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.