[opendtv] Re: Worn out boots in San Fran?
- From: Mark Aitken <maitken@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 09:47:19 -0400 (EDT)
Got a problem with aiming at the soft (grey matter) spot? ;-)
Regards,
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "OpenDTV Mail List" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 8:17:06 AM
Subject: [opendtv] Worn out boots in San Fran?
An interesting analysis of what is happening with local content in
one of the nations largest TV markets.
You gotta love the last paragraph in this story.
Kinda "says it all" about the target audience of broadcasters...
Regards
Craig
As ad revenues and staffs shrink, TV news turns to technology
By Mineko Brand
SF Public Press
- May 11 2011 - 11:13am
Local TV stations, the No. 1 news source for people in the Bay Area,
are scrambling to adapt their news formats and slash budgets to fend
off the triple threat of diminishing ad revenue, growing Internet
adoption and cable news.
To do so, they are using technology to turn multi-person news teams
into solo "VJs." News directors say it is the best use of dwindling
resources and gains in technology. But critics say the cost to local
viewers is less information about substantial topics and more crime,
traffic and weather coverage.
San Francisco's KRON 4 was one of the first major-market television
stations in the country to switch to the video journalist model in
2005, following a four-year financial and viewership free-fall and
the loss of NBC network affiliation in 2001.
"The VJ model," also referred to as multimedia journalism, is a
one-man-band method wherein reporters are responsible for reporting,
conducting interviews, shooting and editing their own stories.
Michael Rosenblum, a producer and consultant who travels around
training and indoctrinating newsrooms into his VJ paradigm, describes
himself as leading the revolution. He was hired by KRON in 2004.
This model has been adopted to one degree or another by all the local
stations that produce their own news; independent KRON 4, KPIX CBS 5,
KGO ABC 7 and KNTV NBC 11, with the notable exception of Fox's KTVU
channel 2. In response to declining ad revenue, broadcast stations
have cut some of the most experienced senior staff, replacing them
with younger, cheaper talent.
The upshot: The medium where most Americans get their news is quietly
changing coverage patterns.
Trial by fire
While most people familiar with the industry will tell you KRON made
the sudden shift to multimedia journalists because they had little
choice, KRON general manager Brian Greif said that wasn't the case.
"It's easy to say, 'Well they did it because the economy was tough
and they needed to save money,'" he said. "That's not the real reason
for doing it. I mean, everybody's moving in that direction. It's the
future."
Greif said the advent of video journalists was the direct result of
new technology, as video cameras, computers and editing software
became more portable and user-friendly.
KRON has had a tough time in the last 12 years, ever since Young
Broadcasting outbid NBC when the station was up for sale in 1999,
paying a record $737 million. When channel 4's network contract came
up, NBC demanded that the local affiliate pay them to run its
programming, in a reversal of tradition. When KRON balked, NBC
switched to KNTV in San Jose, which agreed to pay $36 million a year.
NBC ultimately bought KNTV in 2001, making it one of 10 NBC-owned
stations in the country.
Upon becoming an independent station, KRON responded by increasing
local news coverage, running more infomercials and using syndicated
programming.
After an unsuccessful attempt to sell the station in 2008, Young
filed for chapter 11 protection in 2009. Greif said KRON has been
profitable since emerging from bankruptcy last year, and that ratings
are up.
"There's a misconception that KRON doesn't have any viewers, and it's
not true," he said. "We made a profit last year. The company as a
whole had its best year ever last year." For the most recent ratings
period, KRON was number three in morning news, beating CBS and NBC.
His station serves up 10 hours of broadcast news a day, the most in
the Bay Area.
Pat Patton, KRON's station manager, said when they first transitioned
to the VJ model, some veteran reporters were told: "If you want to
leave there's no shame in leaving. We'll let you out of your contract
if you don't want to do this."
He added: "The irony of that is many of those did leave and went to
other stations that are now going through the same thing."
Entire generation of news people threatened
"The traditional way of doing journalism no longer exists," said
Melissa Camacho, professor of television theory and media criticism
at San Francisco State University. "It's certainly threatening an
entire generation of news people who are probably retiring earlier
than they thought they would or finding themselves unemployed."
KGO news director Kevin Keeshan thinks that in most cases, management
doesn't have a choice. "We all get budget dictates from somewhere,"
Keeshan said. "We've been fortunate that ours have been very
reasonable."
Keeshan said KGO has also been forced to cut costs, but that they
were able to do it over time and through attrition, eliminating jobs
on the technical side, such as engineers, photographers and videotape
editors.
Unlike KRON, which had its staff undergo a six-day video journalism
boot camp with Rosenblum, KGO is making the transition gradually.
Two years ago, they started switching to the multimedia journalist
model with producers. A year ago, they trained six reporters who now
use their video journalism skills to shoot enterprise stories -
original reporting they develop through their contacts and their
beats.
This is in contrast to KRON, whose reporters shoot daily
chronicle-of-events stories that often air the same day they are shot
and edited.
KPIX news director Dan Rosenheim, a former managing editor of the San
Francisco Chronicle, said his station went through a similar
evolution, laying off 14 from the newsroom in 2008 due to budget
problems.
Rosenheim said the biggest problem for television and newspapers is a
cyclical, long-term trend of declining audience. This is due to the
diverse variety of news sources available, as well as the ability to
consume them in a nonlinear fashion by watching clips and videos
online or on other portable technology.
"As audience shrinks, ad revenue shrinks concomitantly," Rosenheim
said. "That's not to say TV and TV news are not viable businesses.
They are, but they're harder businesses and there is a lot more
pressure on costs."
KPIX has made the move to multimedia journalism gradually, with the
greatest push to get everyone trained in the last three to four years.
Rosenheim said the Bay Area media advertising market decreased by 50
percent in the last decade, going from about $700 million a year to
between $300 million and $400 million today.
Changing patterns of coverage
Critics contend that much of television news has become overly
focused on crime, traffic and weather, while ignoring in-depth
reporting. "We've had a willingness to depart from quality of news
reporting to just quantity and how quickly we can report it, because
digital media lends itself to that," Camacho said.
Dina Ibrahim, a professor of broadcast journalism at SFSU, said that
since coming to the Bay Area in 2003, she has noticed more crime
headlines with less coverage of issues of concern to ethnic
communities. She sees more episodic coverage as opposed to thematic.
"Episodic coverage tells you, 'yep someone got shot last night,' and
thematic coverage tells you not just what happened but why," she
said. "'Someone got shot because there were cuts to the police
force.' To be able to link it to what's really going on."
KRON's Greif said broadcast news still has advantages over print and
the Internet.
"TV newscasts are still a mass medium, unlike the Internet. You know,
if I go online I have to work. I have to pull up the website, I've
got to read it, that sort of thing. The beauty of TV, and why still
over 87 percent of people say that their preferred method for local
news and information is a television newscast is I've just got to
turn the TV on and sit there. I don't have to do anything," he said.
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