Local television news can be so easy to mock. Happy-talk anchors, meaningless live shots and enough on-screen grammar goofs to send an English teacher into orbit. The good news is that it’s not all terrible. But a lot of it is and, sadly, there’s not much hope for improvement. Take the fact that so many [...]

If you just look at the bottom line, local TV stations appear to be thriving. Revenue was up substantially last year, thanks largely to a flood of political advertising. But viewership was down in every key time slot in every sweeps period in 2012, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by the Pew Research [...]

The TV business runs on numbers. So it’s really no surprise that networks from ABC to Fox are ramping up their efforts to offer news aimed at Hispanic viewers. The real wonder is that it took so long. For years, Latinos were mostly ignored by the biggest names in broadcast TV, viewed as a niche [...]

It was a sorry spectacle. For more than a week, NBC let Ann Curry twist slowly in the wind after word leaked that she was on her way out as co-host of the “Today” show barely a year after getting what she described as her “dream job.” As one critic put it, watching her soldier [...]

This won’t come as a huge surprise to anyone working in local TV news, but there’s more of it than ever and more people are watching. ”To quote Mark Twain, ‘Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,’” says Hearst Television’s vice president for news, Brian Bracco, in the 2012 State of the News Media report, issued [...]

A New York station’s decision to dump one of its veteran anchors has people up in arms–and not just the anchor’s fans. Sue Simmons is an institution at WNBC, having anchored the news there for 32 years. But at age 68, she’s been informed that her contract will not be renewed. So what? It’s not [...]

Are the days of dominant No.1 news stations over and done? Not quite. But the headlines from this year’s February sweeps period do make you wonder. When former powerhouses struggle and former rivals are neck-and-neck, have we entered a new era of local news? Let’s start with Salt Lake City, where KSL used to own [...]

Forgive the apocalyptic headline, but when two columns cross my desk the same day warning broadcast executives to wake up or face extinction, I pay attention. Technology-driven threats to the broadcast business model aren’t new, but these columns suggest a bazillion-channel future is closer than many may think, leaving little time to prepare. Let’s begin [...]

A new mobile app aims to give YouTube a run for its money in the “citizen journalist” assignment game. Rawporter is the latest competitor to YouTube Direct, giving newsrooms the ability to request and rebroadcast video from anyone who happens to be at or near the scene of a news event. What Rawporter offers that’s [...]

There’s more news on local TV than ever–more than five hours every day, on average–but is it any good? It depends on where you look and whom you ask. On some stations, serious reporting is hard to find, squeezed out by crime and fluff. And even at stations where good journalism is valued, there’s no [...]

After a couple of bumpy years, the local TV news business is growing again, according to new research from Hofstra’s Bob Papper and RTDNA. The average network affiliate now airs more than five and a half hours of local news a day, and there’s every reason to believe that the air time devoted to news [...]

After two grim years, the state of local television news is much improved, thank you. That’s the bottom line of the chapter I wrote for this year’s State of the News Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, released today. The good news is most obvious on the revenue side but there are [...]

Remember when websites used to measure traffic in hits? The results didn’t signify much of anything, of course, because every element on a page generated a hit. Page views came to be considered a better way of counting online traffic, but they couldn’t tell you anything about actual users. Enter the “unique visitor,” a measurement [...]

A disgraced ex-governor, a talent show host and an Oprah wannabe. Not a bad guest list for Letterman, perhaps, but as prime-time anchors on a cable news channel? This is what’s become of CNN. The one-time cable news leader has had a horrible year. Over the summer, viewership in prime time hit a 10-year low. “Larry [...]

There’s a new battleground in local TV news, and it’s dark out there. In more than a dozen cities, anchors are on the set well before dawn, chatting live with reporters and meteorologists. And they’re not just talking to each other. Hard as it is to believe, people are actually watching local news at 4:30 [...]

Finally some good news. Well, sort of. The good news is that there isn’t bad news, says researcher Bob Papper, who’s just come out with the latest RTDNA/Hofstra annual survey of salaries in TV and radio. The average paycheck in local television news was up 2.5 percent in 2009 and salaries in local radio news were unchanged. [...]

For all the talk about the need for innovation, most local television newscasts still look almost the same as they did decades ago. Even some of the makeovers attempted in the past year or so haven’t amounted to much more than tweaking. Some stations have integrated social media and more graphics into their newscasts or [...]

The more I read about how non-profit funding is going to save journalism, the more I wonder about the cost. As grant-supported news operations like Pro Publica and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting proliferate, they’re not just changing journalism’s business model but also raising questions about conflict of interest. The ad-supported model has its [...]

It’s not news that local television newsrooms are doing more with less. But the latest RTDNA/Hofstra survey shows that even as the economy struggled last year and TV newsrooms laid off more staff, stations produced more news on the air and on other platforms and outlets than ever before. The average amount of on air [...]

Looking for something upbeat in the latest annual report on the state of the media may be a fool’s errand. No matter how you slice it, the news about local TV news is grim. But buried in the fine print are hints that after two horrendous years things are getting a little better, at least [...]