As mentioned, KOHD has discontinued their local news program. Here’s the official announcement, with various other sources weighing in here, here, and here.
True, to say “nobody cares” is being a bit harsh. Strictly speaking, those posts have a combined 16 comments from people who do, in fact, care (including Drew Bledsoe, btw). But that poor showing would seem to validate KOHD’s claim that, “viewer’s habits are not reflected positively in Nielson ratings”. Not that that was ever in doubt. After all, viewers have been fleeing TV news in droves for years now. What caught my eye about these comments is the concern that this gives KTVZ a virtual monopoly on the local TV news market, as though these people were losing all choice in where their news comes from.
To which I respond with a very blunt, “Dude, seriously???”
The reason KOHD went away is not because KTVZ won some battle for viewers. Rather, it went away because KOHD (and KTVZ) have both been losing this battle for quite some time. Even here in podunk Central Oregon, TV news is in competition with news aggregation from big boys like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and AOL. As well as other local media outlets like kbnd.com, bendbulletin.com, tsweekly.com, and news.opr.org. There’s also the very well-done topix.com, and toss Twitter’s local search into the mix, along with hackbend.com and bendblogs.com. That’s just a quick off-the-top-of-my-head list.
If we want news, we have tons of options. If KTVZ has a monopoly, it’s pretty much limited to:
- Viewers who are willing to tolerate the local TV news format (read, “the finest 4 minutes of news we can deliver in half an hour”)
- Viewers who aren’t interested in participating in a discussion about news of interest (i.e. No comments or community-submitted news)
- Advertisers willing to carpet-bomb viewers with ads that only a small fraction of a percent care about
- Advertisers who aren’t interested in having better data on how effective their ads are
So it’s hard for me to get too upset about this. And while I agree to some extent with the pundits who claim “real news reporting requires real news journalists”, this is most often trotted out by news people who are too land-locked by their business models to consider an alternate way of thinking. And given how inevitable this shift from old-to-new media is, I’m not even sure this is an argument worth having anymore.
So, where’s this leave us? With TV news as a dead medium that will just quietly die with hardly a whimper, like KOHD? Perhaps. But having a re-think about what a local TV news program might become, in this new-media world, is kinda fun. So let me throw out some crazy ideas for ways KTVZ might avoid KOHD’s fate …
Deliver LOCAL News – As I’ve argued in previous posts about the newspaper industry, all that state and national-level news… worthless. Viewers can get it in lots of places, and syndicated content is expensive. Local news should be 100% about connecting viewers with people and events in their community.
The Studio Is A Forum, Not a Pulpit – ‘Net savvy viewers want a two-way interaction. Moreover, nobody believes news outlets are unbiased anymore. What they want, instead, is a news outlet that is upfront about their biases, and willing to compare contrast alternative viewpoints. Not just because it provides perspective, but also because it provides discussion they can participate in either for real, or by proxy in the form of whoever is arguing “their side” of the story. So create a venue in the studio where experts are connecting with interested/interesting community members. And let viewers participate by texting/tweeting/emailing comments and questions in real-time.
Fire All the Pretty People – Seriously. Even if they’re smart and insightful, they represent the old-school mindset where news anchors are supposed to be good looking and able to read from a teleprompter, and little more. Discourse and ad-lib discussion of the issues are more important. You want Jon Stewert not John Tesh.
Engage the Smart, Awkward, Silly People – Seriously. Feature an ever-changing cast of local folks. We’re a small town, people will be drawn to the show when the see friends/acquaintances on it. And even the people they don’t know will be a refreshing change from the same ‘ol-same ‘ol cast that currently sits at the news desk. The show is about connecting people with their local community… i.e. the other people around them.
Crowd-source it – Make it trivially ease for viewers to submit their own news segments. I’m not just talking youtube-like video clips, but also actual, bona-fide news programs, with themselves as the in-the-field reporters. Sure, they’ll be crude and amateur-ish, and fact checking will be a fun challenge to solve, but you’ll end up with a unique, compelling show that viewers will identify with.
Fire Everyone – … well, almost. Full-time staff is expensive, and you’re competing with a medium where aggregation of crowd-sourced content is driving the cost of doing business to near-zero. This means engaging anyone and everyone who has a vested (non-monetary) interest in disseminating news. Be they community leaders, businesses, local special interest groups… whatever. Producers should think of themselves as “Community Cat Herders”.
And, finally…
Embrace the Chaos – These changes will be difficult and push the bounds of what a “news show” is, and is about. But that’s okay! It will be an energizing and creative endeavor, dare I say, fun even. You’ll be exploring unchartered territory. But viewers will understand this, and even come to enjoy the all-too-frequent screw-ups and missteps. The end result will be a program that has a passionate following, and that holds a critical place in the heart of the local community.
Even if you fail, I promise more than sixteen people will care.
Well said, agree with most your points, but it’ll probably be a cold day in hell before any of it happens. The folks that run these media outlets (all forms of media) are very set in their ways, and aren’t willing to experiment (probably due to that minor detail about profitability, and the feelings that change will hurt that — even though they’re not making any money anyway). Your proposals are good, but good luck seeing them in reality.
Dude? Seriously? I think you are missing the point! News is a business. I am not sure what business you are in, but what you are suggesting is a “throw the baby out with the bathwater approach”.
Both KTVZ and KOHD do a decent job in localizing national news and covering local news. I dont know how you define deliver local news, but just in the last two days I can recall seeing several very local and relevant stories (Westlund, Couger Attack, and Local soldier in Redmond school). KTVZ repeats the local price at the pump every week so we know where gas prices are heading.
The studio is not a forum or pulpit. Its a stage and should be treated as such. It lights and cameras and reporters doing there best to tell engaging relevent stories to the persons tuning in to the shows.
Fire the pretty people. Well if you consider Lee Anderson, Barney Lerten, or the new guy Ted pretty…To each his own. Its a HD media. Most of the people you see WANT to be seen and want to look good doing it. They are young and not well paid and are in an environment that is small town and is small market tv. The end product that is produced is as good as or better then most other small market shows.
Engage the smart, acquard and silly people? The news cast is just that NEWS (facts). Discussion are for sunday morning programs, newspapers, and online formats. NEWS does need to tell all sides of the story if possible. But c’mon, do we really need to have a discussion on the merits of releasing the redmond 5, or how about a discussion on why cougar attacks are on the rise. That would make for interesting news wouldnt it?
Got a story idea? just about every newscast on KTVZ I see a screen that gives an email address and phone number to submit to. Want to produce your own? If its news worthy…go for it. Please produce a high quality well written entertaining article, add your supers and see how long it takes you. Once you have done it, submit it to ANY tv station and ask them to preview for air as an opinion and let us know what you get as a response!
FIRE Everyone? Now you are getting WAYYYYYYY out there. Go on down and take a look around at the station. I think you will be VERY surprised to find out how much staff it takes to run a broadcast facility. Please keep in mind that your sophisticated technology centric view on this only appies to 5-20% of the 150K of the central Oregon population.
I recommend you get in on one of the feedback meetings that I am sure they do. Give the media management your feedback and see what the response it. I bet you find that the product that is produced is a direct result of feedback that they have recieved from research from neilson, polling, and other surveys.
So I guess the bottom line is if this is what you think people want……create it and see if you get a following.
@Brian: I appreciate you taking the time to comment. You’ve offered valid, and likely well-deserved, criticism of my ideas. Which was precisely the point. I called them “crazy ideas” for a reason, and intentionally dramatized them a bit. But I’d like to think they are based on some fundamentally sound observations, such as: more could be done with the 30 minutes a news program has, viewers can get state/national news from a variety of sources, there is value in connecting people to their local community, the cost of disseminating news online has dropped dramatically, etc.
What I’d like to see from you, in addition to simply pooh-pooh’ing my ideas, are some ideas of your own. E.g. If you were in charge of KTVZ today, what would you do? Your only competitor, KOHD, who by some accounts was doing an as good or better job than you, has just cried, “Uncle”, as a result of viewers turning to other news outlets (namely, the Internet). That would seem to bode ill. So how do you prevent the same from happening to you? What changes would you make stay to relevant? How do you make sure you retain your audience and advertisers? For KTVZ, the demise of KOHD could be a perfect opportunity to effect some big changes; they now have a captive TV audience who are unlikely to go anywhere (for now.)
… or are you saying there’s nothing wrong with the status quo? That KOHD was an aberration, and that doing a “decent job” of providing a traditional local news program is all that’s required?
P.S. Please note that I don’t think of Mr. Lerten as a “pretty face”
I’ve exchanged a few comments with him here and on other websites, and been impressed by him. I’m not familiar with Lee or Ted, so can’t offer up opinions there, but sounds like you think they’d fall into a similar mold, so I won’t disagree.
The problem isn’t with KTVZ or KOHD…it’s Nielsen (and anyone in television will agree with me.)
The way it works (and I’m not making this up.)
1.) Nielsen finds a viewing household by land line (they cannot call cell phones so there goes a whole demographic)
2.) Nielsen sends a household a diary (this is a book for you to WRITE in)
3.) You the viewer (who obviously lives in the dark ages because you still have a land-line) are supposed to WRITE DOWN the television you watch. This is divided into 7.5 minute intervals per hour.
4.) Your family or housemates are also supposed to fill out their own book every time they watch TV.
5.) At the end of the week you are supposed to send in your Diaries back to Nielsen.
6.) Nielsen will send you a gift card (up to $20 for your participation…you get more if you are an ethnic household.)
7.) Nielsen processes these diaries and determines who is watching what in the Bend Designated Market Area (DMA)
By now, you sharp folks’ wheels are already spinning (I’m guessing. . .)
What really happens (and I know…because I have been a television research director and visited the Nielsen Headquarters to complain and only came back more discouraged)
1.) Nielsen has a hell of a time finding a fair sample of respondents that match the census demographics for the Central Oregon region (especially Men 18-34) SO they find households where the “family” has an 18-34 who attends college and “might” be home during the sweep period or they give a lot of weight to the handful of respondents that are in an elusive demographic.
2.) People fill out diaries not on what they really watch but in one or more of the following ways: 1. They write down the programming they think they are going to watch (and never revisit the diary when they are watching it.) 2. They write down shows that they really want to succeed (like 30 Rock) regardless if they watch it or not (like they are doing these programs a favor and/or 3.) They write down all the programming they think reflects well on them (PBS and the like) as if Nielsen is going to give them a citizenship award.
3.) Nielsen receives these diaries and (as a rule) objectively analyzes them to determine who has what rating.
There are many more Nielsen flaws…but that is just an overview. . .
Additionally, I can tell you that the only people that fill out diaries correctly are retired women (they are extremely accurate and honest..think crossword addicts) and Hispanic/non-white respondents (I’m not sure why this is true…but I’ve seen the diaries and they write down everything!) Of course in Diary markets shows like Jerry Springer get 0 (ZERO) ratings because no one will write down that they watch them (C’mon…we all watch train wreck tv from time to time.) The same goes for a lot of local news. PLENTY of people are (were) watching KOHD and KTVZ newscasts, but few fill out the diaries…except those not so key 60+ age groups (there rating points are worth far less than an 18-34 year old)
Long story short: It’s the Nielsen Ratings system that is flawed (and is largely why TV sucks these days)
Now take a moment to reflect on the above and know this:
1. Stations make programming decisions based on these (incorrect) rating numbers
2. Stations get PAID based on the (incorrect) rating numbers
3. More than anything in the WORLD a TV news station would love to be YOUR news source…but they can’t do it because they can’t generate the money (see 2)
I could go on and on…but I think you get the idea…
@Jeff: That’s interesting – I wasn’t aware Nielson was relying on hand-written diaries still. I had assumed, like many others I suspect, that they used some sort of “black box”. But googling around turns up a bit of info, including this page showing the diary, and this page showing the “Nielson Box”. So I guess it’s a combination of two fairly antiquated technologies.
And, of course, the whole DVR scene is skewing things dramatically. It may also take some of the edge off Nielson’s stranglehold on ratings. For example, there’s this challenge from TiVo. But… I’m guessing Nielson won’t be giving up their position anytime soon.
As an interesting aside, our household was a Nielson Internet household for a while (they monitored our internet usage to see what websites we use). And that experience certainly didn’t convince me they were getting accurate data either. The way it works, Nielson sends you a CD with some software to install (an HTTP proxy that gathers info about your browsing habits), and in exchange they pay you $100/month. If you don’t participate (e.g. you upgrade your computer and don’t reinstall the software), you’re implicitly “opted out” of the program. All of which makes for the following biases:
- Low income families are more incentivized to remain in the program
- Families that update computers more often (i.e. high-income families, or more tech-savvy families) tend to get opted-out sooner.
- Users with concerns about privacy and security will not participate.
- Households with multiple computers (not uncommon these days) will put it on the computer that least used for important or sensitive stuff.
- It’s trivial to hack their monitoring software… if, for example, you wanted them to think you were participating, even when you weren’t.
Robert,
Thank you for such a rich response! You dug up lots of detail that I didn’t have the time and energy to add to yesterday’s rant. By now you see where I’m coming from. . .
One quick note: there is a difference between the “Nielsen Box” (which is called a PEOPLEMETER and a “Household Nielsen box” that just measures if your TV is on…but not who is watching it demographically…which leads to a whole different discussion on Nielsen’s accuracy.
I really appreciate the research that you put into this and I also want to applaud you for taking this discussion to such a deep level. I would almost suggest you forwarding this to your local TV station (KOHD and KTVZ) and let them know your thoughts! Change starts with you!
~Jeff