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Television
by David Lieberman
Lieberman is a media reporter and columnist for USA Today.
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| Philip Balboni, president of New England Cable News, predicts "a strong appetite for quality local news." |
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related sites: New England Cable News
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"A whole new genre of local news." That's what Philip Balboni calls his young, twenty-four-hour regional news service and a host of fledgling cable channels like it. These electronic versions of local newspapers aim to be "the highest quality source of news on television," says Balboni, who -- as president of Boston-based New England Cable News and chairman of the Association of Regional News Channels -- is a pioneer in a journalistic movement that's burgeoning across the country. He's convinced that, for once, good TV journalism is good business. "There's a strong appetite for quality local news."
Many cable operators agree. Companies serving nearly every major market are rushing to create local and regional all-news channels. Nearly thirty of these services reach about 23 million subscribers in or around cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco -- and regions including New England, the Pacific Northwest, and Southern California's Orange County. Most are less than five years old. More are on the way. In January, A.H. Belo will introduce a statewide service for Texas. It may face a showdown with Time Warner, which recently announced plans to create a regional news channel at the company's cable systems in Austin. And cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. is considering a possible service for Denver.
The low-budget channels eschew helicopters, fancy weather radars, and expensive remote trucks, and usually lay off the happy talk and celebrity gossip. They devote plenty of time instead to breaking news, weather, traffic, and sports, and leisurely reports about local politics, education, transportation, and the environment.
Different agendas are at work here. Some cable news channels, such as Time Warner's New York 1, go after local newspaper and TV ad dollars. Others, like A.H. Belo's Seattle-based NorthWest Cable News Channel, supplement and promote the company's newspapers and TV stations, generating additional revenues and burnishing the companies' images as specialists in community news.
TV stations and newspapers -- though their audiences are usually bigger -- are beginning to feel the cable channels' hot breath on their necks. The old-line news outlets can no longer blithely assume they'll be the first to report what's happening in their hometowns. Regional cable news has "opened everybody's eyes to the fact that local news can be done around the clock," says Eric Braun, a consultant with Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc. The twenty-four-hour availability appeals particularly to young adults juggling kids and careers, and to commuters who often can't carve out the time to watch a station's evening newscast.
Viewership runs highest on weekdays before 9 a.m., in prime time, and on weekends before noon. Ratings predictably rise dramatically when there's eventful local news. Florida residents tuned in to Time Warner's channels when massive brush fires spread through parts of the state in July. Viewers are grateful for news having some genuine relevance to their lives -- and for an alternative to the grief and gore that dominate many local station newscasts.
Big-city TV stations often reach hundreds of towns, and lack the time, resources, and inclination to cover any one of them in depth. As a result, many newscasts are heavy on crime, a subject that's relatively easy to report, and that grabs viewers who live far from the scene. (Violent stories filled an average of 40 percent of the time devoted to news in the latest annual survey of local broadcasts in fifty-two major markets, conducted by Rocky Mountain Media Watch. New England Cable News was one of four local newscasters praised by the group "for presenting quality programs that provide empowering information to viewers.")
part 1: The Rise of 24-Hour Local News
part 2: Regional news cable channels...
part 3: The Challenge is now to lower expenses...
