From a MarketWatch story today about CBS CEO Les Moonves:
The executive also said that in 10 years, CBS may no longer have traditional affiliated TV stations, but could offer its feed straight to cable and satellite operators. For now, however, the network has contracts with local stations that are binding for several years.
This shift is inevitable for all the networks, if you ask me, but it’s interesting that Moonves said it in public. So the writing is on the wall: in the next few years, local TV stations must aggressively expand beyond straightforward local-TV-style news to create new multiplatform content businesses that set them apart from their competitors. This content must be produced at a significantly lower cost and enable advertising that helps connect an audience to local businesses in new meaningful ways. Or else.