable to assume, given that these negotiations sometimes go into “extra innings.” However, Disney/ABC was clearly working on alternatives in the event that it couldn’t reach a deal. Those options could have included moving ABC’s affiliation to another Miami-based station. That might have been either current UniMas-owned WAMI or CW affiliate WSFL-TV. The latter might have proven a friendly home, as that station is owned by Scripps, which currently owns ABC affiliates in several other major markets–including WFTS in nearby Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida.

But we’ve heard a few industry observers wonder aloud if there might have been another factor at play here. Was ABC rebuffed in a possible effort to actually acquire WPLG from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway? The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t own any other television stations, it acquired WPLG in 2014 from the former Post-Newsweek company controlled by the Graham family, after they sold _The Washington Post_to Jeff Bezos. The family then formed Graham Holdings, spinning off WPLG to Berkshire, which had been a major investor in Post-Newsweek. Both CBS and NBC own their stations in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, and it would be reasonable to assume that ABC would like to own its outlet in the nation’s 18th largest market. Is it possible that Bob Iger and company were given the cold shoulder to that idea, so, in turn, proffered a network contract with less-than-favorable terms to WPLG, who wouldn’t budge in these extended negotiations?

Nobody is saying that is what happened, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. However, another thing to consider is what happened the day before the news broke in Miami, some 1,787 miles north in the decidedly cooler environment of St. Paul, Minnesota. There, inside the Warren Burger US Courthouse, the United States 8th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on whether or not the Federal Communications Commission in 2023 acted appropriately in maintaining its rules on broadcast station ownership. Broadcasters, represented by their trade organization, the National Association of Broadcasters, argued that the FCC’s rules, including the ones that prevent mergers between the top four stations in a given market (typically the ones affiliated with the “big four” networks of ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC) are threatening the very future of broadcasting business in this country.

While the court case is important and is being closely watched, the reality is that the current FCC Chairman, Republican Brendan Carr, opposes the ownership rules and is likely to dismantle them. That would give broadcasters freedom from the government restrictions on how many stations one company can own, both in a single local market, as well as across the entire nation. Broadcasters argue that they need this freedom to survive in a digital world where the internet and its giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft can–and do compete for viewers and advertising dollars in every corner of the country.

Should the deregulation that the Trump administration has championed in its blitz to reshape all aspects of the federal government arrive at the FCC, it is entirely plausible that the moves in Miami that were announced on this Thursday could play out in many ways and the results could be “coming soon” to a television set near you.

Hope your bracket isn’t busted already.

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Some 45 years ago, we got our hands on a new book by famed marketing gurus Al Reis and Jack Trout. The book was named “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.” It was a hot topic in the television promotion world, as the people who did that function in local television stations were grappling with the age-old question of how to stand out in an ever-crowded marketplace.

A reminder that it was 1980. Cable Television was barely a thing, as only 16 million households were subscribers that year. CNN would just launch that summer. The FOX broadcast network wouldn’t launch until six years later, and Fox News would take another decade to debut. Cell phones weren’t sold on every corner. Outside of a few universities and the defense department, the internet wasn’t a thing yet, either.

So the “ever-crowded marketplace” typically consisted of three commercial television networks, one non-commercial television network, and, depending on how large a city you lived in or near, maybe an independent station or two. At a maximum, there typically were a half-dozen local television stations to choose from. And the people charged with promoting and marketing local television stations were concerned about too many competitors fighting for attention.

We know that all of that seems pretty quaint in today’s world. But that was the reality of the time.

And the idea of the Positioning book was bold. “How to create a memorable position for a product or brand in the minds of consumers.” The small book became a classic text in the marketing world. If you have never read it—or can’t remember if you did—we’d urge you to spend about ten bucks to buy a paperback or digital copy from Amazon right now.

Here’s a link to order: amzn.to/41LqCtB Full disclosure: This is an Amazon affiliate link, so we will get a small commission if you order from that page.

So why are we pushing you to read this book? Too many people today in local television stations, especially in their news departments, don’t fully understand the positioning of their news—or perhaps more importantly, what it should be.

We were reminded of this problem watching a recent news promo from KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

ABC7, as KABC is branded these days, has had “pitch-perfect” promotion for a long time. The station made “Eyewitness News” a household name in Southern California, and its success in the nation’s second-largest market is legendary. But this one fifteen-second promo made us stop and admire the station’s current positioning of its news.

The first words you hear from the anchor in the spot are these: “If it happens in Southern California, you’ll see it on Eyewitness News.”

What a simple and direct positioning statement for the station. It is easy to understand but makes an explicit promise to the customer. The promo references that the station has said this to viewers “for decades, but it’s just as true today.” And finally, the payoff copy: “In the air, on the ground, in your neighborhood—no one covers Southern California better than ABC7 Eyewitness News.”

A key point from the “Positioning” book is to highlight both your business’s strengths–and the potential weaknesses of your competitors.

Instead of declaring their “number one in the ratings” position as so many stations focus on, ABC7 makes it simple. If nobody is better, then why would you watch any other station? We’ve found for years that so many stations are reluctant to position their news aggressively. Or if they try to be aggressive, they miss the target and come off arrogant and tone-deaf. The KABC spot threads the needle with a strong message that isn’t too strong. Also, the fact that the station has been “Southern California’s News Leader” for many years gives them license to make the claim.

Lest you believe we are in love with everything that KABC does, we aren’t huge fans of that “Southern California’s News Leader” tagline. We’ve seen some stations adopt this phrase, and we always think when we hear it, some viewers will ask the same question: “Exactly what are you the leader of?” We get that it is a neat way to say you are the number one station for news, but frankly, if that is what you want to communicate, then why not say so directly? Back in the days of longer opens to its newscasts, viewers of KABC would hear this at the beginning of each edition of Eyewitness News. “This is Channel 7, the number one station for news and information in Southern California.”

That is a positioning statement if there ever was one.

Here’s a takeaway for you. Could you describe the positioning of something in just 15 seconds? Your station? How about you? Positioning isn’t just for a business or a product. If you have been reading of late about building “your personal brand,” you’ll find the insights in the book by Reis and Trout to be well worth your time, too. With apologies to “Kenny Rogers and The First Edition” and their 1967 record, there is never a bad time to drop in and see what position your position is in?

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We noted with interest here the announcement from Gray Media yesterday that 37 of its local television stations are now carrying a daily hour of the company’s “Local News Live” streaming channel as broadcast programming. Why does that matter? We don’t typically like to quote ourselves, but in our dispatch of March 11th, we speculated that some underperforming local stations might get out of the local news business this year. One of the reasons that might keep some stations and groups from making that decision is this question: If a station doesn’t produce local newscasts, what does it air in the empty time slots across the program schedule?

We forecast that larger groups with national news platforms like Nexstar’s “News Nation” or Sinclair’s “The National Desk” could turn to air hours of those products instead of local news. Sinclair already does this with “TND” on stations that don’t produce any local news. One example is WUCW, Sinclair’s CW outlet in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Market, which has no local news operation. It currently airs The National Desk both in Mornings and Late Nights.

However, Gray’s move with “Local News Live” airing on the company’s local stations feels like a somewhat different take on this idea. Overall, Gray is a strong performer in local news across its portfolio of stations. The company’s website states that nearly 70% of Gray stations are top-rated in their 113 local markets. Our recent road trip confirmed this with the trio of Gray outlets we viewed as being the most substantial local news presentations in each of their respective markets. The company’s investment in local news operations is more apparent, even to the casual viewer.

So if the move to put an hour of “Local News Live” on the program schedule of a growing number of stations isn’t about shoring up weaker local news operations, why is it being done--and why was it worth a press release announcing the development? We’d offer it is because Gray is thinking ahead and arguably being more strategic about the future.

The move accomplishes a couple of important goals. First, and more obviously, it exposes a broadcast audience to the “Local News Live” product, which is a full-time streaming channel operation based at Gray’s Washington, DC bureau operation. If you Google the phrase “Local News Live,” you’ll get a results page full of your local television stations' websites before seeing a second-page listing for the no-spaces version of the “LocalNewsLive.com” website.

The second goal achieved is that it allows those local stations not to have to buy (or barter) more syndicated programming to fill the 2 p.m. (Eastern) hole in their program schedule. Gray has some experience doing this. Three years ago, it began producing “InvestigateTV,” a half-hour program that currently airs on over 100 Gray-owned stations each weekday. InvestigateTV is a platform that showcases investigative reporting from across all of the company’s news-producing stations, assembled and expanded into daily half-hour reports.

Investigative journalism on a local level isn’t easy or cheap to produce. By leveraging the work done by all of its local stations, InvestigateTV not only showcases local reporting on a much larger stage, it also reduces the dependence on buying programming from third-party syndicators. And the reality today is that far fewer offerings in the national market are truly compelling acquisitions these days. Aside from the perennial staples of “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune,” big draws like “Judge Judy” and “Dr. Phil” have ended their original syndicated runs (though they seemingly live on forever in reruns.)

And we haven’t seen “must-see” daily talk shows like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in over a decade now. Sorry, Jennifer, Drew, Tamron, and company—but that's just being honest.

If you can’t go out and buy syndicated programming that is a proven “tent pole” to shore up the gaps in your daytime schedule—why not “roll your own.” As we have noted, some stations do this by creating their own entertainment or lifestyle shows. But those require at least minimal investments of staff and resources and might not be feasible for every station. Putting streaming programming your company is already producing on broadcast stations’ schedules may make more business sense, at least in the short term.

This move may seem even smarter in the future if the broadcast networks ever decide they no longer need local affiliated stations as part of their business model.

Way to be thinking ahead, Gray Media.

One of the hazards of spending decades watching local television newscasts is having little patience with real-world examples of missed opportunities to get the basics right. Since we were on the road this past weekend, we flipped on a local newscast and right from the top we were…disappointed. Here is a breakdown of what we saw and how we'd suggest to do it better,

This situation was a local 11 p.m. newscast in a southeastern market on Saturday night. The severe storms that have marched across the Midwest and into the South since Friday are forecast to arrive locally on Sunday morning. This system has already produced 40 tornadoes and killed over 30 people by the time this newscast goes on the air.

The newscast begins with headlines, and then, from the opening, the anchor leads directly into the meteorologist for the first weather segment. The meteorologist starts talking about the severe weather threat that is forecast to be less than 12 hours away. But the first on-screen graphic shows the current conditions outside at 11 p.m.

Already, we want to yell at the television set in the hotel room.

But we hold our anger and wait for the second weather graphic because maybe their format is always open with currents. Does the second graphic show anything about the severe threat? No, because apparently we needed to see current temperatures for the entire state first. But right after that, we were definitely going to see the severe threat ahead, right? Wrong again, because now we are seeing the current winds on the same state map!

Because we were now looking for something to throw at the television set, we’re not exactly sure if it was the fourth or fifth graphic to appear before we finally saw the live, current regional radar. It’s set wide enough to see a lot of storm activity in neighboring states to the West. We are talking about the storm system approaching. Finally.

Suggestion number one: If you have a severe weather threat in the next twelve hours and you are leading the newscast—then skip telling me the temperature outside right now and get to the severe threat, right off the bat.

The very last graphic shown in this first weather segment was the Storm Prediction Center’s Convective Outlook. This showed much of the East Coast, from Jacksonville, Florida, to Washington, DC, in the yellow-colored “Slight” risk category, including where we are sitting watching this newscast.

At this point, let’s review an important tangent. The SPC’s outlook is confusingly named across a 5-point scale because “Marginal” is the lowest threat level. The next level up is illogically named “Slight.” Then comes “Enhanced,” then “Moderate,” and finally “High” as the highest category of threat. Every time one of these threat maps is shown, it presents an opportunity for the meteorologist to explain that a “Slight” risk is not as low as the viewer might believe. Every single time.

This first weather segment ended with a generic tease promising to “break it all down in my full forecast in about fifteen minutes.” Lest one think that only the meteorologist was guilty of missing an opportunity in this newscast, let’s consider for a moment what might be expected as the first news story to follow this weather segment. You might expect the first news story to be more about this major weather system that had raked across a sizable swath of the country.

Well, on this particular night, and on this specific station--you would have gotten a reader about a teenager stabbed and taken to the hospital in one of the border counties at the edge of the market.

Let’s make this simple. Weather is always the story that impacts everyone. From disrupting plans to being a life-threatening situation, the audience wants as much information about severe weather as they can get. And when the weather has left a trail of death and destruction, it deserves to be covered as the major story that it is—especially when that same weather is in the forecast locally.

We hoped for redemption in the main weather segment and stayed around to watch. And to the weekend meteorologist’s credit, they did a great job of showing the projected wind shear for the next day and how the variance between wind direction and speed at the surface level and the upper levels of the atmosphere could be potentially favorable for the formation of tornadoes. It was the kind of detailed moment put into an easily understandable presentation that we don’t always get in local weather segments. And it almost made up for the admission at the beginning of this weather segment that the second graphic being shown “was the wrong graphic—and it shouldn’t have been there.”

As we looked to find positive things to highlight in this newscast, we were happy to see that they did bring back the meteorologist for the final weather hit at the end of the half-hour (well, almost the end because there was still a long break before SNL would start.) In this third weather hit, a specific breakdown of the different severe weather threats (wind damage, heavy rain, hail, and tornadoes) might be possible in the coming day. And yes, there was a “push" to the station’s weather app so that viewers could keep up with the latest radar on Sunday.

While that was good, and we were glad to see it, what we wanted to hear was the meteorologist assure us that their weather team was going to be on duty all of Sunday, covering the possibility of any severe weather outbreak--and that they would be the first to alert us to help keep us safe. Is that potentially overdoing it a little bit on the brand messaging? Maybe, but it would have made us remember who we should stay in touch with--should the severe weather threat materialize. This was another missed opportunity.

Allow us another tangent here—if you work in an NBC station and don’t recognize that your Saturday late newscast that leads into “Saturday Night Live” has a built-in audience that reliably shows up each week at least for the last five minutes or so, then you may be missing a giant sampling opportunity for viewers who may never otherwise watch your station. Consider making the last three or four minutes of that 11 pm newscast a quick showcase of top stories and weather, targeted to reach those SNL viewers tuning in--rather than a long commercial break between the end of the news and 11:30 pm.

We kept watching to see Saturday Night Live when the second local break in the show featured a tease for the same station’s Monday morning newscast. This featured the weekday morning meteorologist discussing whether “the weekend rain showers might continue until Monday” while showing a seven-day forecast graphic with zero indication of severe weather chances for Sunday. Why? Because this promo had clearly been recorded on Friday and now looked clueless on Sunday’s severe weather threat.

Now, we really don’t want to critique “just one station” here. We have seen countless stations make some of these same bad decisions and miss chances to make a real connection with the viewers. So, understanding a severe weather situation and seizing the opportunity to make key editorial decisions is essential for every station, every day.

We’re on the road for a few days, but we wanted to share a couple of observations.

The first: Why was it necessary to give the folks who lead newsrooms these new sounding titles like “Director of Content” or the more expansive “Director of Content and Coverage?” We are seeing this more often now, rather the traditional and more easily understood title of “News Director.” Also curious is the “Executive News Director” variation of the title. Is this because without being specifically called an “Executive,” you might be mistaken for the “Director” for the show in the control room?

Let us confirm this, if you lead a newsroom, you are indeed an Executive. The buck for the news department stops with you. And yes, you are certainly the Director of Content. And Coverage. As well as Communications. And Complaints. And all the other Crap that starts with letters other than “C.”

And for the record, we believe that there definitely need to be more workdays when Cookies (the edible kind) should be required on the job. 

Point two. Why do almost no local tv stations air credits at the end of newscasts any more? The folks in your newsroom bust their rears to get the newscasts on the air daily. We don’t seem to have any problem putting name supers up over the on-camera talent. (Well that’s not always true either. We may have written more than an email or two about getting the names of the anchors supered on the screen more often.)

Heck, we dont even seem to mind giving bylines to the folks who write the stories for the website.

So, would it kill us to spend 30-45 seconds maybe once a week to put the names of the newsroom staff on screen at the end of a newscast? 

Why? Because airing credits does one simple--but important function: they acknowledge those behind the cameras whose work makes the newscast possible. They are recognition—which the last time we checked, everyone could use a little bit more of.

The headline on Scott Jones’ FTVLive.com (which many love to diss but read all the same) is pretty straightforward: “Is Scripps Planning To Shut Down News Departments?” And it would be easy to dismiss his premise as based on an unusually frank comment by an Indianapolis station’s general manager while announcing layoffs. When asked a question about the future of the station’s operation in six months, FTVLive reports that GM Charlie Grisham said, “I don’t know.”

No matter who you are, there is absolutely nothing easy about telling people you work with that they are losing their jobs and then having to tell those who still have jobs that they will be OK and have to keep working. That’s even more true now as we all live in this moment where little is promised to anyone working in any field—even in government jobs, which used to be potentially secure for the remainder of one’s working days.

But back to our story today: Scott’s been pounding Scripps pretty hard on his website for some time now. And he’s not without some justification. The company, E.W. Scripps, Inc., has gone from being a $25 dollar a share stock in 2021 to currently trading under $1.50 a share. Its one-year return rate is down about 67%, while the S&P 500 index is still up nearly 10% over the same period, even with the current market volatility roiling Wall Street. UPDATE: After we initially published this story, Scripps announced its 4th Quarter Financial Results for 2024 and announced a restructuring of some of its loans and credit facility, which it says will provide the company with "the runway and liquidity to continue the progress of its strategic and operating initiatives."

From any business metric you might want to apply, Scripps has not had a great track record over the past five years. With things not looking optimistic for most any broadcasting company for the rest of this year, this latest round of layoffs across the 60 local stations that Scripps owns isn’t good. Especially for those in an ever-shrinking market for jobs in local TV news.

We would argue here that a headline asking whether or not any local television station will be operating in six months may miss the more significant point. Each station will still have some value, no matter how diminished by the current economic factors battering the business. What might be the better—and more practical—question is whether or not some local stations will make the choice and just get out of being in the local news business this year.

Let’s make it clear as we don’t want our meaning to be misconstrued. We don’t ever want to see fewer local news outlets in ANY place in the country. And given our careers spent in local television, we certainly don’t want there to be fewer people working in the business.

But that said, we are reminded of a prediction that was made offhandedly back in 1996, at the launch of a 24-hour local news channel on cable in one major market: “You can imagine a time when a third or fourth-rated station might just decide to get out of doing news and counter-program in those time periods.”  Could that time be coming almost thirty years later?

The economics are simple enough. The expenses of producing local news are typically the largest in a local station’s finances. And the largest part of that expense is employee salaries and benefits. Yes, that is still true, even if wages seem low by comparison. This is why stations have embraced any technology that makes it easier to produce newscasts with fewer people. Take, for instance, a control room that puts a local newscast on the air. A decade or more ago, five or more people would typically work in that space. Through automation, the number is probably down to two people now: a Director/Automation Operator and a Producer. When you start talking about eliminating three positions across each shift, you are talking about significant savings to the bottom line. Now, some stations are beginning to implement systems that can make it possible for one person to write, produce, and then direct a newscast on television. Thus, the “headcount” in a control room is taken from five or more people down to a single person.

Station staffs have gone through a “cut down” process that makes the NFL’s annual process of going from 90 prospective players in training camp to having just 53 make the team's roster seem almost quaint by comparison.

Even with almost annual "reductions in force,” the reality is that you still need people to put the news on TV. Even with smaller staffs, the economics—especially for stations with the smallest share in the ratings—may have reached the point where the return on the investment, or “ROI” as business school types like to say, will not make sense to continue on.

Put more simply, the point where "throwing good money after bad” is not in the future anymore. It’s here this year.  This isn’t unheard of. There is the story of Toledo, Ohio’s WNWO-TV. In the country’s 81st largest market, the Sinclair-owned NBC affiliate dropped all locally-produced news in May of 2023. The move came after years of struggling as the market’s lowest-rated news station and trying to cut costs as much as possible. But the station still has news programming on the air because it carries blocks of Sinclair’s Washington, DC-based news operation “The National Desk” in Mornings, Early Evenings, and Late Nights. In other news time periods, the station carries additional news from the NBC network, or Judge Judy reruns.

More importantly to note is that the station is still on the air and delivering NBC programming to the people of Northwest Ohio. As far as we can tell, there wasn’t any boycott or viewer backlash against the station. It just doesn’t produce a local newscast anymore. Local news viewers are served by the newsrooms from the other television stations in Toledo, except that the Fox station doesn’t produce any local news but carries news from TEGNA-owned WTOL. So that leaves Gray Media’s WTVG as the other local station producing local news seen in the 424,056 television households of the Toledo market.

What was once four local television newsrooms in Toledo is now down to two.

Larger markets have, for the most part, avoided this “shrinkage," as George Costanza might refer to it. But those days might soon come to an end. Returning to the previously mentioned Indianapolis market, eight commercial television outlets are licensed in market number 25. And there are still four local television newsrooms in operation. Nexstar Media controls both the Fox (WXIN) and CBS (WTTV) stations, which share a building and a news staff—but produce distinctly different newscasts for each station. TEGNA owns the NBC station (WTHR), Scripps owns the ABC affiliate (WRTV), and locally-owned and independent Circle City owns CW-affiliated WISH-TV, which had been the market’s CBS affiliate until it moved over to WTTV in 2014, as well as MyNetwork affiliate WNDY.

WRTV has perennially been the market’s weakest station in terms of local news ratings. Along with the latest round of layoffs announced at the station, the station will begin airing more “Scrippscast” newscasts daily. This format features no anchor, playing a series of local news stories in what might be described as "a half-hour playlist of local news.” Scripps has deployed this “new idea” in many smaller markets.

But when that proves still too expensive, how long might it be before the Sinclair model in Toledo is followed? Scripps still has the remnants of its “Scripps News” channel in Atlanta that could serve as WRTV’s version of Sinclair’s “The National Desk” and fill the local news time periods. Nexstar's “News Nation” operation would likely get a boost in viewership if it appeared for a few hours each day over some of its local television stations currently with underperforming local news operations.

As we mentioned in a previous dispatch, there is no requirement for a local television station to produce any news programming. The FCC requires some evidence of addressing “local issues” as part of the license-granting process. However, that does not have to be done by producing a daily local news product. And given the current regulatory climate in the nation’s capital, station owners would likely not expect the Commission to come after licensees who don’t keep money-losing news operations on their air.

While we are certainly not hoping for it, we just can’t help but wonder if 2025 is the year when more stations that have struggled for years in the local news game decide to say that it’s “game over.” They will argue that financial viability is more necessary than operating in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity” as the Communications Act of 1934 required of all broadcasters.

We’d like to be completely wrong on this. But “necessity" in 2025 may prove that desperate times truly call for desperate measures.

Weekends, especially weekend mornings, are a time period that many television stations just don’t put much of a priority on, at least in terms of their newscasts. And it can be a truly missed opportunity. Weekend mornings have solid audiences available, and those viewers are in a different mindset than on weekdays--when everyone is rushing to get out the door and to school and work. Weekend Mornings represent a genuine opportunity to connect to that audience that may not usually watch your station.

Of course, when discussing the current financial climate, weekends are seemingly the first places stations want to cut back on or just cut out altogether. In our opinion, that is a short-sighted mistake. Some viewers may not watch any local news during the week, but they might just turn on the news on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Getting sampling, especially for a number two or three-ranked television station, should be the goal of trying to implement a growth strategy. (And isn’t everyone trying to implement a growth strategy these days?)

To quote the hockey great Wayne Gretzky, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” That’s true for local TV news as well. Don’t have an audience when everyone is on the air? Try being on when the others aren’t. Admittedly, given the amount of local news on the air now, that is harder than ever.

But even when stations have weekend morning newscasts on the schedule, they often give them very little care and feeding. Not only is the time period an opportunity to reach a different audience, but it is also an opportunity to showcase a news operation. Growing the bench for the next anchor isn’t a new idea, but presenting people who can be more relaxed and not quite so focused on rattling off what’s “New, Now, Next” every ten minutes is a significant opportunity. We know of some stations with a co-anchor team on their weekend AM newscasts, and we believe that is a strong decision. Filling a couple of hours as a solo anchor is tough. Having another voice at the desk can make the show far more watchable. One thought is to schedule one regular anchor and then rotate others in the second chair to get their chance to anchor. We’ve never known a newsroom that didn’t have people who wanted a chance to sit at the anchor desk.

Weekend mornings can also be an opportunity to showcase some of the best work the newsroom has done in the past week. One example is a replay of a special report or investigative piece, along with some Q&A with the reporter. If you haven’t noticed that cooking segments are a staple in the network’s weekend newscasts, you haven’t paid attention. Segments with things to do this weekend is another opportunity to give the audience truly usable information—and with a digital content play that can have a revenue opportunity.

And speaking of revenue, there can be multiple sponsorship opportunities in weekend newscasts that just may not be practical or desirable in weekday newscasts. Of course, we are not suggesting that every segment should be sponsored, but some creative thinking can certainly be applied to the challenge of creating the kind of opportunities that will make the sales department happier.

Even having those with cameras in the newsroom shoot some extended video of almost anything on weekend mornings can be great. Those “Moments In Nature” that CBS Sunday has made a staple over the years can work locally, too. Let us remind you that everyone in your station with a smartphone also has a video camera! (And often, they make better pictures than the cameras the MMJs and Photographers use daily!) Teaching everyone how to shoot and submit videos is an excellent investment in expanding your content base.

One more idea—as long as you have the team in place, perhaps consider producing an additional live newscast for your streaming channel. It may not be accurate in your home, but we know of many folks who spend some part of their weekend morning staying longer in bed and looking at their phone or tablet before getting out there.

Weekend evening newscasts are a bit more traditional but still present the same opportunities for growth. Many stations schedule their primary evening anchors to work Sunday through Thursday shifts, given the large number of major programming events that become lead-ins to Sunday late newscasts. Sunday nights are also when many who haven’t kept up with news over the weekend may reconnect to what is going on while they were enjoying some time away from work.

Weekends can and should be a place to experiment and develop your people, your content, and even your brand. Putting some emphasis on them can be the first step in a long-term growth plan. And we’ll say it point blank here: getting out of the weekend news business is not good business--it’s just missing an opportunity.

And these days, can local television stations really afford to miss any opportunities?

My late father always teased me a bit about loving big words as a child. I began reading at a very early age and always tried to use words that I thought made me sound smarter. (Those who know me can attest that this hasn’t changed over the years.) Occasionally, Dad gently reminded me that it was perfectly acceptable to "not always use a twenty-five cent word when a five-cent one would do.” He would explain that some folks might believe I was using all those “big words" to confuse them about what I really meant.

So last week, when the Trump administration’s commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, said that he aims to “re-empower” local television stations in this country—I thought of my dad and imagined his reaction to the use of what I am sure he would’ve labeled “a real fifty-cent word." He would probably opine in his measured Southern drawl, “Well, If something was empowered to begin with, you shouldn’t have to re-empower it--unless you unplugged it in the first place.”

Never underestimate the power of a Dad to call out “some foolishness.”

Carr’s would-be encouragement to local television stations was intentionally vague, and so far, there haven't been any signs of the promised “re-empowerment.” He heads the federal agency that controls whether any local broadcaster can stay in business because the FCC issues a license to each radio and television station that allows them to operate their transmitters. The FCC can decide if it wants to “review” a station license anytime it receives a complaint about that station. 

Take the curious case of one such license review for CBS’s New York City flagship local station, WCBS-TV. An outfit called “The Center for American Rights,” whose website suggests it is active in filing legal actions for a particular political point of view. The center filed a complaint with the FCC over last October’s airing by CBS of clips from its interview with then Presidential candidate Kamala Harris on “Face the Nation” and “60 Minutes.” Because the two clips were edited differently, the Center argues that the network engaged in “news distortion” and filed a complaint with the FCC, which led to the commission’s previous chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, reviewing and dismissing the complaint against WCBS-TV back on January 16th. She would explain her decision by stating that “the agency should not be the President’s speech police."

Of course, a new administration took office in Washington on January 20th, and Brendan Carr became the FCC's chairman. One of his first acts was to reinstate the complaint against WCBS-TV and proceed with opening “a docket for public comment.” That means there is now an official review process in which the Commission solicits opinions about the matter and ultimately rules on whether or not WCBS-TV could be potentially fined or even lose its license. Meanwhile, CBS News bowed to pressure to release the unedited interview footage and a transcript of the Harris interview, as parent corporation Paramount Global is trying to get government approval for its announced merger with Skydance Media. That “raw” material of the Harris interview is now part of the official WCBS-TV review, even though no one from the local station would have been involved in gathering or editing it. The station simply had the misfortune of broadcasting the shows from the network owned by its parent company, along with 250 other CBS affiliates across the country.

This blatant move to use the FCC to intimidate a local television station’s license as a punishment for clearly protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution isn’t without precedent. President Richard Nixon used the FCC during his time in office to go after licenses of network-owned and operated local stations on multiple occasions. At the time, there were actually more legal grounds to do so because the FCC’s so-called “Fairness Doctrine” was still in effect. That doctrine required “equal time” on licensed broadcast stations for different points of political view. 

Despite much belief that it still exists, the “Fairness Doctrine” is no longer in place because, in 1987, then-President Ronald Reagan’s FCC voted unanimously to abolish the rules that required it. At the time, the Commission stated, "We seek to extend to the electronic press the same First Amendment guarantees that the print media have enjoyed since our country's inception.” 

Talk about actually creating some “re-empowerment.” Both for local television and those rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution in the first place.

As Dad and any Southerner might tell you—That’s about all there is to say about that.

Our brand consultant says that just calling this by our website address isn’t memorable enough, so we were challenged to think of a cool name. We went with “The Topline” because it is something that everyone who has ever worked on a newsroom computer system is used to seeing--those little messages that pop up on the screen during a workday. Will a new brand get us more new readers? Doubtful, but we did pay for the consultant’s advice, and so, like in every newsroom, we have to listen to them. Until we don’t.

A favorite read on our bookshelf is Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” Her sweeping 1943 novel tells the story of the central character, an intransigent architect, Howard Roark, and his fight for what the author calls “individualism over collectivism.” Over the years, much debate has been had on how much the Roark character is based on real-life architectural icon Frank Lloyd Wright—with whom Rand had a long-standing correspondence. 

Early in the book, the Roark character delivers this crucial line: “I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best possible way to me.” 

We were reminded of the book when we heard of the announcement that Adrienne Roark is leaving her current position as President of Newsgathering and Editorial for CBS News and Stations to become the new Chief Content Officer for Tegna at the end of this month. It struck us not just because of the name shared with the book’s character, but in the initial review, this move seemed a little perplexing. It comes just seven months after she was given the top job at CBS News. Roark arrived at CBS after years in local television newsrooms, leading her to become a general manager for two different stations in Portland, Oregon. She was named President of the CBS Stations group in 2021 by former ABC-owned station head and now current CBS News and Stations CEO Wendy McMahon.

To be sure, CBS News has some significant challenges at this precise moment, and it has likely made it more complicated to close the eight-billion-dollar deal to merge CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, and Skydance Media. As Puck News's Dylan Byers insightfully reported on February 19th, CEO McMahon’s management structure, including "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Bill Owens, had led to confusion amongst the rank and file in the CBS Newsroom. Byers reported that it was determined that Roark wasn’t the right fit “after both sides determined that she wasn’t up to the challenges of the current moment."

Eight days after Roark’s departure was made public, McMahon would name Tom Cibrowski, an experienced network news colleague from her ABC days, as the new President and Executive Editor of CBS News. Notably, the word “Stations” does not appear in Cibrowski’s new title, but “Executive Editor” does. That change would suggest Cibrowski will be much more hands-on in leading the network newsroom on NYC’s West 57th Street.

But back to our focus here, and that is what's ahead of Adrienne Roark when she joins the Tegna C-suite in Tysons, Virginia. Can she be the hand that steadies the wheel aboard a ship that boasts of having “64 Local News brands in 51 markets” on the company’s website? The fact that the company refers to its television stations as “brands” gives us a clue.

Tegna was created over a decade ago in 2014 when the Gannett company—primarily a newspaper concern once led by newspaper maverick Al Neuharth, the creator of “USA Today”—decided to divide itself into two companies. The first would be centered on print-based media and would keep its original name. Then, there was a new television-focused company to be named Tegna. The split was a full circle moment for Gannett, who had first entered the local television business back in 1978 by acquiring Combined Communications Corporation, which, aside from owning The Oakland Tribune and The Cincinnati Enquirer newspapers, also owned a group of seven television stations which would be the first Gannett would own before building their broadcast portfolio by acquiring Texas-based Belo Corporation and its 20 television properties in 2013. 

It might be helpful to remember that until 1984, one company could only own a maximum of seven television stations, along with seven AM and seven FM radio stations, per the Federal Communications Commission’s rules. In ’84, a new limit of owning 12 of each type of broadcast outlet was put in place before being changed again in 1996. Now, the FCC rules determine the maximum number of stations one company can own by calculating the percentage of local and national audience reached by the total of the stations owned. And it is those ownership rules that are once again important to Tegna, as we’ll get to shortly.

But over its life as a separate entity, Tegna has faced its share of challenges. There was a bruising and drawn-out drama with the Biden administration over an announced deal by hedge fund owner Standard General to take Tegna private. The deal ultimately collapsed in 2022 when the FCC put the regulatory review of the agreement into a form of purgatory from which there seemed to be no ultimate resolution. When the deal collapsed, Tegna collected a $136 Million termination fee for its trouble. CEO Dave Lougee would step down to be replaced by new CEO Mike Stieb. Tegna’s longtime VP of News, Ellen Crooke, departed at the beginning of this year. And EVP & COO Lynn Beall is leaving in a few months. One might speculate that those two departures created the opening that Adrienne Roark will fill in the newly created role of Chief Content Officer.

But Tegna, like many local television group owners, has been implementing what it calls "a series of core operational cost-cutting measures.” Those moves, known in plainer English as “budget cuts," began during the Covid pandemic. They accelerated to get the company in shape for the imminent arrival of Standard General’s management team, which then never came to pass. A dramatic move came recently when the company shuttered its creative services departments at their stations, choosing to centralize those functions at a couple of “regional creative hubs.” The move put a significant number of employees out of work.

That would all be challenging enough for a new Chief Content Officer to face on day one, but perhaps even more of a challenge will be determining how to reverse the damage done by the company’s time working with news provocateur Joel Cheatwood, who was hired during his tenure as a Partner at Red Seat Ventures in 2016. As a consultant to Tegna, Cheatwood prototyped a new vision for local news that was touted as being “revolutionary” by installing a new “digital-centric” sensibility into some Tegna station’s newsrooms. Tegna saw this vision, drank the Kool-Aid, and, in turn, hired Cheatwood as the company’s VP of Content Development in 2018 to install the new vision across all of its stations. Unfortunately, the audiences decided they wanted a more substantive flavor of news, and many of the Tegna stations lost audience share. Cheatwood would be done at Tegna in just two years.

But the vestiges of that ill-advised era are still evident on most Tegna stations, even as they have pivoted, for the most part, back to a more traditional-based newscast. So one of Adrienne Roark's first orders of business will be to see through the self-induced fog of the industry awards that Tegna has seemingly been so focused on gathering over recent years and determining what her vision will be for a group of stations that might be best described as “soldiering on each day” trying to recapture their more successful time as a respected, industry-leading broadcast group.

And the clock on that restoration project could be a relatively short one, as the future of Tegna could be impacted by the potential for a Trump administration-led FCC to loosen further--or even eliminate--any limits on broadcast station ownership. As the thinking goes, survival in the local television business may well be determined by further consolidation of the ownership of local stations by a few large companies that already hold a good number of station licenses in many television markets in the country. In that light, as our friends at TheDesk.Net succinctly put it recently, "Tegna is the broadcaster with the most to gain in a new regulatory environment.” To be clear, they are not the only group owner that could be in play, but they may well be the first in line.

One would hope that Adrienne Roark, like the fictional architect Howard Roark, can find some joy in the work ahead of her. 

Anyone who has worked in a newsroom with this former news director is probably familiar with what I typically say during any discussion about what leads a newscast whenever the weather is a significant story. Even my family likes to recite it to me, because I have said it so many times over the years.

“Weather always wins.”

That has been true since the 1960s, when I can remember watching my hometown weatherman, Charlie Hall on WCSC-TV in Charleston, SC. Charlie delivered the weather using what was the very latest technology– a magic marker, which he used to write backwards on clear plexiglass maps that he stood behind, facing the camera. It was very slick for the time, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old. When Charlie came on the air, folks stopped what they were doing to watch. Given Charleston’s location on the coast, whenever a hurricane was threatening, Charlie could dramatically pick up a two-way radio microphone and deliver an “official” bulletin to local first responders. So beloved in the community was Charlie Hall, they would name the street for him where the station’s new studios opened, just months after his passing in 1997.

Other weather segments on local tv at the time might feature a weatherman in the uniform of an oil company (Sohio, Standard, Atlantic, and Esso–just to name a few.) Yes, there were a few women who would present the forecast, but unfortunately most were unfairly dismissed as “weather girls” no matter how professional they might be in the role. There were also the whimsical character weather types, along the lines of one example, know as “Captain Scotty,” who would pull the written forecast out of a puppet-like clam.

Of course, that all changed in the 1970s when television stations became serious about weather science and hired actual meteorologists to deliver the weather. For example, in 1975, KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul would bump popular Barry ZeVan, “the weather man,” to make way for Dr. Walt Lyons, a degreed meteorologist. The station would, as many did at the time, build out a team of meteorologists and equip them with their own weather radar and computer graphics to present the weather in as high-tech and credible a fashion as possible. A personal note here–I would arrive as KSTP’s News Director in 2019, just before Dave Dahl, the last member of that original team of meteorologists, would retire as the station’s Chief Meteorologist–after 43 years on the air.

In some markets around the country, what would become best known as “The Weather Wars” became a technology-fueleded “arms race” with bigger and bigger station-owned Doppler Radars with whizbang features like “dual-polarity” and “klystron” in their names. Then came tornado-chasing helicopters in the air and storm tracker vehicles on the ground. Virtual Reality weather graphics are becoming the latest rage, powered by the same computer engines used by video game creators. They turned the staple “green screen” chroma key-based effect into the modern-day equivalent of those plexiglass maps from years gone by.

In fact, weather is so important to local television newscasts that it is now the first or second thing presented in every newscast. Your town probably has a few of the weather brand names in current use across the local television channels, like “First Alert,” “Next Weather,” “Storm Team,” “Weather Authority,” or the head scratching “Weather Impact” brand now adopted by most Tegna-owned outlets.

Proving that a good branding opportunity should never be wasted over just calling it “the weather.”

In recent years, local television weather departments have been pushed into the latest trend of promoting or hyping (depending on your opinion) specific weather events in the forecast with “Alert Days.” The idea of highlighting specific days that weather will be more than just inconvenient but could actually impact people’s day-to-day lives. The practice has already spun a bit out of control with some stations now featuring “Possible Alert Days” along with even half-days being given alert status.

To be fair, real severe weather events are where local television stations can be at their absolute best. From tornadoes in the Plains to Hurricanes on the Gulf and East coasts. Or during Blizzards in the Northern states to the Droughts out West. Major events in our climate, whether or not you may believe it is changing, impact everyone and it is when stations can save lives and truly help in the aftermath.

For some stations, there is trouble on the horizon that you don’t need a million watt super doppler to see. A small but slowly growing number of stations are “outsourcing” their weather coverage to sister stations, hundreds of miles away. Or in the case of the Allen Media stations, there were plans to shift some local weather coverage to be done remotely from co-owned The Weather Channel, in Atlanta. Those plans were paused when public backlash developed in some markets, but don’t be surprised when it is implemented in the future. The argument is that it makes business sense, and that is probably true in a spreadsheet.

But if Weather Always Wins, and let’s just say that I certainly believe it does, why on earth would you ever give that local advantage up, even just to save some money?

As Charlie Hall would say about a pop-up shower: “Even on a clear day, you might not see it…until you’re all wet.”

The reviews of Conan O’Brien’s work hosting the 97th Oscars last night were more generous than expected. Otherwise, the reviews we’ve seen here at TVND headquarters seem to have found the telecast somewhere between “uneven” and “uninspired.” And what was that whole James Bond tribute?

So why would we, ostensibly interested in television news in this space, be interested in the annual awards celebration of Hollywood and the movies? Precisely because the performance of Conan’s debut hosting what is probably the most globally watched television show of a given year (outside of a sports competition) has a parallel in television news. Let’s face it, there was a ton riding on the guy who, at one point, lost the gig hosting NBC’s “Tonight Show” but then went on to have a successful run on cable and is now a staple on streaming and social platforms.

For our purposes, his Oscar hosting and the reaction to it provide another great example to make our point that the people who appear in front of a camera still matter—a great deal, in fact. The misplaced attempts to demote the role of the anchor in television news need to be examined for what they are: more examples of the “let’s throw something against the wall and see if it sticks” thinking that is rampant in the business these days.

Don’t get us wrong, just like in Hollywood, having major stars with top billing doesn’t automatically save a lousy movie (we’re looking at you, “Joker 2”) OR a newscast, but it doesn’t hurt to start with them. And we don’t think there isn’t room for some rethinking of anchors' role in both the newscast and the newsroom. Plus, there will always be the opportunity for an unknown to become a success–both in the movies and on a nightly newscast.

OK, we’ve tortured this analogy long enough. But the point to make here is that people want to watch people on a movie screen or a television. They want to relate to the people that they see and hear. Does this mean we must stick with the long-established pairing of attractive co-anchors on a local newscast or a solo Ron Burgundy-like figure on a national one? Not by any means. YouTube, TikTok, and every other video-centric social media platform should teach us that one can make for interesting and often informative viewing, even if they are using a smartphone and a ring light in their living room.

The key thing that usually doesn’t get much consideration on this topic is that the people in front of the camera actually have to have some aptitude and ability to connect to the viewer. To put it a bit more simply, “the talent has to have some talent.”

While that may seem like the most obvious thing you read today, the fact is that there is no specifically reliable way to determine that talent. Instinct from experienced decision-makers is most typically the way talent decisions get made. A standard “scientific tool” that has been used forever is some kind of qualitative audience research, ranging from target subjects spinning handheld dials while watching audition videos–to doing that same process with online participants. Despite being more rational than trusting individual gut instincts, neither method has proven fool-proof.

More than once, an up-and-coming television anchor has been the subject of research, only to have the test results come back with less-than-enthusiastic results. Somehow, though, the anchor has impressive ratings in their current position. In one such situation, we’ve heard a brilliant voice in the room full of executive types trying to make the big decision put it best: “Well, nobody likes him…except the audience.”

But even with the most vetted selection process possible, the hiring and development of on-camera talent is a process that takes time. No one meets someone new for the first time and decides they want a lifelong relationship with that person, except maybe in a movie. Relationships typically take time, even with people you watch on a screen. The best actors can convince you in short order that they are a character in a story. The best news anchors can convince you quickly that they know the news stories they are presenting and care about you understanding them. It’s why they have been crucial to successful television newscasts since the medium’s early days.

Very few people are born with this ability fully formed. Skills must be developed with any athlete or actor; much repetition and study are usually involved. Just like with athletes, a good coach can genuinely help. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of time for those leading newsrooms each day to coach their talent to fully develop their greatness. Plus, it can be challenging to be as sharply critical as good coaching often requires. And we won’t even get into the fact that the best talent frequently has egos as fragile as a pre-pubescent child’s.

Some excellent folks can effectively deliver this kind of talent coaching to those who appear on camera. If you need some recommendations, please do get in touch with us here. We’d be happy to help. In fact, one of our future offerings from TVND will be to provide individual evaluations of on-air work, be it anchoring or reporting, and assist in structuring talent development programs for organizations and individuals. (Apologies for the small commercial message here.)

Returning to the point here, talent in front of a camera truly matters. Think of the most successful movies you have ever seen. Then, think of the best television newscasts you have ever watched. We’d bet the chances are pretty good that you can name the people on the screen the most in each one. Years ago, at a certain growing cable network we were part of, a senior executive once declared “we don’t want any stars here, all on-air talent are interchangeable.” That was a guiding principle there for some time until the realization that a few stars in front of the camera could supercharge the numbers in the ratings, leading to some very profitable numbers on the books.

Fortunately, no one has ever said, “We don’t want to make any money here.”

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Last Friday, February 28th, was my final day as the news director for KSTP-TV, Hubbard Broadcasting’s flagship television station in Minneapolis-St. Paul. My departure was my choice. I’m retiring after spending the last 33 years leading over a dozen local television news operations, big and small. I arrived here in 2019, just before one of the most tumultuous news periods in recent history, both locally and nationally.

During my final meeting with the newsroom, I was asked this question: What message did I want to leave with my colleagues about how I see the future of the business? Admittedly, I took a few moments before answering because my mind was flooded with various thoughts and the responsibility of the moment to try to be positive and maybe even give those assembled the tiniest bit of inspiration.

Here’s what I said: “Never forget that what you do every day still matters.”

In the 1975 classic, “Monty Python and The Holy Grail,” a classic scene is where a man walks alongside a cart of corpses being pulled through the village with some difficulty. The man leading the cart beats a large triangle with a wooden spoon as he shouts, “Bring out your dead,” over and over. A local man approaches and tries to put what appears to be the body of an older man that he is carrying over his shoulder onto the cart. The old man wakes and protests, shouting, “I’m not dead yet.” The situation devolves into a back-and-forth as the still-not-dead old man keeps maintaining that he feels fine, and the body cart master continues to refuse to take him. Ultimately, when asked if there is anything he can do—the cart master suddenly whacks the old man on the head with a club, and his body is put on the cart to be hauled away, with thanks from the locals.

This hilarious scene reminds me of the moment television news seems to be in today, some 50 years after the movie’s release. The business is not dead yet, but you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Every day, there are reports of more people leaving the business. Every other day, there is another take on how to fix local TV news from some would-be sage who knows just how to rescue, reinvent, or even revolutionize the business.

Then there are the politicians of all stripes who have found blaming “the media” to be a solid distraction, especially when said media is not pandering to any particular point of view on the political spectrum.

And let’s be honest, aside from the critics, the revenues that may have poured into local stations in previous decades aren’t coming in at those levels any longer. As cliche as it sounds, the business has changed from the arrival of cable’s “hundreds of channels and nothing to watch” era to the latest revolution, when digital media’s siren song lures everyone to become “a content creator.” All this happens as ad budgets get even more fractionalized in the never ending quest to chase impressions–wherever they can be found. It is fair to think that local television is heading for the same proverbial “bump in the road” that pushed so many local newspapers into the ditch along the road toward survival.

You have to wonder if maybe we’re just waiting for that body cart from the movie to come around again next Thursday.

As someone who started working in television the same year “Monty Python and The Holy Grail” hit movie theatres and who has seen the changes that have led up to this moment, let me offer a few words of encouragement for those who work in television news: What you are working on every day still matters.

We know the studies showing that trust in local news far outpaces national news outlets. It is far easier to have some modicum of trust in the people who are seen in your community in person. The simple fact is that being on the ground and covering the stories, big and small, still matters. From what happens on your block to what they are arguing about down at city hall. All of it matters.

No small amount has been spent over the years trying to figure out why people watch what they do on television. News is no exception to that effort, especially since the 1970s when the idea that producing more local news could be a significant profit center for local television stations rather than just a minimal requirement the FCC imposed to keep station licenses. One constant in that research was that people matter, from the people on television who presented the news–to the ones who were in the stories offered each day.

The best account on the rise of local television news was Craig Allen’s aptly titled 2001 book, “News Is People.” Though out of print, it is still a great read if you can find a copy. It details how this rise of audience research and consultants tried to replicate the formulas of the early innovators and their success stories in local news, such as the late Al Primo’s creation of Eyewitness News at the ABC Owned stations, starting at New York’s WABC-TV in 1968.

In Primo’s original typewritten memo to the newsroom announcing his plans, he spelled out the key in the first line of the second paragraph: “The most important aspect of Eyewitness News is People.” In seven short pages, he laid out the blueprint for how Eyewitness News would be different. That plan would make WABC-TV a success story that has continued for the past 57 years.

Yes, the audience watching is smaller and older than ever. Clearly, there have never been more ways to get the news at one’s fingertips. Do local television newsrooms have to adapt to the changing marketplace? Of course, they do. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply denying the inevitable. But failing to make those changes is what leads to extinction. Adapting and experimenting will lead to surviving and potentially even thriving, in the years to come.

Simply put, I am stepping away from newsroom leadership but still very bullish on the future of local television newsrooms and those who work in them. Because they definitely still matter. The goal will remain to make them matter even more going forward. I have some observations on how best to do this, and I will share those here in the days, weeks, and, hopefully, years to come.

I hope you will “stay tuned.”

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