Economically speaking, local TV newsrooms must learn how to produce less costly product. That’s the cold and hard reality of the approaching year when that product — even with high ratings — will yield significantly less revenue. TV journalists, of course, don’t like to hear news described as “product,” often don’t understand that high ratings may not equate to high revenue, and they certainly don’t like to hear anything about reduced costs. You get the sense of it in this NY Observer story today about WNBC’s re-engineering efforts.
But in a new fractured digital world, stories are too expensive to produce with the old model. Local TV newsrooms must re-engineer themselves to produce and aggregate multiple forms of content — even non-news content — on multiple platforms with a streamlined cost structure. Employees must learn new skills and become more adept at juggling multiple specialties. Writers, for example, should know how to write TV stories, web stories and blog posts. They should also know how to edit video and photos.
This may sound like “doing more with less,” the unofficial motto of local TV news. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t, depending on the model. But one thing is clear: if local TV newsrooms don’t adapt, they could be replaced with cheap syndicated programming. Sure, the jury is still out on which approach to re-engineering proves the most successful — the industry is watching WNBC carefully — but the question of whether or not to re-engineer has already been made by the economy and a new competitive reality.