Terry Heaton participated in a “background only” RTNDA summit this week that brought together top TV news executives to talk frankly about the future of the business. “We admitted we have an audience problem, and that we may have actually fed that problem,” Heaton writes in AR&D’s email newsletter. “There is nothing new about our news programs, and many employees don’t even watch…. There was a sense that we’ve gotten away from ‘real’ journalism and are morphing into a utility that may not be relevant to the people in our communities.”
Sounds like some real progress. Whenever someone asks me about the most important goal for content creators today, I say one word: relevancy. Sure, technology provides more relevancy because users are able to self-select content on their schedule — and even contribute to it. But the content itself must still be relevant, too. I think this is especially important for local TV, which as I’ve written before, on occasion seems to be trying too hard to fight the limitations of a linear medium (by over-emphasizing urgency and “pacing”) instead of focusing on relevant enterprise storytelling.