A Dire Warning for Local TV News

Media consultant Terry Heaton has written an essay warning that 2005 will be a "do or die" year for local TV news outlets. "2005 will be the most important and difficult year in the history of local broadcasting," the piece begins, "and by year's end, the landscape could well be littered with the corpses of those who hung on too long."

Heaton discusses how the disruptive technologies we've profiled here -- blogging, moblogging, podcasting, videocasting, to name a few -- will continue to hammer away at the business models of local TV news stations, who don't have the financial resources of the major networks to stave off the attacks. Regional TV news media, he argues, will have to embrace new technologies if they are to survive, though too many are in denial.

Already, in the Philadelphia media market, we've begun to see the beginnings of such change. The local network affiliates have been leaders in creating Web-based content and videocasting, and have begun taking baby steps into the blogosphere. Heaton's timetable might be aggressive for major markets like Philadelphia, as they have the resources to hire the best technical minds for engineering a turnaround. Smaller TV news markets are likely to be far more vulnerable.

Source: Pomo Blog