[opendtv] News: Should viewers pay for local TV news?
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:43:33 -0500
http://broadcastengineering.com/newsrooms/should-viewers-pay-local-news-1212/
Should viewers pay for local TV news?
Dec 12, 2008 8:35 AM
Speaking at a National Press Club forum on the future of journalism
Dec. 8, Darrell Adams, news editor for Waterman Broadcasting, said TV
broadcasters are feeling the same economic pressures confronting
newspapers and must engage viewers in a conversation about what they
are willing to pay for news.
Currently, advertising revenue supports over-the-air television and
Internet sites, giving viewers content for free. But that traditional
economic underpinning is in decline, which raises a fundamental
question for broadcasters, he said.
"If you want to continue looking at what we deliver, you are going to
have to start to ask yourselves, are you willing to start paying for
it?" Adams said. "We need to be able to pay the staff to go out to
report. Investigative reporters, producers, people we expect to go
out there and get the facts and get them right - we have to find ways
to pay for it."
For Adams, who spoke during the National Press Club Centennial Forum
co-sponsored by the Naples Press Club at the Sugden Theater in
Naples, FL, this issue reaches beyond the television. "If I charge
you a subscription fee, would you come to my Internet site?" Adams
asked. "Or would you trust a non-professional journalist blogger?"
Phil Jones, a former CBS News correspondent, said people are turning
away from TV news because it has lost its punch. In the past, he
said, people felt they had to sit down and watch Walter Cronkite on
CBS or Huntley-Brinkley on NBC.
"The reason there is no longer an appointment with nightly television
news, the reason people are not sitting down or hanging around for
the morning show, is they feel they have been stung," Jones said.
"They have seen the news shows go soft after the first story. They
are looking at themselves and saying, 'I don't need to know that.'"
But Matt Bernaldo, managing editor for Waterman Broadcasting's online
service, said the change in viewing habits has more to do with
changes in lifestyle and changes in technology. People don't come to
watch a TV newscast, he said, because they can get news elsewhere,
even on cell phones.
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