We admit to never being big fans of the branding campaign that some stations adopted a few years back. It centered around the idea of “Getting Answers” (in a more extended version, it might have been “Asking Questions, Getting Results.) This promotion spun out of the “advocacy-based” positioning that news consulting firms added to their roster of big ideas. We don’t object to the idea that local television stations and, in turn, their news operations should be advocates for their communities and their viewers. Our experience is that this is more of a “price of admission” type of thing. By that, we mean that the idea of advocating for the viewer is what is meant by the FCC’s regulatory language, which states that “broadcasters shall operate in the public interest.”

Does that mean that having a reporter chase down a reluctant official, shouting questions at them, is “getting answers?” Or that making massive Freedom of Information Act requests for public records to unearth potential corruption is? Maybe just making a couple of Google searches to find out some information related to what might be open or not on any given holiday?

In other words, just what answers might your viewers be looking for your station to get for them?

Last week, a development in the online search industry emerged that may provide a clue to that answer. In case you missed it, Eddie Cue, the head of Apple’s services unit, was testifying in a federal courtroom, and he dropped what turned out to be a bombshell bit of news. Cue stated that in the last two months, the number of searches in Apple’s Safari web browser had decreased.

Let’s unpack that a bit. Since the inception of the modern World Wide Web, the web browser has been the primary means by which most people access what they need. How many times each day do you open a browser on your computer or smartphone and either type in a specific web address (such as Amazon.com) or a query along the lines of “How many smartphones are being used in the world?” (The answer is 7.21 billion, according to Google.) You perform this query in the Safari web browser if you are using an Apple device, and typically Chrome on Android, Windows, and other devices. Yes, we are aware that there are different web browsers, including Microsoft’s Edge, Firefox, and Opera, among others. But Safari and Chrome are Home Depot and Lowe’s of this industry. We also know that on many devices, specific applications (“apps”) are used to access online destinations directly, such as Amazon or your station’s website, but that’s a focus for another day.

For years, all such web queries, also known as searches, were mainly sent to Google for responses. The Chrome browser is a Google product, and Google has paid as much as Apple $20 billion a year to be the primary search engine that powers the Safari browser. In fact, that arrangement is exactly why Mr. Cue was testifying in a federal courtroom. The United States Department of Justice is suing Google, alleging that it has a monopoly in the online search business. So, when Cue said that searches in the Safari browser had declined over the past few months, that fact caused Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to drop by over 7%–a move that did not go unnoticed on Wall Street.

The reason this development matters is that for the first time in 22 years, searches that Google would usually answer went somewhere else. And that somewhere was the “new hotness” in all things digital: Artificial Intelligence, also known by its shorthand moniker, “AI.” More online questions are being asked to ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Claude, and their competitors on an ever-expanding list. Each of these AI products can be accessed in various ways. However, each has a “natural language interface to a large learning model,” also known as a “chatbot.” These chatbots enable users to input a simple question or a very detailed premise. The big difference between using an AI chatbot and a typical web search is that the AI response is likely to be a more complete answer to your question, rather than just a series of links to webpages that are probably related to the topic you are interested in. Depending on the detail in the query posed to the chatbot, you can get everything from a simple statistic to the beginnings of a fully formed business plan.

We’ve heard it described as going to the library and asking a question, where one librarian points you to the section of books on the topic you’re asking about, and another librarian simply provides the answer to your question. Which librarian would you go to the next time you had a question?

All of which means exactly what to those of us in the television news business? We suggest considering the implications of this shift in digital habits, where more people are adopting AI applications as their primary source for answers. It may mean that, given a choice, your viewers are looking for more detail than just an answer to a question. Earlier, when we asked about the number of smartphones in the world, the AI response was more than just a link to a source, such as the Global Systems Mobile Association. It was a couple of paragraphs about the specific number of smartphones, along with additional detail on the growth of that number over the past few years, the individual nations with the most significant percentage of smartphones, and so on. It was an explanation.

In the information age we currently live in, viewers can get answers to questions anytime they want, without waiting for your newscast to deliver them. What they couldn’t get from their digital devices before was more context in those answers. Explaining, and more importantly, demonstrating the potential impact of the answers, where television still holds an advantage. And yes, if the questions can’t be easily answered–then chasing those officials down the hallway may make the difference in understanding why someone doesn’t want you to know the answer to the question being asked.

We get it, a promotional slogan along the lines of “We Provide More Context For Your Questions” probably isn’t the next big marketing innovation for a television station. But demonstrating to viewers that your station can help make more sense of the ever-changing world they face every day? Now, that can be at the very heart of what a local newscast does to be more intrinsically valuable to the audience. The idea that help is delivered by actual human beings, who live in the same community, is a distinct advantage over any AI chatbot’s text-based response.

At least it is for now.

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