For NAB, there’s no other way to see the move than as a blow, and it’s one from which the organization must now pick itself up, dust itself off and regroup for next steps.

In this Talking TV conversation, Curtis LeGeyt, NAB’s president and CEO, says he’s “tremendously frustrated” with the FCC’s decision, and that the group is still weighing the next legal steps it can take to put broadcasters on a more level footing with its unregulated competitors.

LeGeyt also lays out NAB’s priorities for the year, which include an April conference that continues to expand its tent with CES-like ambitions for content creators from all media platforms to find a home.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Happy New Year and welcome to our first 2024 edition of Talking TV. I’m Michael Depp, the editor of TVNewsCheck, and today I am with Curtis LeGeyt, the president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters. We’re going to be talking about that very unhappy holiday gift from the FCC to the broadcast industry, as well as the NAB’s priorities for TV broadcasters this year. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Happy New Year, Curtis LeGeyt, and welcome to Talking TV.

Curtis LeGeyt: Great to see you, Michael. How are you? Happy New Year.

Thanks for joining me so soon in the new year. Curtis, the FCC gave broadcasters a very unwelcome Christmas present when it reaffirmed and then even tightened its network and TV station ownership limits. This was obviously a big blow, and it comes despite your lobbying efforts. So, what happens next? What’s your next move?

Well, as you point out, you know that the order from the FCC came out right before — or immediately during — the holiday week. And so, we are still spending the time going through the final item. But suffice it to say, we are very, very disappointed, and I’m confident that there are policymakers in Washington, D.C., especially on Capitol Hill, who are going to be disappointed as well.

I think there is significant awareness across Washington of the challenges facing local newsrooms across the country. We have been working with members on Capitol Hill for years on legislative efforts to level the playing field with big tech. You know, we are competing, both television and radio, in an environment where we’re competing for audience and advertising dollars with players all across the media landscape. Yet the FCC’s ownership rules are premised on the idea that broadcasters only compete against other broadcasters.

So, it’s tremendously disappointing that after sitting on this item — and let’s dwell on the fact that this is the 2018 Quadrennial Review — after sitting on this item for so many years that the FCC not only would have left the current rules intact, but in some ways use this opportunity to re-regulate in a way that is going to have a detrimental impact on smaller television markets. So, we’re tremendously frustrated.

Is your best hope here ultimately getting a Republican in the White House?

Well, I wouldn’t say that. There are people on both sides of the aisle — Democrats and Republicans — who are tremendously invested in ensuring that there is a viable business model for local newsrooms. If you look at the media landscape over the past decade, broadcasters are growing our newsrooms. We are investing in local communities and filling the void that has been created by the collapse of the local newspaper industry.

And so, I think members of Congress on both sides of the aisle see that. I have every belief that whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican administration, there is a real awareness of the need for local broadcasters to be able to compete. And in some cases, having increased scale is going to be a part of that.

So, we’re going to make our arguments at both the FCC, at the administration and the White House, regardless of which party is in power. But, you know, we are tremendously disappointed that the current FCC can’t see what I think is obvious even at the holiday dinner table when I talk to my mother or father, that the way that audiences are consuming our content has changed dramatically, yet the FCC’s rules haven’t kept up with it.

Well, preserving localism is ostensibly, for the Democrats on the FCC, that’s their prerogative here, and obviously the station owners are extremely concerned that this has exactly the opposite effect, that it’s going to be corrosive and damaging to local newsrooms. To your knowledge, is there any research about the impact that a lack of consolidation would have on local news production?

So, look, I think the newspaper industry speaks for itself. And what I’m focused on is ensuring that broadcasters have the ability, when audiences are cord cutting, to ensure viable revenue streams. We know that the major tech players, Facebook and Google, have absolutely eaten up the marketplace for digital advertising. And we see that audiences are fleeing the traditional ecosystem.

And in light of that, how do broadcasters compete, not go the way of the newspaper industry, without increasing where they choose to do it some scale, both in the local markets and in the national markets?

I think it is very, very difficult to justify how tightening the ownership rules is going to enable broadcasters to achieve the scale, to invest in the type of local journalism that our audiences have come to expect, as well as to innovate. So that’s really where we are focused right now, advocating for greater scale.

You know, we’re really heartened by the fact that looking up on Capitol Hill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which is legislation that would enable broadcasters to gain some scale when we’re negotiating with the tech platforms for our content when it’s accessed online. That passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year and demonstrates, to your question of Republican versus Democrat, we can work with both sides of the aisle.

There are significant Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill who are behind that legislation, which aims in a different way to level the playing field with big tech. We wish the FCC would take an honest look at the marketplace in the same way that our friends on Capitol Hill have.

Well, so to that end, do we need a study or studies to quantify the real potential damage now wrought by this decision? And if we do, who would best execute that?

Well, we have put plenty of evidence in the record as to the state of the local broadcast marketplace and example after example where scale in local markets has resulted in increased investment in local journalism. So, the record, in our view, speaks for itself.

We are certainly examining our legal options, as are individual companies throughout the broadcast industry. But I would expect that there will be legal challenges brought to this order. And our hope is that the record will speak for itself in justifying that these rules no longer represent their stated objectives of the Communications Act.

Well, moving past this, which is sort of like saying: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” I wonder what else is on the NAB’s agenda this year? What are you prioritizing?

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost is the further growth of the NAB Show. You know, we are just thrilled with the way that the show has bounced back. We’ve now had two shows coming out of the pandemic and the fact that we had 65,000 people in Las Vegas last year, another 12,000 people in New York. We’re obviously building a digital platform to connect our NAB community the other 358 days of the year where they’re not in Las Vegas and they’re not in New York.

We’re gonna be building some additional opportunities to come together around that. I think it demonstrates that with all of this disruption that we are talking about here, that our business leaders and the technology companies that really enable us to create content, distribute it, monetize it, they’ve got real reason to be in person together. And so, we are thrilled with what lies ahead. You know, we’re three months out now from the 2024 show in Vegas. Expect that to be an even larger experience, new innovative experiences on the show floor. So, we’re excited for that.

You know, on the advocacy front, we are going to continue the deployment of ATSC 3.0. The FCC took a huge step last year in its Future of Television initiative, which the NAB has been asked to lead, and we are doing that. Really, this agency putting its imprimatur through that initiative on the fact that this transition needs to go from where it is right now, where you’ve got roughly 60% of the country with access to an ATSC 3.0 signal, to a full nationwide deployment.

This is very, very complicated. You know, we are not the wireless industry where any one individual company can just decide to upgrade. This requires an entire industry rowing in the same direction with the cooperation of the set manufacturers and the consumer groups, as well as our partners on the pay TV side, and I think you’re going to see real continued progress thanks to NAB’s leadership in that regard.

Just to jump in on that one, are we talking there about the task force that [FCC] Chair Jessica Rosenworcel talked about at last year’s NAB Show?

We are. Yes, so immediately following the NAB Show that task force was initiated. You know, there are three different working groups within that task force, each of which has held several meetings and will be issuing a report back to the FCC on the status of any number of issues relating to this deployment.

But I think the importance of this is rather than trying to get to a nationwide transition through just comment filing at the FCC on an issue specific basis, what that initiative enables us to do is really come together and talk about what are the technological hurdles, how do we get through them, what is the policy need to look like in a post 3.0 landscape?

And how do we ensure that no consumers are left behind? Broadcasters are absolutely vested in making sure that every consumer that wants to access a free over-the-air signal has the ability to do it, and they’re going to have an even more enhanced set of programing and a better experience through 3.0.

So, this initiative is a huge part of our agenda for 2024, as is, you know, further progress on ensuring that when our content is used, whether it’s by the large tech platforms or through the emerging generative AI technologies that are relying on news content to fuel their systems and their benefits to consumers and businesses, that local broadcasters are fairly compensated for the use of our content.

So, we’ve got a full plate here. You touched on the Quadrennial Review and the work that we need to do there to ensure a level playing field for broadcasters, But we’ve got a full agenda on Capitol Hill as well as it relates to our TV membership.

Let me just circle back to the shows for a second. In April. I should mention, of course, that TVNewsCheck is a conference partner with our Programing Everywhere event for April 14th there, which we’re very much looking forward to bringing back. Register now.

I wonder — your expectations seem to … I mean the show is bouncing back from the pandemic. Can you ever scale those 100,000-plus attendee heights again? Is that possible anymore?

I think it is possible. The response — and this is across the trade show industry — but I think the demonstrated bounce back of trade shows following the pandemic illustrates that you know, in spite of our increasingly online and digitally connected world, there is a unique value proposition to being together in person, especially when it comes to innovations.

And so, there’s no doubt in my mind that this model of bringing folks together, whether it’s predominantly in Las Vegas or spread across a number of different, more geographically centered events, that there is a demand for it.

We are still trying to make a determination on how we best cater to the NAB audience on an ongoing basis. But I think there is no doubt that given all of the evolution happening in media, you know, in some ways this industry, much in the same way that, you know, the consumer electronics industry became the nexus for, you know, a whole bunch of ancillary players, whether you’re talking about health care or auto, to convene and talk about what innovation meant for those spaces.

I think the NAB Show provides a real opportunity as content production is happening not just at NBC, CBS, Disney, Fox, but instead it’s happening, you know, at major streaming services, but also, you know, in the living room, a place where you can convene and learn about the latest technologies in content creation, the latest trends.

It has broad appeal, it has cross-sector appeal, and we’re going to continue to expand that. So, I’m not sure if the 100,000 will necessarily be simply in Las Vegas, but I think spread across the full NAB portfolio that we plan to grow over the next several years, we see real opportunities to cater to the space.

It sounds like you have a kind of CES-style vision for the thing becoming more expansive then, in that way.

Yeah, I just think that right now we do a great job of servicing broadcasters. You know, this show was created by broadcasters, has really fostered innovation in broadcast, but the reality of this show over the last decade in its growth is to the larger media landscape. And as you know, that landscape is only becoming more complicated, it’s only becoming more significant.

There are such real dramatic questions about some of the business models that are out there in media right now. And the NAB Show is going to be the place where business leaders can explore all of it, where technologists can come together. We’re really excited.

And it sounds like you’re still pretty firmly behind the NAB New York show as well, that that’s fixed on the calendar. I know it is for this year, obviously going ahead. But in the long term, do you see that show as having longevity?

I do see it as having longevity because, you know, what it allows is for those companies who have demoed particular products out in Las Vegas, it allows for them to create a more hands-on experience, a practical one in New York. It also provides us access to a very, very different audience. Yes, just geographically it’s on a different coast. But I think beyond that, the access to Madison Avenue to Wall Street opens up opportunities for our industry that we can’t just necessarily get in Las Vegas. So, there’s a lot of real potential for how we continue to build out NAB New York.

Do you see other regional shows in the mix potentially as well?

Well, I think we’ve got to continue to evaluate where those needs are. But I certainly think, you know, there is major content creation happening in emerging markets across the country. That is something that we can certainly capitalize on. You know, we are continuing to look overseas as to what opportunities might exist there. This is about expanding the NAB Show community.

And, you know, we’re not looking to create redundant experiences where we recapture the same audiences in different places. It’s about expanding our footprint and I think there’s real opportunities to do it, both by increasing our geographic diversity, but also by offering something that’s maybe a little different, more specific than what you can get at a huge show in Las Vegas.

One last thing I want to ask you: The vMVPD issue was a bruising one for broadcasters last year, with both the affiliates and the networks launching their separate respective lobbying efforts over negotiating rights. What is the NAB’s role in this? Can you serve as a mediator in this dispute?

Well, listen, I’m tremendously disappointed that the FCC hasn’t acted to refresh the record in the vMVPD proceeding. Now, this goes back to the points we were discussing with regard to the Quadrennial Review. The world around local broadcasters has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and yet the FCC pretends it is the status quo, and audiences have dramatically changed the way they’re accessing broadcast content.

Broadcasters are competing with large tech companies for market share, for advertising dollar. Yet these rules are premised on a 1990s and 2000-era media landscape. So, as it relates to vMVPD, we’re simply asking the FCC to take a look at the changes in the way that consumers are accessing broadcast content increasingly through these over-the-top streaming services. What impact is that having on local broadcast? We’ve asked them to refresh the record.

We obviously have support on Capitol Hill for that. You know, 21 Senate Democrats, including the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Maria Cantwell, have written to Chair Rosenworcel and asked her to refresh the record in this proceeding, and we’re waiting on a response there. So, I’m tremendously frustrated.

At the same time, the relationship between the networks and the affiliates is a very, very important partnership, NAB is going to help to facilitate that partnership, that we have an unbeatable combination when the networks and the affiliates are aligned within our big tent producing, you know, must have sports journalism, national and local combined with the most-watched programing. And that is how we compete in a media landscape with Apple, Amazon and I’m going to continue to urge my networks and my affiliates to invest in that partnership.

It’s not good for anyone when mom and dad are fighting all the time, is it?

That is certainly one way to put it. I’m grateful for the service that both the affiliates and the networks are providing to communities across this country. I think those ingredients are tremendously important in a world in which we’re just overrun by tech misinformation.

Well, Curtis LeGeyt, you’ve got a busy year ahead of you, an important year for yourself and the NAB. So, thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.

All right, Michael, thank you so much for the time.

And thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel as well as an audio version of the podcast available most places you get your podcasts. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: NAB’s LeGeyt ‘Very Disappointed’ In FCC’s Ownership Decision appeared first on TV News Check.

Here are the videos:

Adapting to a Climate of Continuous Crisis, the conference’s titular, opening panel, featured Barb Maushard, SVP of news, Hearst Television; Ellen Crooke, SVP of news, Tegna; Nora Zimmett, president, news and original series, The Weather Group; Sam Singal, group vice president of editorial and content, Spectrum Networks; and Joe DiGiovanni, head of North American Sales, The Weather Company. They discussed how they’re dealing with the recruitment and retention crisis, climate change coverage, navigating a growing trust crisis with viewers and how they’re readying to deal with generative AI.

Democracy, Technology, TV Journalism and the 2024 Election, the keynote panel, featured E.W. Scripps CEO and President Adam Symson and Connell McShane, an anchor at NewsNation. They discussed how their respective networks are looking to avoid the pitfalls faced by their major cable competition to chart a middle course and how to build a more durable model for news that, in turn, shores up an imperiled democracy.

Reassessing the Streaming News Content Strategy featured Sahand Sepehrnia, SVP, streaming, CBS News & Stations; Mike Braun, SVP, digital media, Gray Television; Jeff Zellmer, SVP digital operations, Fox Television Stations; Greg Morrow, GM of ViewNexa, Bitcentral; and Rick Young, SVP, head of global products, LTN. They shared that the volume and immediacy of viewer data on their streaming and FAST channels is allowing them to make programming decisions and iterations on the fly and the live content still winds with audiences over everything else.

Harvesting the Archive for New Content and Opportunities featured Ben Ramos, VP, Fox Archive, field and emerging tech, Fox News; Mike Palmer, AVP, advanced technology/media management, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Devon Armijo, director of digital news integration, Hearst Television; and Philippe Petitpont, CEO, Newsbridge. The panel looked at how AI is impacting the content retrieval and rights management elements of archives, and the steep challenges news organizations still face in getting a handle on what’s in their vaults.

Building the Architecture of More Collaborative Content Creation featured Lee Zurik, VP of investigations, Gray Television; Kate O’Brian, president, Scripps News, The E.W. Scripps Co.; Meredith McGinn, EVP, diginets & original production, NBCUniversal Local; Kengo Tsutsumi, partnerships editor, ProPublica; and Stephane Guez, co-founder & principal, Dalet. Panelists discussed the collaborative structures they’ve built both within their groups and with partner organizations, the technology that’s helping to realize the complex projects they’re undertaking and how such collaborative ways of working will be essential to newsgroup’s survival in a rapidly changing age for journalism.

Agility in News Production featured Ernie Ensign, AVP, news technology and operations, Sinclair; Steve Fastook, SVP of technical and commercial operations, CNBC; Clint Moore, director of broadcast operations, Gray Television; and Erik Smith, VP of news operations and technology, Fox Television Stations. The group looked at how broadcasters are striving for more efficiency in all aspects of news production including studio presentation, newsroom workflows and field operations. Flexibility and speed, they stressed, are key drivers for any implementation of new technology.

Chasing AI: Threatening or Enhancing the News? featured Laura Ellis, head of technology forecasting, BBC; Aimee Rinehart, senior product manager, AI strategy, the Associated Press; Santiago Lyon, head of advocacy & education, Content Authenticity Initiative, Adobe; Claire Leibowicz, head of AI and media integrity, Partnership on AI; and Ray Thompson, senior director, partners and alliances, Avid. The group laid out the most pressing issues around generative AI that news organizations will need to triage, including its weaponization for disinformation, how it will complicate already thorny trust issues and the ethical considerations that come with its adoption and labeling of its usage for viewers.

Fireside Chat Sponsored Sessions

AI and the Future of Broadcast Workflows

There’s lots of talk about AI in media, but what is likely to be the actual impact on TV production workflows? Ray Thompson, senior director partners and alliances, Avid Technology, talks about how AI is increasing workflow efficiency and will soon expedite content delivery.

News: The Last Frontier for AR and Virtual Sets

Widely used in sports programming, augmented reality and virtual sets are making their way into news programming, thanks to photo realism and other technologies that have ramped up quality. David Rodriguez  Moldes, director of product at Brainstorm, talks about how AR and virtual sets are affecting news storytelling and expanding companies’ ability to go beyond the news into magazines and other formats.

The post NewsTECHForum: The Complete Videos appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp and Editor at Large Harry Jessell take a wide-ranging look at the year just wrapping up and the one ahead, and what’s on the line for broadcasters as it comes.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: We’ve come to the end of a pretty volatile year for broadcasters, and it might fairly be said, an annus horribilis for us all. So, it’s probably a good time to take stock of some of the major events that have faced broadcasters in 2023 and look ahead to what is most likely to impact the industry in 2024.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, our weekly video podcast. This week, I’m joined by Harry Jessell, our beloved editor at large, and we’re going to talk about the health of the industry generally as it goes into the next year, the hope for regulatory relief, the prospects being ushered in by generative AI, 2024 election coverage and much, much more. We will be right back with that year-end conversation.

Harry Jessell: Good to see you, Michael. How are you?

It’s good to see you. I’m well, thanks. And it’s good to see you. You are the only person I’d want to wrap the year up with and look ahead to…

I think I’m the only person qualified to do that.

The only man standing on this planet who can do it. Exactly. Exactly. So, let’s play a little ghosts of Christmas past, and then ghost of Christmas future. And let’s start with the past, the year behind us. A lot of things going on. One of those things that might tell us something to sum up the year’s health of the industry, are stock prices.

Well, yeah, I thought, you know, there’s a lot of ways to measure an industry and we have some big public companies, so I thought I’d take a look at the stock prices and see how we did this year. First of all, the Dow is up 10%. The S&P was up 20%. So, it must have been a good year for the TV stocks. No, they were all down: 3%, 7%, 5%, 3%. Nexstar took a big hit, 32 points [Ed. note: Since this was recorded, Nexstar’s stock rebounded to 155 on Thursday]. But it was a high-flier. It started the year 174 and is down to 142, which is sort of a shame because Nexstar, the group, I think is really trying to do some things. And maybe we can talk about that a little bit later on with the CW and the NewsNation.

So, not a great year if you believe Wall Street. But I will say they’re doing better than radio. There’s a couple radio groups now that are selling for under a dollar.

Yeah, I don’t know, I mean, radio is a pretty low bar relatively speaking, but we have had a lot of headwinds this year. I mean, you know, just generally, advertising, the spot ad market was really challenged for a lot of this year. It wasn’t a political year. Of course, they’re looking at one next year and have a lot of hope with regards to a rebound there.

Well yeah, you know, that’s the nature of this business. And I think the number was that we got from Steve Passwaiter was $10 billion, of which broadcasters will get the lion’s share. So, that’s going to be a big hit for broadcasters and positive hit. They have that to look forward to as well as the challenge of covering those elections.

Yes, which we will come to. Let’s talk a little bit about the M&A year that wasn’t, in many ways, starting with Tegna.

Well, yeah. Well, this business is so heavily consolidated now that there’s not much room for mergers and acquisitions anymore. And the one big deal was cratered by the FCC and Jessica Rosenworcel, she torpedoed that deal crushing Soo Kim’s opportunity to make another big score in broadcasting and I think may have chased off some private equity money and hedge funds that might have been looking at broadcasting and their big cash flows that come, and she sort of sent a signal that you’re not wanted here in broadcasting. She’s a traditional Democrat, isn’t looking for more consolidation in this industry. So, that was sort of a negative for the industry, I think, overall.

Yeah, absolutely. But then we also have perhaps ABC on the sales block.

Well, yes, that was the story that never happened. In July, Bob Iger decides… I think the comment was like, his linear channels may not be core to the business, which a lot of people took as a sign that he was ready to divest ABC and ESPN maybe and his minor or smaller cable networks. And everybody got excited for a while. I saw numbers for ABC at $5 billion up. But you know, just a couple of weeks ago he sort of walks it back and says, you know, really, I was just really gassing, never mind, we believe in the future of linear TV. Maybe that means he does believe in linear TV. Maybe he just stirred up no interest in those networks.

Well, Byron Allen shot his hand up and Nexstar seemed to be sniffing around.

Nextstar, I think is definitely, and Byron is always sticking his hand up in the air. He’s an ambitious man. One of these days he’s going to make a big score, I think.

This would be a big one for him.

So, that never materialized. Maybe let’s put a positive spin on that. Let’s say this is Disney recognizing once again that linear TV is core, is important for maybe creating shows that they can sell downstream. So, let’s take it as a positive.

And of course, people at ABC are pretty nervous, though. I don’t think anybody feels like they’re standing on terra firma right now.

Well, probably not a good idea if you’re in the broadcasting business.

Harry, there was another big story this year with Disney and Charter.

Well, I was just going to say, the other sort of endorsement of the linear TV idea was that Disney and Charter, after coming to loggerheads in September or late August over a new carriage deal. It looked like that would go bad. It looked like Charter might walk away, but they didn’t. They were able to cut a deal for the ABC stations and more, and ESPN, and they got Monday Night Football up there.

And so, all was well, that was sort of a short-lived crisis. And had they not done that deal, that may have had repercussions for other broadcasters trying to cut new retrans deals. And so, I think for the time being, it’s secure, the idea the retrans will continue to come in. We have another year or two anyway of business as normal.

Sigh of relief.

Sigh of relief.

Another issue this year that was substantial, still unfolding really, is around the FCC and the virtual MVPDs, and that kind of fostered a bit of a schism inside of the broadcast world.

Well, yeah. Network versus affiliate the old, they’ve always been at odds, more prominently at some times than at others. But the real story there is, again, Rosenworcel has decided that she will not save broadcasters and allow them to deal directly with the virtual MVPDs, which are becoming a big part of the ecosystem now. That they will have to work through the networks, and when the networks make those deals with the virtual MVPDs, the affiliates always end up on the short end. So, that was a blow.

And it’s like Rosenworcel, like a lot of people, they say they love localism, but she doesn’t do a whole lot to help localism by supporting TV stations. I think she thinks she’s doing good by disallowing duopolies. I saw that was in the news again this week. NAB is making another run to persuade the FCC to allow network affiliates in the same market to own each other, you know, common ownership of two network affiliates. She’s not a fan of that. She’s turned down deals like that or rejected deals like that. That’s something she could do. You know, giving affiliates the right to negotiate directly with the MVPDs would have been nice…

Doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it, Harry?

Now we need another term. Can we come up with another term for that?

Yeah, I’ll work on that.

But what is clear, what is crystal clear, is she wants to help, maybe. But she doesn’t quite know how to. We’ll put it like that.

Well, one of the things I suppose you could say that that she did do to help, at least nominally, was a task force that was announced on ATSC 3.0, back in April, I believe it was, at the NAB Show, to kind of kick start that along, get that moving a little bit further. Doesn’t seem to have been a great year for NextGen TV, though, has it?

Well, it continues to bump along. Every so often you’ll see that they have announced another market, but I have yet to see a real plan for generating some revenue, creating a business either through enhanced television or through datacasting. I think the fact that LG, one of the big TV manufacturers, decided to take a pause in the marketing of NextGen sets was not good news.

Under litigation. So, it wasn’t maybe a voluntary pause, but nevertheless.

Yeah.

Just to say they were the biggest boosters in the OEM world for this technology. They were the ones kind of sticking their neck out the furthest. There was a lot of ambivalence with a lot of other set manufacturers.

Well, we’ll see what happens at the Consumer Electronics Show. But, you know, frankly, I don’t think that’s… I think it’s more of a datacasting business. I think that’s the way it’s going to go. And in even in that space, there’s another competitive transmission system out there. Got 5G, you know, uses the same transmission system they’re using for the phones, there’s a faction of the LPTV industry that’s sort of pushing this idea. So, then the ATSC proponents have to deal with that now, that somebody else is after that spectrum.

They’ve definitely thrown some cold water on that. But I do know that that some of the other the non-Sinclair broadcasters are trying some experiments with datacasting that they’ve kind of been keeping a lid on. I think some companies are just trying to manage expectations around this that it’s not going to be a panacea.

But you know, what’s interesting, when I talk to general managers, these are some of the people who are the most John the Baptist about the potential. They really do believe something is coming that will be transformative, mainly in terms of like addressable advertising in many ways. And it’s odd because that sort of dropped out of the national conversation. Certainly, it’s not leading the salient characteristics of ATSC 3.0 when we’re talking about it in a broader sense. So, they still believe, even if the faith has perhaps been challenged.

Well, as Mark Aitken is always telling me, keep the faith.

OK, well, there it is. So Nexstar, we touched on that before and they’ve had an interesting year with their national network endeavors. One of them being the CW, which underwent a pretty significant reboot this year.

Well, my Nexstar or my CW story is: I was at a New Jersey beach in September wondering how I was going to watch the West Virginia/Pitt football game, and I was surprised to find it on the CW. I guess they have an ACC package. I should have known that, but they do, and so I was able to watch that game sitting in a beach resort in New Jersey. I guess out of Philadelphia, it was. But I think that’s the right strategy, I mean they’re really heavy into sports. They did a wrestling thing also.

So, yeah, I think that’s a wise way to go. I hope they can make it. I know they’re investing heavily in it. At least Nexstar has sort of a growth strategy and maybe that’s why their stock is trading so much higher than their peers. Also, I listed this the year that Scripps came out and started talking about scooping up some local sports, and we’ve seen some of that.

Yeah, not only Scripps, Gray is on their heels, other groups are getting in there and definitely a lot of sports deals were announced. It wasn’t a plethora, but there was so much flux in that space, and it continues to be really, a lot of the teams in various leagues wanted to develop direct to consumer products for streaming so they can be sure to reach their fans. But they were convinced in many cases that broadcast is a value to them.

You know, it was years ago when I was growing up, you could watch baseball, hockey, basketball on broadcast TV or fairly frequently, boxing. All of that went away, by and large. And so, you know, those were fan recruitment devices. Those are tools for that, and I think they’re seeing the wisdom of that. And so, you get these 30-game packages that are popping up around the country with different teams and they seem to be good deals, or at least the teams are willing to try it out and see how it works.

Well, I hope we see more of them. You seem to have tracked it more closely than I. I’ve seen a few, but I’d like to see, you know, what do I know about sports marketing? But here in Pittsburgh, to do 25 or 30 games on broadcast TV and remind the people that have abandoned, the cord cutters, that we still have baseball here in Pittsburgh seems to me like a no brainer. I’d like to see it. I think it certainly would be a great thing for broadcasters if they could make that not as a loss leader, but as a real source of profit.

Yeah, well, Scripps is certainly the most bullish in that area, but Gray isn’t far behind them. And I think every group is taking this. Sinclair is trying to get back into that game a little bit and do some deals, and I think most groups are at least considering the possibility.

I think if Sinclair never saw another sports program again, they’d be happy.

Well, perhaps.

Their venture into sports has not been a good one so far.

No, but that story isn’t done being written yet.

OK, keep the faith, keep the faith.

That’s right. That’ll be the mantra.

That’s our theme.

Absolutely. And then just lastly, with Nexstar, NewsNation has another year behind it. Now they’ve got a presidential Republican debate that they have hosted. Are they, do you think, moving closer to viability, acceptability, with viewers?

I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant, and they could have had any TV station going on. Any TV station, there’s 10,000 of them and they had NewsNation. They must be doing something right. I think having that Republican debate on, which for some odd reason, I’ve been enjoying those debates. You know why? Because they’re talking policy. If they’re talking real policy, they’re talking about fixing things. There’s something normal about them. But I thought, I thought that was sort of a feather in their cap. It gave them a little status. If they were one of the big boys. I think it’s a very polished network.

It is.

No nonsense, very polished. They’ve done a nice job.

That’s Christmas past Let’s look to Christmas future 2024. There are a few things I want to bring up. Just the things that I’m watching and dynamics that will be kind of obviously important for the next year. One of them is the FAST channel phenomenon, which has become wildly, explosively popular with broadcasters. All of them, I think, at this point realize or already have FAST channels that they’re putting in various places, on the MVPDs, on the apps that are sponsored by the OEMs. Most of them have a strategy of ubiquity and putting them in as many places as possible. It’s a sort of easy-to-understand, intuitive business. It’s linear TV streaming, simply no VOD menu.

But it is an area that also, interestingly, where there’s a lot of change already happening. It used to be, you buy a smart television, you open up the app with all the FAST channels inside and you’d see a lot of library content stuff that was just kind of thrown at the wall to see what works. We are past that phase now.

We’re in the culling phase and the reorganization, redistribution of where FAST channels sit in those ecosystems. And it’s definitely turning out to be the case that they have to really think about, anybody putting one of these channels out, has to think about programing. It can’t just be some afterthought or just wheels that are running in endless circles that the OEMs and other more prized real estate wants to see original programing. They want to see dynamism, they want to see live. And so, it would seem that every broadcast group right now, needs –  

When you say, OEM, what are we talking about?

The set manufacturers, so the LGs, the Samsungs, anybody’s who’s got… and every TV basically now is a smart TV and it’s starting to come with loads of, you know, hundreds of FAST channels. But if you want to have a good place in that channel lineup, then you’ve got to have good stuff there. So, there can’t be any passivity about the programing. I think we’re going to go into this interesting year of prioritizing that platform and what it can do and just being much more active.

I have to tell you, when I turn on my TV, I look at, you know, I use Roku, when I look at those, you know, I can go down search channels and it’s just the clutter of stuff. And, you know, sometimes you see something that you might think is interesting. You go in there, it’s second-rate stuff. It looks like a lot of clutter.

It’s got a diginet-y kind of quality to it, sometimes in the worst sense of the diginet. But again, that’s you know, that stuff is getting stale. And it was sort of placeholder material in the FAST ecosystem. And now we’re moving into this more, I hate to use the word, but curated kind of sensibility about those channels.

Well, here’s what I want to know is what am I going to do with all these pay streams that I’m paying for I can’t keep paying them for. I think I’ve you know, they’re sort of like barnacles. You go through, I just collect them. I don’t think there’s, I’ve got them all and I got to do something. Can we cut to the consolidation phase?

Bundling. Well, the consolidation phase is happening for sure. But before that we’re going to see the bundling phase. And that word has already been thrown out by a few executives just in the last couple of weeks. It is coming. I think Apple TV and Paramount are talking about bundling and there are others that are under consideration right now. Bundling is going to happen, as people predicted years ago, the a la carte nature of streaming and buying streaming services has become onerously expensive, just on par with what people were paying for their cable bills. And so, what’s the value proposition really there? We’re going to see some culling of the herd. We’re going to see some bundling. There’s just going to be endless volatility in that space. So, you know, keep watching.

I guess the story is that none of these things are particularly profitable right now.

No.

No, they are not.

Well, many of them are. You know, Netflix tends to, by and large, to be pretty successful, but you have to have a massive, massive library. And that bundling is right. Even when you have a big library with lots of good titles, it’s got to be super enormous to really sustain. Of course, having all that programing costs a lot of money. The technology itself costs a ton of money and people don’t realize, they think it all just wafts in the cloud. There are server farms and massive infrastructure costs to running these things. And so, these were not small businesses that were quick to get off the ground and inexpensive. They were enormously expensive.

And then you add in the programing cost, to make the best programing that we’ve ever seen in some ways in the history of television. High cinematic production values, this cost a fortune. And this is all weighing on everybody’s balance sheets right now as we’re going into 2024.

You know, back in the day, it always irritated me that you had to get both HBO and Showtime. And I’m feeling the same way. If I want to get all the stuff that I want to get, I really have to do all those channels and they all have something on them.

You have to work three jobs to pay for it all too.

There’s a couple other things. Well, the major thing to watch, I think, for next year and maybe the most important thing since the advent of the internet — and I’m not even being hyperbolic here — is generative AI and its potential not only to change every part of our life, every industry, it’s going to affect broadcasters and it’s going to affect them imminently.

When I was at the IBC show in Amsterdam back in September, the word every single booth there was repeating like a mantra was the word
“efficiency,” because everyone realized they needed to get more efficiency out of their technologies than they have been getting. They need to lighten the load on people who are working in news, who are overworked. They need to get rid of redundant activities that go on routinely in newsrooms.

And AI, generative AI, has the opportunity to wend into so many facets of news production and lighten the workload, do incredible good potentially toward reducing the kind of redundancies that are out there helping, for instance, with versioning content from multiple platforms, which is a very onerous part of people’s jobs at TV stations as one example. It has so many appeals, and it’s becoming so much more precise, so sharp and so intelligent, it’s machine learning, so it’s always learning from what it’s doing. And its appeal to news producing companies is enormous on many levels. They are also extremely wary of the knock-on effects that it brings with it.

I’m sorry, what kind of effects?

The knock-on effects of, you know, just various things that will happen that as a result of adoption that you have to consider. You know, one of the things, for instance, being the major trust issues that consumers have with all sorts of televison, both local and national television, at this point.

When you’re employing AI at any level of the news process — and it can be applied at every level from news gathering to writing material, editing — all of this stuff can be automated. It can intermediate itself in very minute and very substantive ways that you might consider to be authorial in some ways.

The industry now has to reckon with how do you tell viewers about how you’re using it? If you are, what sort of disclosures do you offer there? And if you do disclose — I just read something today that the viewers want to know when it’s being employed, but they trust you less when you tell them. So, you know, you’ve got a real conundrum, there.

Yeah, really. Are you hip to what happened to Sports Illustrated?

Sports Illustrated, Gannett. I mean, those who have used it compositionally to write stories and yet, mind you, AP has been using it for years in that regard. They have these sort of templatized stories that they use to report earnings for a lot of small companies that allowed them to produce a lot more earnings coverage than they had been doing because they create a written template, and they plug in data points that are sort of scraped with the AI.

They did the same thing for minor league sports and baseball. And we’re talking like five or so years ago. It’s been out there, and they were fully transparent about its use there. Other groups are murkier in the way that they have used it.

Well, SI, which I consider a great journalistic brand. I don’t know what it is lately, I don’t read it. They were making up reporters. I mean, they were using stock photos and putting little blurbs at the end of the story. I mean…

And I still don’t think, as of this moment they have not come completely clean with what happened there. But it does enormous damage to the credibility of the brand. Of course, SI had some damage done, you know, going into this. And I think it’s often groups that are in dire straits, like Gannett, who are using it very liberally. But some TV station groups, look, many of the SVPs of news that I talked to in local station groups have a high, very elevated level of concern about it. They know they have to deal with it. They know it’s kind of fashioning into an arms race where someone is going to start using it and they’re going to get a competitive edge by doing so. So, they can’t just stick their head in the sand about it.

The stage that they are mostly at right now as groups is to form a sort of steering committee or some sort of internal apparatus that can start to assimilate all the information, the developments that are going on around this world — and they are coming daily, fast and thick — to try to get a handle on simply what is the narrative around this technology, how can it be used and what are the pitfalls we need to be aware of?

And there are also industry-wide consortia that are beginning to consolidate around this, around subsets of the AI issue, for instance, content authenticity, and we’ve had some podcasts and other material just this year about this subject.

How do you authenticate stuff because it’s so easy… AI can be weaponized as sort of tool of manipulation of content, and what do you do? How do you discern that? How do you prevent your own content from being in some way altered and misused once it’s out in the wild? And so, there are technologies being developed to watermark things once they’re disseminated, and there’s a sort of manifest that follows it. It’s extremely complicated, and it’s an arms race between the sort of bad actors using AI and the news organizations who want to use it to good effect.

Well, look, let me interrupt you. What would you advise the broadcasters? You say there’s sort of a downside to transparency, Right?

There is.

You can’t be too honest.

Well, so it seems. I mean, there was one report that found that viewers then have a wary eye that they raise around that. But there’s already a handful of news organizations who are wholly creating content with AI, that you can just get rid of reporters altogether.

This is one of the facets that’s going to have to be dealt with, and it does present, it should be really clear, that if companies broadly adopt generative AI into their newsrooms, it doesn’t seem possible that positions won’t be eliminated in the process. And those are positions that require a lot of critical intelligence.

And so, you know, I don’t want to say that producers all need to be worried about their job security per se. But the notion of a gen AI filling the many facets of the producer role is imminent and many other roles. You can have an AI-generated synthetic anchor or an avatar of one of your existing real human anchors, right now.

Well, TVNewsCheck has been sort of on the cutting edge of reporting that they can’t find producers. So, it sounds to me nobody’s going to lose their jobs, they’re just…

Probably not.

This may save stations.

Harry, I have a disclosure for you: You’ve been talking to an AI this whole time. I’m not actually, not actually me. It’s just my avatar. Just kidding. But it’s close. We’re close to that, and so the point is, broadcasters need to lean into this. They need to pay close attention, read everything they can. They should have a point person or group if they don’t have that now already. And these groups, these people are going to have to make some very consequential choices over the next months and year with regards to this technology.

Well, that’s great editorial fodder.

We’re all over it.

You should be.

I just want to bring up one last thing I think that we’re all going to obviously be looking at for next year and deeply concerned about, which is coverage of the 2024 election, because you have a very, very difficult needle to thread, even just looking through the lens of local television stations here where everything is politicized at every single level. You can’t just say, well, we’re local, we’re not national, we don’t have to worry about the same trust issues. They do. Mistrust has widened and it’s deeply impacted local news, and they cannot put their heads in the sand with regards to engaging the deeply polemicized viewerships that they have right now.

Trump is almost certain to be the Republican nominee and Biden the Democratic nominee. And with more and more utterances coming from Trump that are deeply, concerningly anti-democratic in nature, as in threatening the core tenants of the republic, stations have to wrestle with how they present that, that language, its consequences. What we know, in this particular candidacy, is issues that are raised that are very, very serious to the future of U.S. democracy as we have long known it.

They risk in engaging that to any degree utter alienation of Republican voters, for instance, and to abdicate in any way they risk alienating Democratic voters or just generally left-leaning voters who feel that that abdication is a failure of responsibility. And so, on that front, again, they’re going to have to make daily decisions about coverage. And they’ve struggled with this, and they continue to struggle with it about how to contextualize all of this. And how to get out of the horse race to talk about the larger issues that affect the state of the republic right now.

So, those are those are some serious, serious things that they’re going to have to grapple with, as well as the safety of their reporters. I mean, reporters are assaulted in small ways and large ways, much more than people realize in this country. It is a dangerous job. They’re in the crosshairs. People have been whipped up into a kind of frenzy and they feel very, very free about attacking verbally or otherwise or making threats on social media or in person reporters at every level.

And so, every single newsroom is going to have to develop protocols and keep iterating those protocols and have security with their reporters when they’re in situations that could become dangerous and so many more situations can become dangerous now.

OK, here’s a question for you, you want to pontificate, sir. Do broadcasters have a responsibility or are they liable? Because of the nature, I mean they’re going to take all this political advertising in next year, right? A lot of it is provocative, a lot of it is pretty nasty. It can get pretty nasty. Doesn’t that sort of fuel this conflict out there in the real world?

So, you’re sort of warning broadcasters that they’re going to have a tough time covering this election next year. At the same time, they’re sort of whipping up the electorate with just broadcasting those ads. I didn’t use the word responsible because they’re not, because of the way the law is written. They are not liable for a lot of what goes into those ads. Their obligation is they air them pretty much as they receive them. What do you think?

Well, like you said, their responsibilities are somewhat limited. They’re certainly not going to turn down that money. They need it badly. But, you know, it kind of also circles around to a broader media literacy problem that we have in this country where, you know, a lot of viewers conflate everything they see into one big kind of organism.

They don’t make these delineations. We’ve done a terrible job as a country, given how saturated we are with media. We have an electorate which is ill informed in many, many, many cases and conflates a lot of material. Of course, those problems are conflated by some news organizations themselves, particularly on cable, particularly in primetime, where this conflation of opinion and news is just wholly realized at this point.

So, we have that problem to untangle and no immediate solution presenting itself. If I could dictate something to the industry, I would advise trying to weave in media literacy efforts more often into their programing in small and large ways, if they could, to help viewers understand and unpack critically the things with which they are being presented.

And you can do that in all sorts of ways. But right now, this problem does face us immediately. And these are the dynamics that are already well in motion. And so, we’ve got to play the hand that we’ve been dealt.

I think that’s a good answer. Media literacy and broadcasters, I think, should do that. Again, this gets back to transparency. What they’re doing, what’s really happening out there, when the politicians say this, what do they really mean and not?

I don’t think they should stand in judgment just to know that, at the very least, know what the incentives that are driving media understand the economics of the business so viewers can sort of understand why they do some of the things that they do. I think that having a good industry-wide campaign for the industry, for broadcasters to undertake…

At the same moment, it should be clear that a lot of groups have made great leaps forward in just the last couple of years in the way that they’re covering stories, in realizing that they need to build transparency more into the process, what they’re showing viewers and showing them behind the curtain of news production a little bit more than they ever have, trying various creative ways to be more transparent.

And the product is everywhere that you can see of that nature, and there has been great improvement. They are meeting, trying to meet the moment in that sense. So, I’m optimistic that an effect of all of this has been that that most of the major groups have been introspective about their news product, iterating it much more dramatically than they have for decades.

Well, they are still considered the most trusted source of news, so they’ve got to be careful not to lose that.

Yes, exactly. And they know it. Well, I think a good note to leave it on is the prospect of trust and hope springs eternal. Harry, it’s been great talking with you once again and looking back and ahead to 2024. We’ll see you next year.

OK, yes, sir. See you then.

Thank you. And you can watch past episodes of Talking TV, at TVNewsCheck.com, as well as on our YouTube channel. We will be back in the new year with a whole slate of new Talking TV podcasts every Friday and look forward to seeing you then. Have a good new year.

The post Talking TV: Ghosts Of TV’s Christmas Past And Future In 2024 appeared first on TV News Check.

Fox Weather, by contrast, opened its virtual doors without a cable address, instead reaching viewers via its app, website, streaming channel and select programming insertions into Fox cable real estate including Fox Business and Fox News.

In this Talking TV conversation, Britta Merwin, one of the network’s meteorologists and co-host of its morning block, shares her vantage point on the network’s growth since launch. She says its distribution strategy has been its biggest strength, that the network has kept pace with the dramatic uptick of extreme weather and that discussing climate change — often a factual sore spot for its Fox News cousin — is a key part of its ongoing weather narrative.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, our weekly video podcast.

Fox Weather recently celebrated its second anniversary and has continued to widen its distribution since its initial launch.

Britta Merwin is one of Fox Weather’s meteorologists. She’s with me today to talk about how the network has evolved, what it’s doing to keep a competitive edge in the highly competitive weather market, and how the endless torrent of extreme weather that we experience continues to change her job. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Britta Merwin, to Talking TV.

Britta Merwin: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for being here. Fox Weather is now two years old — terrible twos. What are some of the things that you’ve seen change since you’ve come on board?

Really how you find us is what’s really changed the most. I think the mission is very similar. You know, the cool thing about working for a startup is that you get to make it what you want it to be. And we’ve really had these strong pillars going into the beginning of Fox Weather. We wanted to help people, provide people with information, but do it in a way that brought it down to the kitchen table, really connected with people one to one.

And I think that that’s something that we’ve been successful at, we’ve continued to keep in our hearts. But you can find us everywhere now. I mean, really, in the beginning it was all about finding us on the app. And I think all of us on day one when we launched, we realized how big this was going to get. I mean, to see so many people download the app just within the first 24 hours was remarkable. And now two years [on], I think all my family has a different way of finding us. So, it’s amazing how many different sources there are for finding Fox Weather. I have one family member that gets it on Roku, another one on Samsung TV Plus and then you know, locally, you can just turn on the TV. It’s right there.

When you talk to people anecdotally outside your immediate family, how do you find most people are connecting with it and watching you now? Or is it not one predominant way?

You know, I hear it from all sorts of different avenues, especially people that are tied to their cell phone, which most people are, especially younger people. I still hear a lot of people that enjoy the app because the interface is so easy, to watch it live, it’s so smooth and it works so well, that I think a lot of people have that initial connection there. But it’s interesting to see the numbers. I mean, really there’s people that are taking advantage of multiple ways of finding us.

The network launched against some pretty entrenched competition. I mean, The Weather Channel, for instance, has been around for over 40 years now. What are some of the things that you and your colleagues have been doing to stand out, to define your own brand in this landscape?

You know, I think the way you access us makes it very unique. Streaming weather was not really accessible before Fox Weather showed up. And so, I think providing that really made it crucial.

My time in Houston during [Hurricane] Harvey, I think is really one of the first times in my career that I noticed how important a cell phone truly was. You know, power goes off, but many people have power on their phone. You know, they have backup power pods that they can charge up their phone. And it was amazing to see how many people were relying on that to watch our live streaming channel.

And when Fox Weather came around, they provided that on a national level, which was very unique and a new way to be able to get information that you really need. And so, I think that’s something that really sets us apart.

Also, our connection to Fox News, I think that that makes it very unique. We’re not just Fox Weather, we’re the Fox family. For instance, during Idalia, we actually simulcasted the landfall of Idalia on Fox News. So, you know, everybody had an easier way to stay up to date to know what was going on and also provided America with a unique opportunity to really see what was going on in Florida at the time. Because many times during natural disasters, it’s not just who’s going through, a lot of times it’s everybody else on the outside, right? People are interested and intrigued by what’s going on. They either have family members that are in the path of the storm, or they just have an interest in what’s happening because it is at such a notable level like Hurricane Ian.

Is Fox News, do you find, the biggest driver for audience development? Are you picking up most of your new viewers via your exposure on Fox News?

I believe it’s from multiple avenues. I definitely think that that’s a strong suit that we have. Obviously, we have a lot of experience launching new platforms. We’ve done it in various different ways within our company. So, I do think that that’s a strength and a strong suit that we have. But I do think it’s about diversifying the deck, so to speak.

Your own career in TV meteorology has taken you on an interesting trajectory so far. You started out in NBC Weather Plus was it, I think, where you did the weather for Squawk Box?

Yeah, NBC Weather Plus was the first stop.

And then you were on News 12 Long Island, KCRA in Sacramento, KPRC in Houston. How did all these jobs prepare you for what you’re doing now, co-anchoring the Fox Weather morning block?

You know, I think it really armed me with a great diverse outlook of what goes on across our country. And I find myself very blessed to be part of a big military family. So, I’ve lived many places and I have family members in many places. And I think that that has really prepared me for this time in my career because I started as a national meteorologist.

You know, when I was on Squawk Box with CNBC, I was more focused on travel weather. And now as I’m coming back to the network level, it’s a lot deeper than that. We’re really connecting with people and focusing on the weather for the entire nation at such a magnitude, right? You know, we’re covering massive natural disasters, but also going down to the things that are daily life, like hopping on a plane, getting your kid to school. So, I think being able to be blessed with the opportunity to move across the country and see different types of weather, it’s armed me with the opportunity to be able to forecast in many spots.

And that’s really another strong suit that I love about Fox Weather. You know, when you add it all up, we have 120 meteorologists and each one of us has a unique pathway just like myself. So, it’s really neat if one person, you know, might not have had experience in the Pacific Northwest, you can find somebody that has and I always say forecasting, it’s a team sport. It comes down to working as a team, looking at scientific data, as a team and figuring it out together. The more creative minds and strong scientific thinking that you have, the better your product is going to be.

The thing about TV meteorology, which you will be well aware of, is that in individual markets people form very strong attachments to their local meteorologist and their personality is a big part of their delivery. The relationship with the audience that they cultivate is extremely important.

If you have so many meteorologists in your ear in a national-facing network—and you’ve been very emphatic about the technology and the multiplatform distribution is kind of key to the brand—what about the development of, you know, what about you as a person and your individuality? Is that less important in this context? It sounds like it’s you know, it’s the tech, it’s the distribution points. Is the personality side of this a little bit less significant at Fox Weather?

I don’t believe so. I mean, especially with the surge of AI, which I think in many ways we’re still unlocking the potential there, either the potential drawbacks or also the potential strengths when it comes to that in so many different avenues of how we function in life. But when you boil it down, people are always going to want to connect with a person, and whether it’s on a local level or national level, when you are going through a natural disaster or you have a family member that is… or if you go to the macro level, for instance, Hawaii, with the Lahaina wildfires, there’s many Americans that have never been to Hawaii. They’ve never even seen the Hawaiian Islands. They have no connection to it. But that was the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history.

And when you have natural disasters that are hitting that level, Americans feel it. It, unfortunately, sometimes is the darkest things in reality that bring out the brightest light in humanity. And when something like that is going on, you’re always going to want to be drawn to an actual human being. So, to a person, to a face, to a feeling, to a connection that you built with somebody by watching them. And so, I think the connection that people get on the local level is exactly the same on a national level, but you might be tuning in for a different reason.

I do think a lot of our viewers are people that have a large interest in what’s going on, have family members that are being impacted that really want to understand why something is happening, the latest information of what’s going on. So, they’re up to date because they know their loved ones in it, you know, and they might not be able to get that information, but they can tune on Fox Weather and they’re going to have the latest information of exactly what’s going on in an area where they have family members, where they have friends, where they have people that they want to know what’s going on.

Now, talking of extreme weather, I mean, at this point, extreme weather has thrown away the script and there’s no longer any sense of, you know, something’s going to happen in a particular time or season or place, for that matter. How have you adjusted as a newsroom in your two years to deal with the velocity of what’s happening now in terms of extreme weather events across the country?

You know, I think a lot of the shift really has happened over the last 10 years. I think it’s sort of been a gradual increase, but definitely since we’ve launched, I feel like it’s kind of like, you know, putting the gas pedal all the way down to the floor. And so, I think it’s provided us with a unique opportunity to grow with the need, if that makes sense, because we’re happening at the same time as that accelerating, we can grow with the pace instead of playing catch up.

It’s like we’re right in line with it. And I think just the sheer number of people that we have that have the weather knowledge and have all of that scientific back up. I think it arms us in a unique position to stay up to pace, because I do think that when you look at the occurrence of natural disasters in our country, you’re going to run into more people that have been impacted by natural disaster.

If you go back 15 years ago, there’s a lot of people that might not, have never, you know encountered a flood or a blizzard, and now almost everybody has lived through some type of natural disaster. Maybe on a different level, but you’ve at least been touched by the ferocity of Mother Nature.

And I think that we have a unique position because we’re sort of growing up in these times, so to speak, that we can kind of go with it instead of playing catch up. Because I do think that for some Americans, they’re having to play a little bit of catch up. They’re not used to living with these conditions. They’re being uncomfortable because of weather for one of the first times in their life. And they’re having to be reactive instead of proactive. I think Fox Weather is in a very unique position where we’re able to be proactive. We’re not having to play catch up because we’re right there already.

Many people were skeptical at Fox Weather’s launch that the network would acknowledge the reality of climate change in its reporting. And around that time I had Sharri Berg, who runs the network, in an interview onstage, and at the time she vowed that the issue was a nonstarter — that there would be no climate change denial at all at Fox Weather. Now, you came out of NBC’s stations where there’s a lot of talking about climate change now and how it impacts meteorology. So, how are you at Fox Weather talking about climate change right now? Where does it fit into the narrative of your weather reporting?

I think we really stick to the facts and that’s how we go about it, because that’s how it should be done. It’s a science. Meteorology is a science, and so you have to stick to the facts. And you know, there is a much larger occurrence of dramatic weather because our earth is warming up and there’s no way to get around it. I mean, a big example is what we’ve seen with this hurricane season, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean were very warm this year. And the interesting thing is it’s an El Nino year. We should have had a very underplayed Atlantic hurricane season. And we have two names left on the list. And the season ends Nov. 30. So, we’ve gotten very lucky. We’ve only had two real impacts for the U.S., for the Atlantic. Of course, we had Hilary off the Pacific. But to have so many storms, we got really lucky this year. We really, really did. But it’s an example of how, you know, we stick to the fact of what it is.

You know, the water temperatures are insanely warm. And when you look at heat over the globe, you know, there’s, of course, natural oscillations that are part of the Earth. El Nino and La Nina. Those are transfers of water temperatures across the Pacific that are natural part of how the earth works. But then there’s other parts where we are warmer and it’s because of the impact of our life on the globe.

And so, I think it’s important to cover both things and even last week we had a great scientist on that was talking about that specific thing and about how that could impact the winter season. Because the truth is we’re going into winter with a strong El Nino pattern, but our water is hot. I mean, even water temperatures in Canada and the lakes are warmer than they have ever been. And so, we’re kind of in uncharted territory, so to speak.

How is that going to impact things? And that’s what I love about science, is that you’re always curious, you’re always wanting to find the answer, pushing for more information. And that’s what I love about being a meteorologist and an atmospheric scientist is that you’re always pushing the envelope to unearth the truth on earth, the facts and deliver it.

But, you know, Fox Weather, we give you the facts, we’re going to stick to it. We’re all scientists. I mean, my degree is in atmospheric sciences. I didn’t go to school to be on TV. I actually found my way into that avenue through internships, but my degree is in atmospheric science, and that’s what drives me and that’s what I’m passionate about.

How do viewers react when you talk about climate change? I mean, you know, the facts are the facts with regards to that phenomenon. But you know especially those coming from Fox News are not so friendly to that idea as an empirical truth. Do you run against any friction there when you talk about it?

I haven’t personally run into any friction, so it’s not something that I’ve encountered.

Now, I know the network has a pretty serious arsenal of weather tech. What do you find are the most important tools doing your job?

I find the most important tool is our people force. It is the meteorologists in this building. Do we have fancy tools? Absolutely. Do we have a network of awesome radars? Absolutely. And that is an important part. But if you don’t have the minds that can read that, that can use the tools, then those fancy tools are useless. You have to have the science behind the technology to make that marriage and make it work. And that’s what we have at Fox Weather. It’s the perfect setup.

That said, are you really not going to tell me your favorite toy at work?

Well, I have to say my favorite toy, it might sound a little silly to some people because I am a hardcore atmospheric scientist, but it really draws back to a very human element. We have an event planner on our app where you can put in your vacation. It can be a week-long … so right now I actually have a family vacation that we’re planning for in June in Florida, and I have the whole week laid out for the location that we’re meeting up, and it’s my parents, it’s my siblings.

We have been looking forward to it. And it’s showing me the weather leading up to that. And that’s really, I have to say, just from a personal standpoint, that’s one of my favorite things. Although we have fancier things, our 3D radar on the app is really great. But I have to say that’s probably my favorite feature on the app, is the planning feature. Just because it’s fun to pull it out with my kids and count down and know what the trends are and where we’re going and what we could be looking forward to.

An endeavor like this network is always about continued expansion and iteration. So, what can we expect for the third year of Fox Weather?

I think distribution will continue to grow. I mean, we’ve had such an accelerated rate just in the last two years, but I think that that is something that will continue to move forward. And I think you’re going to see more people come on board. Always when there’s something new, you know, it takes a while for people to latch on and just seeing how much has been embraced in two years. It makes me excited for the future because I think that piece is just going to continue to grow and more people kind of coming into the family.

Britta Merwin, meteorologist and morning co-host of Fox Weather, congratulations on Fox Weather’s second anniversary and thank you for coming.

Thank you, Michael. I appreciate you having me.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. Talking TV is back most Fridays with a new episode. You can watch all of our past episodes on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Fox Weather Marks A Second Anniversary appeared first on TV News Check.

The premise is straightforward — the reporter develops a closer relationship to the area, building trust and delivering more relevant, useful stories. The community, for its part, sees a station invested in its future.

At WCBS in New York, President and GM Johnny Green and VP/News Director Sarah Burke say the community reporters are gaining traction with viewers, as are the beat-focused reporters the station is increasingly turning to as well. They say the effort is an investment in trust, especially in a media hostile climate on the cusp of a deeply fraught election year.

In this Talking TV conversation, Green and Burke also discuss the momentum WCBS has built as a first mover in the local news streaming and how they’re readying their staff for safety in a rough year ahead.

Michael Depp: I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, our weekly video podcast.

Today, I’m joined by Johnny Green, president and GM of WCBS in New York, and Sarah Burke, the VP and news director at the station. There are always a million things going on at an O&O station in the country’s biggest news market, but our conversation is going to zero in on a few of them: The community reporting model being implemented across the CBS stations, growth in CBS’s local streaming channel there and how they’re bolstering for a tumultuous news year ahead of the enormous pressures that everyone in the industry—but perhaps especially the New York stations—are under. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Johnny Green and Sarah Burke, you are very welcome to Talking TV.

Sarah Burke: Thank you. Good to be here.

Johnny Green: Thanks for having us.

To a greater or lesser extent, CBS-owned stations have been creating the position of community reporters in their markets, essentially to be covering a neighborhood with the idea of building trust, building relationships in the community and ultimately giving better, more relevant coverage. How widely are you doing this in New York?

Johnny Green: I can start from a broader sense from a station perspective. We assign journalists to geographical areas and beats. And what I can tell you is since we made that commitment, it’s kind of energized the entire station to be almost journalists across departments because everybody takes pride in where they live and share news from that beat. Being involved, community activities from that beat. I can toss it to Sarah, who can go deeper into how we do it specifically with our reporters here in the newsroom.

Sarah Burke: Thanks, Johnny. Our community reporting kind of takes several different forms at this point. So, we have the reporters who live and work in community. I have a reporter in the Bronx, I have a reporter in Brooklyn, Queens, someone who specializes in Harlem. Those are the investments we’ve made to date with other investments in the future.

We’d love to have someone on Staten Island. We have folks who are in New Jersey, two reporters there. And what we feel like that investment gets us is really hyperlocal reporting, but not just hyperlocal, as in, you know, we’re finding out about this story or that story, but the follow up is, I think, a little bit more authentic and automatic.

We are building real relationships with the people who, you know, Jessi Mitchell in Harlem or Elle McLogan in Queens, Hannah Kliger, who was born and raised in Coney Island and is getting good tips, is following up on stories and building a lot of trust in the community. Like you said, Michael, that’s one of the community reporter investments we’re making.

But the entire station is investing in community through our Better Together campaign, which is really active all year round, but particularly around the holidays. We’re doing our season of giving campaign and that I think has helped the whole organization understand the importance of investing in community for all of us, not just reporters who are working a beat. And we’ll be out on Saturday at several grocery store locations talking about food insecurity and things of that nature. We also just generally do internal efforts to kind of bring the station together, too, which I think has been really meaningful.

Johnny Green: One quick thing I would add is, the one thing that I think the newsroom’s commitment which spreads to the station — what I love about it is we’re there to cover stories that we have to cover that are not always fortunate, but we’re also there to celebrate when things go well and to be partners, you know, when things don’t go well. I think that is the biggest payoff from what I see from this seat.

You’re kind of actually getting to what I want to just follow up on with the community reporters. How are the communities that are being covered responding, and how are viewers more broadly responding to this structure? Is it something where you’ve had some concrete feedback so far to build from?

Sarah Burke: We’ve gotten really positive feedback in the form of emails. I forget the story last year that we covered, I think it was a domestic violence kind of survivor event. We went there, I think it was in the Bronx, we spent the day, we covered the story, we talked to folks and one of my news managers… her title is executive producer impacting community, and that’s a role that was new to the station group when [CBS News & Stations President] Wendy [McMahon] first came, came aboard… and it’s been just such a valuable role to have in our newsrooms. She works with our community reporters to just kind of keep track of what they’re working on and also engaging in some of these bigger station events.

But anyway, she was the one who received this email from somebody who said, I can’t believe you showed up. You’re never here to cover us for something good. I’m not doing the email justice because it was really just a beautiful sentiment that meant a lot to the newsroom, and I think it has that reinforcing effect. We want more of that. We want to be there for positive stories and make sure that we’re shining a light on good things, things that are helping community as much as we’re there for the things that certainly become news coverage and are unfortunate stories.

I’m just curious about the implementation of this idea in New York, particularly because it’s such a massive city and you have such giant populations even within neighborhoods. I mean, you could have a community reporter just in Astoria, Queens or in Hell’s Kitchen or, you know, you could divide it up in an even more granular way. You just have people covering essentially boroughs, it seems at the moment, or Harlem. Do you foresee kind of any allocation shift of more reporting resources into this model significantly than you have now?

Sarah Burke: That’s a good question. I think we’ll continue to invest, like I mentioned, we don’t have someone on Staten Island just yet, but we do have two reporters on Long Island, and we have somebody in Westchester County. We’ve deployed in a geographic way already, in addition to the people who are identified specifically as community reporters.

But we’ve also, Michael, talked a lot about specializing in a topic and developing more expertise in that way as well. So, we have the geographic community, but then we also have an education community. We have people who are focusing on congestion pricing, which is such a huge issue here in the tri-state area. So, we’re also specializing reporters in a kind of a hybrid beat way that we think will really help our audience more deeply understand important issues to the viewers we’re trying to serve.

Let’s talk about streaming. CBS had one of the earlier and more robust local streaming channels, piggybacking initially off of CBS All Access. Flash forward a few years and you’ve got these relatively mature streaming operations that I understand are quite successful – their digital performance in all your markets, including New York. I know also that you’re morning blocks are particularly strong with traffic. But what can you tell me about the growth that you’ve had there and how you’re how you’re maturing that operation on streaming?

Johnny Green: Yeah. Michael, thank you for that question. You know, as you pointed out, we had the luxury to bring in the first local streaming channel, local station in the country, and we did get a jump start as far as being out there. People know where we are. And what we’ve seen by the research is those morning hours were heavily viewed.

So, in the last year plus we launched a 7 a.m. That was streaming-only to start. We recently, two months ago, launched an 8 a.m. now both a simulcast also on WLNY ch. 55, which is our sister station.  You know for example, the 7 a.m., the month of October got 7.5 million minutes watched. And it has certainly been a success, I think, post COVID, you see viewing habits changed, so the commute might be different, so we’re going through that 4:30 through later in the morning. We’ve seen some success there. Sarah, anything you want to add about kind of the content and what you guys would produce news-wise?

Sarah Burke: Thanks, Johnny. It’s been really heartening to see just that we’re creating something that there is a big demand for, and to have some of the most successful streaming shows in the station group has been, I think, really rewarding for us. And so, we’re trying to build on that success with the 7 a.m. and we’ve launched the 8 a.m., as Johnny mentioned, come December, it will be a full hour. And so, we’ll have a sizable morning block that starts at 4:30 in the morning on linear. Of course, we’re simulcasting everything on stream, so we’ll be on from 4:30 all the way till 10 a.m. with, I think, newscasts that not only serve our audience with weather and news, but we’re really trying to create an experience for the viewer that allows them to stay as long as they want. You’re not going to get something that feels like a wheel in the morning. You’re going to get news, you’re going to get weather. But we’re also trying to incorporate newsmakers, especially into the 8 a.m. hour, which is hosted by Chris Wragge, who’s an excellent interviewer, and we’re planning on having him lean into that when the show expands to the full hour.

Sarah Burke: And then 9 a.m. is one of my — you can’t say one of my favorite shows, but I have a soft spot for it because it’s so much of what we’re doing in the community. And that’s another kind of leg of the stool of our community engagement is to have this platform where we are celebrating community in such an intentional way. Cindy Hsu is the perfect anchor for that show, joined by John Elliott, who does weather for us. But all of our community partners have a home in the 9 a.m. and it’s just got an excellent warmth to it. And so that’s the streaming block that we’re talking about when we talk about the shows that are really, I think, performing strongly for us.

And elsewhere, Sarah, do you find it’s breaking news that’s driving peak performance on the streaming channel or are there other drivers?

Sarah Burke: Breaking news is a huge driver, absolutely, and that has been a learning curve for us. Not to say that we didn’t anticipate that breaking news would drive people, but just how much it does. And we know that if we’re not standing up excellent coverage during breaking news, we are missing a huge opportunity to serve our audience. They find us during breaking news. We’ve seen it with a crane collapse in Midtown, with the unrest in Union Square when Kai Cenat gave out the video games. It’s millions and millions of minutes streamed and, you know, I’m kind of constantly amazed that people are so available to just start streaming us. And it’s a real opportunity that energizes the whole newsroom.

And Johnny, what about advertisers there? Is it still largely, I mean, generally across the industry, it’s largely programmatic advertising, but are you doing a lot more direct sold into this?

Johnny Green: Yeah, it’s a combo. You’re right. It is more programmatic buys in the OTT space. But as we have these added live hours that we can point people to, and as we see the minutes watched grow, we’re certainly looking to kind of match the model that has worked for linear for many years.

How does that translate to OTT? So, that’s certainly something that our sellers are out in the marketplace marketing when we see this growth. You know, and what I’m happy about, what Sarah mentioned, is when we have those big breaking news events that translate to give us a little bit more regular viewers. Which is kind of the challenge in the sales space, but where we’ve seen some growth after being there, when people need us to be there, they’ll come back perhaps when there wasn’t a big break or so. We’ve definitely seen some success and some growth there.

How’s the learning curve with advertisers on streaming? Do they get it? Some markets I’ve heard are harder than others to kind of explain it to people. Some advertisers get it right away. They see it’s just like TV. They’re very savvy to it. Others, it’s harder.

Johnny Green: Yeah, it’s hit or miss. And you know, in New York is different to where, you know, some agencies are used to it, and they buy network. So, being in New York that works, some agencies are not as used to it and it’s the explanation, it’s calling out these positive stories that we see in our numbers and our growth. You know, reinforcing what we were bringing to the community, and just the convenience of it.

You know, we’re a big commuters place, so a commuter city, so people taking the train into the city, like we literally carry a story that way to advertisers. So, they know that, you know, there’s not appointment we’re constantly on, we’re 24/7. When it’s breaking, we’re there, and you know, slowly but surely, we see that they’re coming around.

Sarah, in terms of creating the programing that is bespoke or original to streaming, how difficult has that been to work it into the workflows of the newsroom? You know, it’s another thing you have to do. I don’t know how much you’ve staffed up to handle these additional streaming only hours or units, but has that been difficult to reconcile?

Sarah Burke: Well, I think yes and no. I have to give the newsroom a lot of credit because I’ve worked in several. They’re all fantastic places, but this is a group of such driven, professional, probably type-A people that you create a new mission, and they’ll achieve it, and frankly, usually in ways that I have not even imagined.

We have just a great team here who has really embraced the challenge of streaming, and more than just in a thing I’ve got to do, kind of like you’re saying, you know, you add another show, it’s another thing, it’s another drain on the newsroom. But that’s not how streaming has been perceived, I don’t think, by the newsroom. I think it’s viewed as the opportunity that it really is. And so, there’s a lot of excitement about it and a lot of people who are willing to pitch in. What I was talking about previously with the breaking news, we use the acronym, S.O.S. — stay on streaming. It helps us remember that, you know, even if we’re stopping down because we’re cutting in on linear, we got to stay on streaming, we’ve got to super serve our audience, and that’s a rallying cry for us, to just make sure that we’re thinking about serving the audience, whether it’s with a chopper picture or a live reporter or information driven from the anchor desk. And I think it’s a challenge that the newsroom has embraced, and we all understand that it’s important for our future to knock it out of the park.

And I should mention to viewers of this right now, if you want to learn more about CBS’s streaming news strategy and how it’s evolving, we have Sahand Sepehrnia, who is the group’s SVP of streaming, on a panel on this very subject at our NewsTECHForum conference in New York on Dec. 12. So, register for that.

Now, speaking of that conference, the overall theme of it this year is adapting to a culture of continuous crisis, which the industry finds itself needing to do now more than ever. And I wonder how you both are adapting yourselves. You know, you’re running one of the country’s biggest local newsrooms in a city that doesn’t ever have a moment of downtime on the best day. So, let me put a finer point on that. Sarah, I’m wondering specifically here, how are you prepping for coverage in an upcoming election year that’s going to see perhaps the most sharply divided electorate since the Civil War and where the prospect of violence against your journalists, you know, just as one baseline concern is perhaps higher than ever?

Sarah Burke: Thank you for that question. It’s certainly something that Johnny and I talk a lot about, and our senior leadership talks a lot about, because the concern that we have for our newsgatherers in the field, it’s real. And I will say that the safety concern is nonstop. Certainly, the election coming up will intensify those conversations and those concerns. But it’s always a concern.

Things are different out in the public now, even if it’s not covering a very controversial story. We face aggressive people when we’re newsgathering. And it’s difficult because I have a lot of veteran reporters and veteran photographers who tell me that, “you know, I was out, somebody flipped me the bird for no reason.” So, there’s a lot of animosity just generally toward the media, which is really unfortunate. I’m sure your point about the upcoming election, it will escalate, and we have lots of conversations about providing security for our teams and deciding if we really need to be live on a story, and any other thing we need to talk about is on the table for discussion. But what we’re not going to do is stop covering the news. That is our commitment to our audience and to do so with the same kind of integrity, accuracy and context that we want to provide. But it can be really tough.

Johnny, let me follow up on that with you, because you’re looking after the overall station, too, and the building itself. And, you know there’s a threat of people coming in there with maybe bad intentions. What are you having to put in place for contingencies now that maybe you didn’t even have to think of a couple of years ago?

Johnny Green: You know, I think Sarah spoke to some of it. What we didn’t do a few years ago, as much, I wouldn’t say we never did it, but was the security with news crews specifically. It’s not too many days go by that we don’t consider it, having that available. We’re having to be in a space where we share with our other CBS entities, CBS News, CBS Sports in the same building. We have constant conversations about this very thing and making sure that, you know, this entrance, that exit, that may not have been covered before, that there’s security all there. And I think, you know, Sarah also touched on something that we do is conversations, having the conversations with staff. “How are they doing?” I think in news, in the news department in particular, we do a good job of. “OK, I’ve covered this story, this terrible story for two days. I need a break from that.” Let’s reassign you to something else.

You know, another thing I’ve done station-wide is, working with Sarah, is bringing in experts and people that can talk. Media psychologist Dr. Don Grant we’ve had in several times to talk, have listening sessions, hear people out, where managers are not necessarily in those conversations. So, they can get the necessary tools they need to mentally do the job, and, you know, just having conversations. “How are you feeling out there?”

You know, I’ve had an incident where I wore a CBS hat, and somebody, and I wasn’t covering a story, I was walking down the street and someone, you know, yelled out something to me. So, I know it happens. It is how do we conversate? There are places where me and Sarah aren’t out in the field covering. We want to hear from them. What are they dealing with and making sure they have the proper resources across the board to do their job.

Sarah Burke: I just wanted to add that a little bit of an antidote to this is community reporting. You know, and certainly the trust we’re building by being in in the boroughs, by being in community, it’s really hard to say something mean to somebody who you see at the grocery store and somebody you’ve built a rapport with or somebody who you’ve sent an email to, and they followed up and helped you get your problem solved.

It’s not, of course, a full solution, but we do take hope from that because we see those relationships as a future and as something that can help us kind of on a dark day feel good about what we do because we know we still have a lot of power to help people and shine a light on problems. And so that helps me when we have some of the more negative, you know, issues pop up. I think a lot about community.

When you are sending crews out into stickier situations, are they sort of less branded maybe with CBS, you know, caps or jackets or, you know, your cameras may be smaller? Are you thinking about the crew drawing less attention to itself as one of the safety precautions?

Sarah Burke: That’s certainly part of the kind of toolkit. Yes. We don’t necessarily roll in a marked vehicle.

And just lastly, I mean, so many parts of this question we could get to, but what do you both think are the stakes for local news in this coming year?

Sarah Burke: Johnny?

Johnny Green: Yeah, I’ll take it first., I’ve been at nine TV stations. The stakes couldn’t be higher with, you know, you talked about at the top the war that’s going on right now, the election year coming up. You know, we all read the credibility and the issues that media as a whole has faced in recent times. And I think, you know, local news, not as much as some national outlets, I think is more important now than ever for us to be their voice to report unbiased and be essential to our viewers. You know that we have that information, and as I said earlier, we’re a partner.

When things don’t go well, we want to be there and be a partner and help it be better. When things are going well, we want to be there and help celebrate. And I think this year, you know, and not even mentioning the economy itself, so with all those things happening, it is more important now than ever for us to be an advocate, the voice for our consumers.

Sarah Burke: I couldn’t say that better.

We could get into all sorts of subsets of this question and be here for a long time, but you are both very, very busy people and you need to get back to it. So, I want to thank you, Johnny Green and Sarah Burke, for joining me today.

Sarah Burke: Thank you, Michael.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of this podcast at TVNewsCheck.com or on our YouTube channel, and we’re back most Fridays with a new episode. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: WCBS Widens Its Community Reporting Web In NYC appeared first on TV News Check.

The veteran anchor/reporter, now hosting the show’s second season at Fox-owned WAGA, sees women like herself, eager to talk about the major currents currently defining their lives — single parenthood, physical and mental health crises, mid-life reentry into the dating pool — with her playing the conduit to spark those conversations to full life.

Bruner hopes that in doing so, she can continue to push Portia along an upward trajectory from her Atlanta audience and Fox Soul, Fox’s Black-targeted streaming channel on which she’s also shown, to eventual national syndication and a live audience that would take those conversations to the next level.

In this Talking TV conversation, Bruner explains how she came to host Portia, how she sees its remit and how following in the steps of first-name daytime talk heroes like Phil, Oprah and Sally is where she’s aiming.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Portia Bruner is a veteran TV reporter and anchor at Fox-owned WAGA in Atlanta who scored an eponymous talk and lifestyle show on the station last year. The show recently returned for its second season. In addition to airing weekdays in Atlanta, the show runs nationally every weeknight on Fox Soul.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, our weekly video podcast. Coming up, a conversation with Portia Bruner about her show, what she brings to it and ambitions she has for it. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Portia Bruner, to Talking TV.

Portia Bruner: Thank you so much, Michael. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be here to talk about the ins and outs of being in this talk show land that has made me go — exploding head emoji — what just happened? This is amazing! So, thank you.

We will get to all the things that have powered that emoji right now. Portia, you spent a long time as a television reporter on all kinds of beats, including consumer reporting. You’ve logged time on the anchor desk. You’re a well-known person in Atlanta. Why did you want a talk show?

Well, because I am a storyteller at heart. Right? I’m pretty much I’m convinced that this is what God put in my DNA in my mother’s womb. I was always the kid in school who had the longest story and sometimes the most colorful story about what did you do over the summer? When I was in middle school, I wanted to be the first black journalist in outer space. And I watched every shuttle launch thinking one day that’s going to be me. And then in seventh grade, the Challenger blew up on live television. And for a bunch of, you know, middle schoolers sitting criss cross applesauce, that changes things. Right. It was heartbreaking- and I just realized, OK, I still want to tell stories. It’s not going to be in outer space, but I still want to be a person who gets to tell stories that make people want to listen. And so, of course, journalism was what I was going to do for a living.

My mother realized early on she had a chatty girl and was very deliberate about curating a college search that included radio and a television station and magazines and newspapers all on the same campus. I grew up watching, you know, Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes and of course, Oprah and Sally Jessy Raphael and Phil Donahue. I had a babysitter who watched Phil Donahue like clockwork. And Larry King, you know, and the local news anchors in Denver, Colorado, where I grew up. And so, I locked in early on this concept of being able to ask questions that people who don’t have the microphone would want to ask if they could talk to a person. And the skill of listening, not just hearing what somebody’s saying, but listening and asking the follow up and sharing the story and then finding out what the lesson is for others.

So, I enjoyed journalism, I loved being a professional storyteller. I loved reporting, I loved anchoring. But, you know, when you’re news director and your general managers say, “we have this idea and we think that we would like to give you a platform where you could tell the stories of Black women and the men, women, children, friends that they love, and all of the things that Black women are talking about that may not be getting a good spotlight,” you say, “Yes, check, here. I’m here for it,” and it was just a given.

I mean, it’s something that you say when you’re a kid that you’d like to do when you’re watching Oprah or Sally or Bill. But I didn’t ask for it. But I am so, so grateful that this is what God saw fit to do, particularly in this season of my life as a storyteller.

So, they came to you and said, “Hey, how about having a talk show?” It didn’t originate with you saying, “I want a talk show”?

I mean, yeah, on the side you’re like, ”gosh, I would sure love a talk show.” But no, I’ll be honest with you, Michael. I would not have thought that I could go to a news director and a general manager at a local news setting, and say, “I’d like a talk show” with such a very specific target audience. I just didn’t think because this is sort of a prototype, right? There’s nothing that really looks like the way we’re doing it.

And I would have thought that that would have seemed arrogant to say, “Hey, can I have a talk show where we talk about issues that impact women?” And, you know, the target audience obviously is Black women. But so much of what we are talking about, if you weren’t looking at the screen and just listening, it’s what women of all backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds and economic backgrounds are talking about.

I wouldn’t have thought that that was something that you can say in a mainstream media platform. Can we just narrow it down to what sisters are talking about and be sure to include what the men are talking about and what kids are talking about or what people on the spectrum are talking about and what our Latino brothers and sisters are talking about and what folks who don’t know their ancestry are talking about until they’re on a search for their adoptive parent.

I wouldn’t have asked for that. I’m not quite that bodacious, but I am so grateful that they said they’d been watching what I did and some of the things that I did behind the scenes on social media, I guess, really were in a sense, little miniature talk shows, conversations with people.

And during COVID, Michael, as you well know, it’s why we’re doing this in a virtual setting now. People were just silenced and lonely and going through it and if you had to sit alone and you weren’t used to that… I’m an only child and I wasn’t used to it. People wanted to be heard and wanted somebody to look into a camera and say, “I see you. I hear you. What’s going on in your life?”

And so, I was doing these little things called Bruner Behind the Scenes. I’ve been doing them in live trucks and just sort of showcasing what a photographer and I … what our day was like, the day of a journalist’s life in Atlanta and a photojournalist life in Atlanta. And then when I started anchoring the new show, I started doing it in between, you know, the Bruner Behind the Scenes. I’ve been doing them a lot. And then when I started anchoring the new show, I started doing it in between the blocks of the newscast in a commercial break.

Unless we were doing really heavy news day, serious, breaking news, you have to always be mindful of your tone. Right? So, you’re not going to talk about what’s happening on social media with somebody going off about where you can’t take a person on a date when you’ve got a heavy news day with, you know, shootings and, you know, murder trials going on.

But for the most part, I tried to very consistently be present online and on the air. And that’s where a really strong following came in. And apparently, I didn’t know, but management is watching. There’s a lesson right there. Lesson one, management is watching, and people are watching. And when people are watching you, it’s important how you show up. I wasn’t doing it thinking I’d get a talk show. I was doing it because I was kind of lonely, too, and enjoyed the conversation.

So, it’s sort of an organic outgrowth that you’re doing. You know, you talk to any veteran of the syndication world, and they’ll tell you that a talk show is all about connecting with the audience. People are spending time with you every day in and out. They need to feel connected with you as a person. So, what do you think in your case? What are you giving off that people are connecting with?

Thank you for asking, because that’s part of what I’ve had to learn to be a better talk show host. My executive producer, Kathy Sapp, spent the first few weeks in like July and August of 2022 getting me out of my news reporter anchor position. Right? I’m old school, Michael. So, there is no opinion. You’re not telling people what you think. You’re telling people what you know and what you feel like they need to know to make an informed decision, right? So, I was very much a news person.

It took me some time to sort of kind of come out of the box a little bit and do what I was doing behind the scenes on social media. And that is what I realized people connect with. They like the fact that I’m open about the fact that I got this dress at a thrift store. I mean, if you’re shooting two talk shows a day, you’re doing two wardrobe changes. Nobody’s paying full price for that when we’re getting ready for all the college applications. And so, I think there was a transparency there that I think a lot of people could relate to and that some people were surprised by.

If you’re a news anchor on a top 10 market like Atlanta, everybody’s thinking you’re making $1,000,000 and you should be shopping at all the fancy stores. I’m like, “why would I do that?” I mean, I’m managing a budget the same way anyone else is. And so, the thrifting is what I heard made people connect, the honesty about the health issues that I’ve had. When I was diagnosed with psychogenic stuttering, I was still a little bit embarrassed to admit that it stemmed from stress and trauma. At the time, I was going through a lot, right? Some personal family issues. I was covering, some really, really horrible things that had happened to a small child and spent several days covering it. And when they arrested the person, and it turned out that was the father who had been telling the media he was just so devastated that this happened to his child, and he was pretending to be a part of the search for his baby’s remains… When it turned out he was a part of it as a parent, that hurt. But I didn’t realize I was processing all of that.

Let’s take a step back a little bit for people who do not know this story or you. One of the things that you’ve shared a lot about in the past is you’ve had struggles with depression, anxiety. Then this happens in 2017, you’re covering this story as you’ve just been describing, and then can you just describe what happened to you after that? People probably don’t know what psychogenic stuttering is.

I got a call that they’d made a break in the case. And because, you know, I’d had some really good relationships with the law enforcement that was covering this and staying in touch, they called me and said, Listen, if you can get here, you know, we want to give the media, the public an update and we’ll talk to you about what we’ve learned about this case. So, we went out there, almost an hour’s drive, got the interview and the details.

As I’m listening, I’m used to processing really bad news and really, you know, painful details and processing it and then turning around, sanitizing it a bit, and making it a little bit more palatable for viewers, especially in a midday newscast. But my body wasn’t processing, and my mind was carrying the pain of it. And so, I started stuttering. And my face, it looked like it presented in the hospital as aphasia. My face is kind of pulling to the side. And I just s-s-s-sounded l-l-l-like th-this.

Was this happening on air or was this behind closed doors?

No, it started right after the interview. I got through the interview at 11:00, 11:15 we’re feeding the sound bite. We’re feeding in the supers, you know, and talking about what we’ve learned and hey, I need to be the lead. This is exclusive. It’s the Dad and here’s what they know. But somewhere between around 11:30 and 11:37, I started stuttering. But because I’m still very competitive, I was like, this isn’t really happening. And my photographer was like, “Bruner, I’m not putting you on TV sounding like that. I can’t do it. You look like you’re having a stroke.” And I was like, “No, no, no, no, I’m f-f-f-ine. Just to t-t-tell him I’ll be the l-lead.”  And they were like, “no we’re not doing this.”

So, because I’m competitive, we still fed everything back. And I said, “Here’s what you’ve got to say.” And then the photographer took me to the hospital, and that’s where we got a brain scan, and they ruled out a stroke. They ruled out everything. They ruled out an aneurysm. And a couple of days later, because I couldn’t go back to work the next day, I was still stuttering.

It was a neurologist and a speech pathologist, and they both just sort of concluded, they unpacked, “what have you been going through? Oh, divorce. Oh, you’re a co-parent now. You’re not seeing your kids every day because I’ve got this great co-parent. And he’s going to spend some time with the kids, too.” All of these “life be lifing” situations, as the kids say, had finally just sort of all crashed into each other in my brain. And a psychogenic stuttering is what they determined it was. They said, “there’s nothing wrong with your scans. You are stressed and you’re probably depressed.”

And because you know, some of the NSAIDs that are prescribed for a generalized anxiety disorder and depression can really kind of turn down your volume. Right? They turn down your reaction to stress, but they sort of also turn down who Portia Bruner is, and that wasn’t good for what I do for a living either. So, I was going unmedicated, trying to push through stress and depression, and they were very clear “you need to learn how to meditate, you need to go back to therapy, and you need to find how to achieve equanimity and find some balance because the stressors aren’t going away.” Right? I’m going to keep covering the news, which means I’m going to end up covering bad situations and horrible things happening to good people. What had to change was how were you going to react to it.

And so being forthcoming about all of that is when people … I had a woman after our health watch reporter, our medical reporter here at Fox 5 Atlanta, did a story about that. And we explained it a little more concisely than we did just there. People called and said, “Thank you. I’ve been stuttering since my dad died, and I didn’t realize why.” I will never forget that call from a woman who said, thank you. I hadn’t put the two together. And in that moment is when I had realized, and I’d even said, “God, if you let me speak in my normal speaking voice again, I promise I will share the testimony. And I’ll be honest,” because we have to stop being ashamed of what stress and depression can do to you, because that was proof. It really can have a physical toll. So that’s one of the things that’s been cited about why people connect with me, because I’m just gonna tell it like it is.

This all happened about five years ago. Fast forward to now and you’re in this show. How have these experiences generally colored the way you approach hosting, or have they?

They absolutely have. There’s definitely, you know, being a parent, you know, you connect being a single woman who is dating for the first time. I mean, I married my college sweetheart, right? So, I was married in my 20s and for most of my 30s, and then suddenly at 40 in Atlanta, of all places, you’d mess around and now you’re single and it’s, you know, another exploding head emoji. So, I’ve been pretty honest about what that’s like. And I can relate to the women who are on the show who are going through the same, you know, you’re awkward because you’ve not been in this dating scene. It makes it very easy for me to relate.

In terms of the other health issues I’ve had. Michael, it is really weird to say that at 45, 46, you have a double tonsillectomy, right? That’s something babies have. But I had to be off the air for a few weeks to deal with that. And you, we all understand in this business you have to control your own narrative. If you’re off the air for too long, people wonder if, A, have you had another breakdown or what’s going on? Is she being replaced? And I’m very much trying to make sure that the narrative is always something that’s clear and transparent. So, I told people I had a double tonsillectomy. Oh my God, I was wondering why, but I’m going to go see the doctor about that. This what we share sometimes helps people unpack their own issues, and so that helps knowing that that’s what I like to do with my guests.

Same thing when I had to have a hysterectomy because uterine fibroids are something that we didn’t talk about in a public arena for years. Right? Because the symptoms are not something that you normally discuss in a public forum. But when it became very clear, a whole lot of women are dealing with uterine fibroids, Black women, white women, brown women, Asian women. And we’re not talking about it, but if we were talking about it, we could have more conversations about what the alternatives are for treatment.

And so now everyone’s talking about it, and it normalizes these conversations that women in particular have just sort of been having quietly with their girlfriends but didn’t want to talk about it. It makes I think, every experience that God has given me has made it into an opportunity to turn a test into a testimony and give someone else a platform to share the version of their life experience that maybe someone can relate to.

Now, this show is made in Atlanta for an Atlanta audience, but as I said at the top, it also gets daily play on Fox Soul, which is a national streaming channel. How do you make a local show with half an eye to the fact that it’s going to go out to a national audience?

It’s much easier than I would have thought, because what happens is if you do it well at a local level, and you have the bridge to Fox Soul, which gave us national eyeballs in Season One before San Francisco and Oakland and Houston and Chicago even knew who Portia Bruner was or what we were talking about. That made it so that people wanted to have this conversation. Right? You are mindful of sort of highlighting and showcasing the city where you developed your credibility and your reputation, but you just make sure that you’re talking to and about women who are going through the same things that women here in Atlanta are going through. Right?

So, if you’re single and just turned 50 and still trying to figure out what dating looks like, it doesn’t matter with the city. It’s the experience. It’s the little giggles that we have about what it’s like when you get awkward because you don’t know how to flirt without looking like you’re being thirsty.

You can’t really talk about Atlanta things, you can’t go on and on about things that are specific to Atlanta because, you know then you will— 

No, you can’t, but that’s OK because you don’t have to talk about the city to still sort of do a tip of the hat to the city. So sometimes, like I had a guest this week, we get a lot of guests who come in from Texas and from Florida. And so, it’s actually a nice opportunity to say now, you know, here in Atlanta, but they’re in Houston where you guys do X, Y, Z, P, D and Q, or listen I know, you know, the women in San Francisco really love you because you do X, Y, Z, P, D and Q. So, it really is almost sort of the olive branch, the invitation, Hey, we’re talking about you too, without feeling like you’ve completely turned your back on Atlanta, because I don’t want Atlanta to feel like we have turned our back on the city because it’s expanding. We’re showing people what Atlanta has to offer in the television news industry and in terms of our viewers as well. But no, you can do both and balance it well.

You don’t shoot this in front of a live audience. You’re in a studio, but there’s not an audience there. And it would seem as though that’s an important part of the formula ultimately, for really successful national talk shows, that they have that—

The audience?

That interaction.

Yeah.

How do you get around that, that absence?

I think one of the advantages I have is that I don’t have a studio audience. I’ve never had a studio audience, right. But I’ve always had to make sure people understood why this story matters to you. And so, I’ve always made sure that I’m asking the question that you would want me to ask, that you would want to ask if you were here. And I’ve always understood that people need to understand the why, right? Why are you doing the story? Why did you spend 90 seconds or two minutes or three minutes telling me this?

So, I am already conditioned to making sure that this is interesting to you whether I can see you or not. I know you’re there and I know you want to know, has the bad guy been caught?  Have they figured out what’s causing this virus to spread so quickly in these schools? And how can we keep our kids safe? I’m already wired for that part as a journalist.

In the studio, yeah, it’s a bunch of cameras and, you know, a small crew of people who are cheering for this show to win. And I know their parents are watching. And then I know a whole bunch of folks who I don’t know are watching are really excited because when I’m in the grocery store, people are like, “we’re just so glad that you’re talking about this. Your topics are interesting. It’s not a lot of you know, they’re all, you know, fussing and fighting and dragging people.” So, I just try to just keep doing what we’re doing. And I recognize the show was called Portia, but this is about the women who are hearing their stories.

You could insert any woman’s name here, right? That’s how this is supposed to work. This is supposed to be about your life as a woman, not you, Michael, you are very handsome man. But for the women who would watch, I’d want them to be able to insert their name here and feel like their story was told as well. So, I don’t need the people to be here for me to remember that I’m supposed to connect with them. And that I’m supposed to make sure that the guests connect with them as well. Now I’m not going to lie and say when we get an audience full of folks would I be moving around the way Phil and Oprah did? Absolutely! Whenever God sees fit to sort of move it into that platform. But I understand the assignment right now.

It sounds like being an anchor and a reporter was good prep, good career prep. I’ve heard that before from people who’ve taken over talk shows from those backgrounds, that that prepares them for it.

Absolutely. And listen, Kathy Sapp, my EP, for years she did daytime television. She has really worked with me to make sure that you understand here’s how you connect, here is how you keep this national. Here’s how you balance making sure that we’re talking to the folks who helped you build your credibility. But here’s how you bring in the folks who we want to feel like they’re sitting at the table with us. And that’s why we always say, “Welcome back to the table. Welcome back to the conversation. Thank you for coming back, because there’s a whole lot of other stuff you could be watching. I thank you for coming back here.” That is my way of saying I see you even though I don’t see what color your couch is. I see you and I’m here to hear your story and tell your story. Does that make sense?

Yeah, of course. People like Sally, Oprah, you know, they started in local TV, and they found their national audience from there. Are your ambitions similar? Are you swinging for the national syndicated fences with this show?

Absolutely. I know what I have learned from this experience is everyone has a story to tell and not everybody knows how to tell their story. But if you help people share their stories, someone else is bound to learn from it. So, I would love to get into other cities.

And this isn’t just about, oh, just the national syndication, right? Because it’s really exciting when, you know, my EP told me that Chicago was picking us and Houston was picking it up, Bay Area, San Francisco, Oakland. And when people are saying, you know, my mom was watching in D.C. and somebody texts you or puts on Facebook, hey, we’re watching you in some other city where, you know, it doesn’t even come on, so to speak. They’re streaming. They’re being intentional about going to find it. It helps you remember there are a lot more stories that I have to tell. And as you can see, I can run my mouth and I love to ask questions and I love to ask follow-up questions. So, I would absolutely love to do this in this format, and I would love to do it with an audience.

We started in this space really kind of that first season out of maybe the second season out of COVID. So, it’s just going to be a handful of us. You don’t have an audience manager. You can’t manage for what that looks like. So, you recognize, you know, you have to build to those levels of success.

When we’re national, I mean, we look much better even than last season and we’re telling stories and it doesn’t always have to be celebrities. It doesn’t always have to be medical, doesn’t always have to be dating. When you learn how to curate what people are talking about when they go out for brunch on Sundays or at the dinner table or in their group chats, because group chats are keeping a whole lot of women’s lives together right now, right?

Being able to check in with your friends and these different apps, when you have those conversations on this platform, it’s bound to grow. And if you keep it about everybody else except you. You know, I’ve always felt like my voice — I’m just the mortar between the bricks. The bricks are the guests. The bricks are the subjects of the story, the good video, the pictures that help people connect.

All right. Well, the show is Portia, Season 2. Portia Bruner is the host. Thanks so much for talking with me. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. I’m honored and I really appreciate you taking the time to spread the word.

My pleasure. You can find past episodes of Talking TV at TVNewsCheck.com, also on our YouTube channel. We also have an audio version that goes out each week to all the places that you get your podcasts. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. See you next time, a thanks for watching this one.

The post Talking TV: Fox’s Portia Bruner Finds Her Place In Talk appeared first on TV News Check.

Station Group Leaders on the State of the Industry featured Chris Ripley, president and CEO, Sinclair; Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO, Graham Media Group; and Princell Hair, president, Allen Media Broadcasting, weighing in on the network/affiliate relationship, the prospect of winnowing local news markets and the prospects of professional sports’ widening return to broadcast, among numerous other issues.

Building a Breakout Hit in a Multiplatform World looked at the importance of digital platforms to buttress successful syndicated shows and tighten their relationships — and interactivity — with viewers. Panelists Stephen Brown, EVP, programming, Fox First Run and Fox Television Stations; Michael Gelman, producer, Live with Kelly and Mark; Jason Kurtz, executive producer, The Drew Barrymore Show; and Suzanne Prete, EVP, game shows, Sony Pictures Television, joined moderator Paige Albiniak, contributing editor, TVNewsCheck, for the discussion.

Go FAST, Go AVOD: Charting a Streaming Revenue Strategy for Local Media examined the realistic revenue prospects for different streaming platforms, along with major changes coming to FAST platforms and the possibilities beyond programmatic revenue. Panelists Jennifer Donohue, SVP, Disney Advertising Sales Local; Adam Ostrow, chief digital officer, Tegna; Sonali Pathak, SVP, business development and local strategy, NBCUniversal Local; Tom Sly, VP of enterprise strategy, E.W. Scripps; and Ahron Young, CEO/founder, Ticker, joined moderator Adam Wiener, founder, Continuous Media.

Collaboration and the Future of Content Creation and Monetization unpacked the complex web of collaborations happening inside station groups and their national news products, zeroing in on the efficiencies they’ve created and the technologies that have supported them. Panelists John Kelly, director of data journalism, ABC Owned Television Stations; Dean Littleton, SVP, local media, E.W. Scripps; Scott Livingston, SVP, news, Sinclair; Ray Thompson, senior director, partners and alliances, Avid; Jerry Walsh, SVP of local content development, Nexstar; and Jeff Zellmer, SVP digital operations, Fox Television Stations, joined moderator Michael Depp, NewsCheckMedia chief content officer and TVNewsCheck editor, for the discussion.

A C-Suiter’s Guide to AI: Cutting Costs and Finding New Revenue laid out what all broadcast leaders must understand as generative AI stands poised to revolutionize all of the industry’s key functions. Panelists Colin Benedict, VP of news, Morgan Murphy Media; James Finch, VP, news services, Gray Television; Michael Newman, director of transformation, Graham Media Group; and Ahron Young, CEO and founder of Ticker, joined TVNewsCheck’s Depp, the moderator, for the session.

Cloud Strategies for Media Groups looked at how leading technologists are designing and implementing cloud workflows and their prospects of creating more efficiencies and driving down cloud costs. Panelists Shilpi Ganguly, VP, IT and cybersecurity, Allen Media Group; Janet Gardner, president, Perspective Media Group; Mike Kralec, CTO and SVP, Sinclair; and Marcy Lefkovitz, consultant, joined moderator Glen Dickson, TVNewsCheck contributing editor, for the conversation.

Ad Sales 2024: Audience Data, Measurement and Technology examined how the upcoming political year, the Olympics, along with the new FAST lane that streaming has opened will impact ad sales’ outlook, along with how bedeviling challenges in measurement and impediments to advance advertising may persist. Panelists Hanna Gryncwajg, VP, measurement innovation, Nexstar; Justin Lewis, corporate research director, Sinclair; and Michael Page, SVP, digital sales, Fox Television Stations, joined TVNewsCheck’s Albiniak, the moderator, for the panel.

The post TVN’s TV2025: The Complete Videos appeared first on TV News Check.

Once or twice each year, the Kneeland Project convenes news directors and other leaders from across the country and different station groups for a multi-day immersion in ethical and professional training. They emerge reenergized and ready to tackle the ceaseless barrage of challenges that now confront every newsroom.

In this Talking TV conversation, Joan Barrett, president and GM of WCNC, and Anzio Williams, SVP of diversity, equity and inclusion at NBCUniversal Local, both Kneeland board members, talk about Kneeland’s legacy, what the project has been able to achieve and how its evolving to new realities of the news business.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism aims to strengthen broadcast TV news leadership and improve the quality of news across the country. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Kneeland Project fellows have included Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC and leaders from almost every station group and every state in the U.S.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today I’m talking with Joan Barrett, president and GM of WCNC, and Anzio Williams, SVP of diversity, equity and inclusion at NBCUniversal Local. Both are board members of the Kneeland Project. We’ll be talking about how the project is endeavoring to spread best practices and better newsgathering techniques across the industry, along with how those practices and techniques have evolved as the news landscape itself has. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Joan Barrett and Anzio Williams, to Talking TV.

Joan Barrett: Hello!

Anzio Williams: Hello, thank you.

Joan, who was Carole Kneeland, and how did this project come about?

Joan Barrett: Carole was a tenacious reporter back in Texas in the day. Lots of stories on how Carole worked her way into television reporting, and one of my favorites is I think she had applied for a job a couple of times in Houston. She was a print reporter in Corpus Christi, and the news director said, you know, I’ll never hire women on this team because their voices are too nagging. Things happened, and oh! Carole got a job as a TV news reporter. And eventually she was the political bureau chief for WFAA based in Austin. Did a lot of really tough, groundbreaking coverage at the time, really leading the way in Texas, for which we know is a rich state in politics. And then she wanted to move into management, and she started reading management books and learning about it.

Eventually, Craig Dubow, who was eventually the president of Gannett, was the GM there, and he gave her first break because as a news director, that’s when I went to work for Carole as a 10 o’clock producer. And she was just ahead of her time like she was one of the first people that did the truth test on TV ads. You know how we all see that today? You do a truth check to see if they’re true or not on political ads. She was just ahead of her time and so many of the things she did and how she operated and ran a newsroom.

Unfortunately, Carole was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s, and as we got to the end of her life and journey, we got on the phone with her. It was Ann Arnold who ran the TAB [Texas Association of Broadcasters] in Texas; myself; I think Dave McNeely, her husband, was on it, and Carole, and we talked about what could we do after her death, because we would raise money and funds as people wanted to reach out.

And she said, I really want to start some kind of mid-career training for news directors, people who maybe want to move into it, or people who just need that inspiration mid-career to reengage. And so, within that first year, we raised by word of mouth about $100,000, and we launched the first session. She died in January, and we had the first one that fall in Austin. And we’ve done an average of about two a year, some years three, one or two years one. But we’re on, you know, our 25th year, and I think we just held our 50th conference.

Anzio, what does the program actually look like for its fellows? Is this a retreat? Is it workshops? Both? Something else?

Anzio Williams: You know, you could call it a retreat from the sense that you are collaborating with other leaders. You’re collaborating with folks who are in the newsroom just like you are. But it’s really learning, it’s getting a chance to just step away, take a big picture look at, you know, what you are experiencing, how others are experiencing. And then you have these great, wonderful leaders that are right there to give you answers, to give you all the right things to do about it.

And when I think about my foundation and Carole Kneeland’s teachings, it really is my foundation for how I was treating people in the newsroom, how I was able to value the people that worked for us, how I was able to put them first and know that journalism was going to take place on a daily basis. So, I know I got that almost 20 years ago, and so even when I walk in now as a visiting fellow, when I’m having conversations with the board, I could feel Carole in the room. You could feel her in the room. And I would like to think that when I go back now, you know, I was like, oh, this great program I did in this market—I would like to think that I came up with this great idea myself. And we laugh about this like, wait a minute. Oh, I got this from Carole. I just gave the 2023 version of it. So, I know other leaders are getting that as well, too.

Well, it’s nice to think that that someone would have such a long-standing legacy as she has. How big of a group do you convene each year, and where do you do it? Is it always in Texas?

Joan Barrett: For the most part, it’s been in Austin. We tend to train 18 fellows because that’s divisive by two and by three. And so, you can do work groups in a really nice setting that way. It’s about the right size. The Texas Association of Broadcasters is a wonderful host for us. They have a great meeting facility, and they donate that space to us as part of their fiduciary role in the in the group. We did one at Scripps, we did one at Media General in Florida, one at Tegna in D.C. And we really found Austin is the home. It’s just where Carole was. That’s kind of where the heart of the project is.

Not a bad place to go out at night after.

Joan Barrett: Absolutely. The fellows usually enjoy that.

Is this a weekend-long kind of event?

Joan Barrett: It starts Wednesday at 4. I do an opening session. We have a keynote that night and then we do all day Thursday, Friday, and we wrap up by noon Saturday.

And who pays for this? Is this the project itself paying for the attendees?

Joan Barrett: We do hotel, the trainers, you know, all the costs associated with it. The fellows will usually pay for their own flight or get there and a meal or two in the evenings are on them.

Who are the instructors here? Are there instructors, or is there some other model in place to facilitate this?

Joan Barrett: For the most part, I have been a trainer at 49 of the 50 of them, so I am one of the lead trainers with Kevin Benz, who runs his own consulting and training business out of Austin. He is a former fellow and former news director. We’ve had other trainers in the past, but right now we’ve really built this. I would say Kevin and I do a majority of it, and then folks like Anzio come in and take a piece. Michael Fabac with News-Press Gazette does a couple of pieces. Gosh, help me out Anzio.

Anzio Williams: We regularly do the panels with Rashida Jones and folks like that. And really, I don’t consider myself a host, you know, because I come and learn something every time. Each time it means something different. Just where you are in your career. I am there helping others. I’m also getting something back.

Joan Barrett: We also brought in a few folks depending on the topic of the time, like during George Floyd, we had someone from Color of Change come in a couple of times and talk to us. We’ve had someone from a local mosque come in and help us understand the Muslim religion. You know, so kind of also what’s going on at the time. If there’s something topical that’s appropriate, we might also add that in.

Anzio Williams: You know, I was just thinking about this, Michael, in terms of what’s happening right now in the world. And the big story, you know, today with Israel and how Carole’s teachings and how we’re able to continue to spread that. It helps on a regular day, but it really kicks in in the crisis of the moment. It really kicks in when big things are happening and you’re able to, you know, kind of rely and lean on these teachings, if you will. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot just over the last couple of days when we talk about taking care of our people, that it’s easy to do that knowing you know, that you’re taking care of folks. It’s the right thing to do.

Does the curriculum or the agenda come together around major news events that might be happening at that moment? Or does it tend to focus more on broader dynamics and themes in the newsroom and then intersects with current things?

Joan Barrett: It’s really been stable for the most part over the 25 years. And the cores of it are ethical decision making, how to go about coverage and ethics. What’s changed is it was maybe more linear focused, and now it’s broadened out to talk about internet and social media and the challenges with those decisions. It’s about people: How to manage people, lead people, create a collaborative culture in your newsrooms, push decision making down, empower people in your newsroom, how to coach and give feedback. You know, we talk about people over product. We talk about Carole’s motto, which is it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. And so that’s 90% of it, and it’s pretty stable.

Like in the last couple of years, we’re talking more about recruiting and what are some ideas and ways to help you with recruiting. We’ve done the mosque and you know, a local leader in or so – those are small pieces, though usually, they’re, you know, an hour or two hours added into this 90% core product, which is how to be a good leader, how to how to empower your people, push decision making down, make ethical decisions. That’s the core and the heart of Kneeland.

Well, this is a very transitional moment for local TV news. Many groups and stations seem to have come to the realization that they cannot just keep doing the same thing again and again and hope to hold on to or gain new viewers. I wonder how that is filtering into the work that’s happening at the project now.

Anzio Williams: You know, I left the day-to-day of the newsroom three years ago, right in the middle of 2020. And I’m reminded every time I step back into a newsroom – one of the NBC or Telemundo newsrooms – how different things have changed in this three-year period of time for our leaders. You know, we used to just worry about what stories we’re going to cover today. Then all of a sudden, we turned into contact tracers, you know, who has Covid? Who was beside who? And how are you going to count those days that they’re out and their sick days or whatever. So, it is much more workload on our news leaders. I don’t think it’s a moment. This has been building up over time, it’s transitioning with the world.

The things from the first Carole Kneeland Project are even more relevant today. You know, you think about people. We talk about ethics, and we talk about, you know, folks losing confidence in local journalism and other journalism. Well, you know, we’ve been talking ethics every year. You know, we are reinforcing that ethics is first. So, I like to say that, you know, Kneeland is something that, you know, we keep looking for this magic bullet that’s going to help save journalism. We’ve been doing it here.

And so, I’m thankful that, you know, companies I worked for, including NBC Universal, has always supported it. And frankly, you know, most of the time when I’m interviewing people, I love to see that they are Carole Kneeland on the resume. That’s a star, a shield of approval in my book.

Given the focus on ethics and empowering people inside of newsrooms, pulling people up for leaders to empower other people to lead in some ways. One of the big issues that is afflicting newsrooms everywhere is burnout and attrition. And so, you know, you talked a little bit to recruitment before and how that’s come up. I wonder how you are engaging those issues now because these leaders are dealing with this, you know, day to day with people who just find the profession to be unsustainable. They’re leaving after just a couple of years or they’re just opting out altogether and not going from journalism school necessarily into TV news anymore. So, how are you tackling those problems in your discussions at the project?

Joan Barrett: We do some homework beforehand, and it’s fair to say a fair percentage are burned out themselves coming in, right? And thinking about leaving the business and what we hear from them at the end of it, either they tell us, or they write to us is you reinspired me, reengaged me. I remember why I got into the business to begin with. So, I do think that’s part of it.

And I think what we’re trying to do to stem the burnout or the issues in the newsroom is to give the managers tools to be better leaders and managers, you know, to manage with respect, to give feedback. Because what we hear from our people is they want feedback. That’s one of the things they want the most. So, we’ve got to talk to them about their work with specific feedback, not just, Hey, great story, but why did you like the story and what went well? Let’s see more of that, right?

Those are the tools I think that in some way when you run a better newsroom and the managers are, you know, kind and respectful and professional and treat people in this way that we try to talk about at Kneeland, the morale of the newsroom goes up. The retention goes up. People like working in that environment better.

There are mental health issues today. We in fact did a breakout group both last sessions on what are we doing to help with mental health, your own personal mental health and your employees? What are some things that we’re all doing that we can take from each other?

Anzio Williams: Joan, you know, my favorite session to sit in with yours is it’s OK not to be Superman. It’s OK not to be Superwoman. It’s OK not to have your phone on 24 hours a day. It’s OK to be vulnerable with your staff and let them know why you’re going to be gone for a little while.

And I love seeing everybody’s eyes because that certainly was not something that I practiced, an idea that I used running the newsroom. But this is also part of the problem there. So, to see and hear Joan do that from a position of a general manager and, you know, running stations and she tells them that it’s OK, you can see it. You can see them start thinking alright, somebody’s saying this. And I admit I, I did not do a good job of the work/life balance. And so, when people always ask me, I could speak from the I didn’t get it right, don’t be like me perspective.

Well, it’s good to know that you’re addressing this among the station leadership, because the subject of the previous episode of this podcast was about mental health and how organizations are trying to start to get a handle on it. First, an acknowledgment of the extent to which this job has become unduly stressful and has many people operating daily with PTSD and the ways in which organizations might start to respond to that proactively.

You know, speaking of that, we’re coming to an extremely volatile election year with threats to journalism likely to be common again and stress fissures in newsrooms are likely to widen. How are you talking with your fellows about managing through those conditions in their newsrooms?

Joan Barrett: It’s really the same principles apply, Michael. Right? It’s creating mechanisms to create relationships and feedback and loops with your team. You know, I tell the story how when I got to one job, nobody felt comfortable coming into the news director’s office. They would kind of walk up, lean in like the carpet was hot lava because they didn’t want to step in, you know. And so, I think all the things we teach go toward that idea of when stress comes up that they know they can pick up the phone and say, I don’t feel safe. And we say, that’s OK, get out. Right? Or that they know those things are OK. And if we create that respect and those relationships and those loops of communication as a general practice, when I think temperatures escalate, our staff is better equipped to raise a hand and say, I need help.

What about DEI in the discussion here, too? Is that woven in more so now than it used to be in these discussions in terms of diversifying your personnel, diversifying the subjects that are being covered, being more inclusive of the entire community that a news organization finds itself in?

Anzio Williams: You know, I like to say that Carole was using the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion before anybody called it DEI. You know, when I go back and look at the things that you and I talk about, Michael, where we are able to measure, you know, our crime content, we’re able to measure at our television stations how we show people of color.

You know, in our news broadcast, you know, Carole was talking about that years, years, years ago. So, yes, we do include it. It Is a thing now. It is important, and that’s part of ethics, too. That’s part of the responsibility of being a news leader, is to take a look and see are we being fair by the communities that we serve in. If they can take an assessment of their own newscast and say, whoa, you know, this looks out of whack, well, then we also give them some principles. What steps can you take to make that better?

Well, all of this sounds very promising. Carole Kneeland certainly sounds like a person to have known. How does one apply to be a fellow? Do you have to hold a certain newsroom position to be eligible? Do you need to be a news director?

Joan Barrett: At this point, we’re really looking for content leaders. So, digital content leaders, news directors. We will also consider maybe an assistant news director at a larger market whose news director has been. You know, because we found that if everyone’s heard it, you know, that helps. And it’s a good investment of our funds, so to speak. Use of our dollars, our fundraising dollars. So, you just apply.

We have one in the fall, typically in September, one in March. The window opens a few months out. I think we asked for a letter of recommendation from either your GM or your corporate VP of news. And you know, we try to diversify it by market size, by geography. I think this time we had New York and we had Lincoln, Neb., which is like market 208, maybe. And I think the beauty of this is those people will learn from each other all through it. Right? It doesn’t matter what market size you are. Everyone’s learning from each other and from the trainers, and it’s very collaborative. So, you put your submission and KneelandProject.org. Just apply.

You know, we also talk to the groups, particularly those that help fund us and most of the major groups fund us, still working to get a few more in the door. We typically don’t have more than two from a group, sometimes one, just so that it’s not a Tegna meeting or a Hearst meeting.

First thing we tell them is you’re going to sit by someone you don’t know every time you come to a room or a table. And your goal is to have a significant conversation with everyone in this room by the end of the session. And I will tell you, we always give them time at the end of the session to speak whatever they want to say.

And what we hear, Michael, are things like this was life changing. I was thinking about leaving the business, but I am not. I am so inspired. You know, usually someone cries, you know, because it’s so moving and powerful and some of it is about this work/life management. I don’t call it balance because it’s not a balance. Right. But this work life that we talk about how to handle that and what are some ideas. Some of it’s just about them and how they can do these really important jobs.

You know, one of the things I say to them at the end is, you know, what you do is one of the most important jobs because, you know, local news is part of a thriving democracy. Without a free and vibrant press, we do not have a democracy. And so, what we do is a democratic job. It’s really you know, it helps support our democracy. It’s so critical. It’s protected by the U.S. Constitution. We’re the only profession actually protected by the Constitution. You know, so it’s really important. Remember that, and here are some tools to help you do it better for yourself and also for the people that work with you and for you.

Well, if that’s not enticing to apply, I don’t know what would be. Thank you very much, Joan Barrett and Anzio Williams for talking with me today about the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism. I appreciate it.

Joan Barrett: Thank you, Michael.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can find past episodes of this video podcast at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel where I encourage you to like and subscribe. You can also find an audio version most places that you find podcasts. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one again. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Improving TV News’ Leaders At The Kneeland Project appeared first on TV News Check.

At Tegna, executives feel they’ve landed on a solution with Daily Blast Live, an hourlong talker that pairs five hosts to gab about current events and celebrity news. The Denver-shot show is a lean production and, its producers say, a utility player in the daytime rota. They say it’s also a likely harbinger of shows to come — cheap, developed by station groups, rather than studios and staying away from the news territory over which the groups are zealously proprietary.

In this Talking TV conversation, Brian Weiss, VP of entertainment programming and multicast networks at Tegna and Burt Dubrow, Daily Blast Live’s executive producer, share why they feel the show works and where station groups will need to turn to fill syndication gaps left by the studios.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Hello, and welcome to Talking TV. I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck. We all know that the syndicated TV market is shrinking, but what’s going to be left when the smoke clears?

My guests today are hopeful that their syndicated offering, Daily Blast Live, will continue to be one of the shows left standing. Daily Blast Live is a weekday hour now in its seventh season, produced and distributed by Tegna, that finds its five hosts riffing on current events with a heavy emphasis on celebrity news. My guests today are its executive producer, Burt Dubrow and Brian Weiss, the VP of entertainment programing and multicast networks for Tegna.

We’ll be talking about what makes this show a “sustainable option for broadcasters’ content needs” in Weiss’ words, how they see the syndication market continuing to evolve as broadcasters’ content needs widen but their budget budgets shrink. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Brian Weiss and Burt Dubrow, to Talking TV.

Burt Dubrow: Thank you, good to be here.

Brian Weiss: Thanks.

Burt, you launched The Sally Jesse Raphael Show and you helped to launch Jerry Springer into public consciousness — may your maker forgive you for that, perhaps, in some regards.

Burt Dubrow: What a way to begin! My goodness! OK, OK. My maker, yeah.

But Daily Blast Live is your baby. So, what’s the elevator pitch for it for those who are unfamiliar?

Burt Dubrow: Well, it is a live, topical show. I say it’s sort of like a contemporary version of The View meets the third half hour of The Today Show. That’s kind of what it is to help, you know, for someone to relate to another show. That’s what it is. We’re a very opinionated show, a point of view show. We talk about what our motto is. If you’re talking about it, we’re talking about it. And it’s true. It’s true. If you’re talking about something. Chances are when you put on DBL, we’ll be talking about it as well.

And topically, I said at the top, it was sort of celebrity oriented. Do you veer away from that patch at all?

Burt Dubrow: I don’t veer away, but it’s not celebrity oriented. I mean, we’re proud to say — not that there’s anything wrong with celebrities, but the show really revolves around the five people that are sitting at that desk. It’s really all about them. It’s about their chemistry.

And I will tell you there all the comments or many of the comments, most of the comments that we get are really just that. Some people have said that if Friends had a TV talk show, this would be it. And it’s real. And, you know, everything I say, and I hear it come out of my mouth when I say it sounds so cliche, but it really, in fact, is true. They really are friendly. They hang out after work, but they’re able to get behind that desk and really go at it, sometimes argue, express their opinion. But as we say at the end of the show, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to go out and have lunch together or drink or whatever. That’s really where the focus of the show is.

I want to talk a little bit more about the hosts in just a couple of minutes. But first, Brian, Tegna is behind this show. Where did the idea start? Did Burt come to you with the kernel of the show, or did you say, Hey, Tegna needs an entertainment magazine for its stations?

Brian Weiss: No, actually, in fact, Daily Blast Live has been around at Tegna actually before Burt or I were here. And actually, I can say this, and I sincerely mean this. I give our leadership — Dave Lougee, our CEO, in particular— a lot of credit for taking a chance.

You know, seven seasons ago, actually under a different moniker, I believe it was called Bold when it first launched and eventually evolved into Daily Blast Live. There was kind of a goal where Tegna basically said, I think we can do a show in the format that we take typically syndicated programing but build it on our own. Let’s build something really topical that makes sense for our stations that sort of blends this idea of news and opinion and covers the topics of the day that doesn’t compete with our news programing but is adjacent to our news programing, can be a really solid lead into our news programing. And let’s sort of take the reins on it.

We can also produce it, by the way, in Denver, where Burt is at KUSA, which is one of our flagship stations, and do it on a cost model that probably is substantially lower than certainly at the time we were paying for some of these sorts of A-list shows.

And so, it’s been really a labor of love and an investment for the company, a show that we continue to invest in. And we’ve added resources, you know, over its seven-year evolution, to really make it the show it is today.

And what I would say is, you know, Michael, we built the show seven years ago really as a show that would perform well on Tegna stations. And we’re really hitting an inflection point now where it is not just a Tegna show, it is really becoming a sort of national syndicated show that a lot of our broadcast peers are finally taking notice of. And finally sort of seeing the value of the show can present to them both in terms of audience, but also, as you mentioned in the lead in, this idea of sustainable economics.

Brian, what’s the time period that this tends to run in? And what is it typically up against?

Brian Weiss: Daytime. So, this is offered typically as a daytime show. We have different windows that we make it available. But typically, it is in the afternoon hours. You know, most Tegna stations carry it at either 2:00 or 3:00 in the local market. We do also offer a 30-minute access show that stations can use on delay. So, it’s been a really good sort of daytime utility player for our affiliates.

The relatively low production cost is obviously a key part of the value proposition here. You mentioned it’s shot at KUSA, a Tegna Station in Denver. Does it have its own studio there? And do you have to work around newscast production or shared space?

Brian Weiss: It’s got an amazing studio, which we’re really fortunate to have when the vision sort of came alive for Daily Blast Live and for recording it in Denver. There was a studio that was available for it. And luckily Mark Cornetta, our SVP of media operations and our general manager there, has been extremely supportive of it. But it’s a real operation. It is totally standalone and totally separate from what happens with the news product at the station. But it’s become sort of its own sort of standalone team and it’s really an amazing production. Burt, you want to just talk a little bit about, you know, the sort of operation that happens there?

Burt Dubrow: Yeah, what I was going to say is that, you know, I have I’ve been fortunate enough to do this several times the same way. For instance, you mentioned Sally. Sally started in Saint Louis, Mo., at KSDK, which is one of our stations, coincidentally. Jerry started at WLW in Cincinnati. So, I’m sort of used to working with a station like that.

I have to say that out of all the ones that I’ve done, Mark Cornetta is probably the most supportive person that general manager that we’ve ever had. So, we give him kudos because he’s really helped this show a lot. But as Brian said, we stand on our own. We’re our own production. News does their thing down the hall and we’re in a locked studio and we do our thing.

Let’s talk about the hosts, Burt, you brought them up before. Obviously, the chemistry that they have with each other seems to be … the show kind of lives or dies around that, doesn’t it?

Burt Dubrow: You know, each executive producer that does what I do, I think has probably different likes, dislikes, strengths. I’ve always been a talent guy. I’ve always been all about the talent. I’m not a big concept person. I’m more of a talent person.

And I’ll tell you, when I got here to Denver, it was a different show. It was a much softer show. It was a lot more trending, like you said, celebrity kinds of topics. And we changed that according to the people that are home available watching daytime television and these hosts, and here comes another cliche, but I’m going to say it are better than any hosts that I’ve ever worked with in my life. Or frankly, I would not be sitting here talking to you. They are that good. People come in the studio and watch the show and cannot believe that there’s no real teleprompter script. There is for intros, but that’s it. They just go.

Where are they coming from? What’s their background?

Burt Dubrow: Well, Sam Schacher, who’s the host, was actually one of my co-hosts on the Dr. Drew Pinsky Show for CNN that I did before I came to DBL. Al Jackson, stand-up comic, still standup comic. He tours on the weekends. Erica Cobb was on the radio all over the country. Tory Shulman did a little bit of stand up or she likes to say was working on an ice cream shop right before she got DBL. Who am I leaving out here?

Brian Weiss: Jeff Schroeder!

Burt Dubrow: Jeff Schroeder, Big Brother. That’s how everybody knows him. He was on Big Brother. Turns out that the lady that won Big Brother that year, Jordan, he married. They moved to Denver. They have two kids. And here we are. A lot of children have been born actually, since we’ve been since we’ve been doing the show.

And Michael, just one thing — I just wanted to say this about, you know, sort of our cast of talent. You know, they are able to have conversations that, to be honest, other networks, other shows have not been able to thread the needle in terms of having really good diverse dialogues about sometimes some prickly issues, different sides of the political spectrum, you name it, various cultural differences. They are able to have those conversations because they genuinely love each other in a way that never veers into the toxic. And that, I think, is something that we’re really proud of.

I’m curious about the direction of a show like this. Obviously, you have some pre-selected topics that you’re going to touch on in an hour. And then this is sometimes cut down to half an hour for some stations. Is the director kind of nudging this along or when the conversation lags a little or are they kind of flagging or let’s move on to the next topic, or is it all living with the host? The shot clock starts, and they just go to the end?

Burt Dubrow: Well, they’re not that good. No, here’s the way it works. At 6:30 in the morning, we do a call with myself and our executive producer and the producers, and we literally choose the topics that morning. So, at 6:30 this morning, we chose the topics. The producers pitched them to us, and then we decide what the show is going to be at that point. We’re off the phone. The producers get to work. We all figure out how we’re going to do this.

8:15 we get on a call with the talent. We tell them what it is. They throw their two cents in and then we have a production meeting a half hour before in person with everybody. And that’s how it works.

As far as on the air is concerned. Sure, we move it along when we feel we need to move it along. Absolutely. But generally speaking, it’s their thing up there. It’s not really our thing. But, you know, they’ll be the first ones to say, hey, tell us when you want us to move it along and get to the next topic. They’re a breeze that way. There is not a lot of ego there. And that’s very, very unique, very unique. And that’s how it’s done.

There are other shows in this kind of category, like The Talk, The View, where you have people having a conversation. Not to psychologize too much, but I’m also curious about what you think audiences are getting from this. Is it being a fly on the wall for a conversation happening among people who genuinely like each other and have good rapport? Is it something vicarious that they’re getting from this dynamic?

Burt Dubrow: The answer is yes. All of that. The fly on the wall thing is a good way to put it. But I think for the most part, based on comments and surveys that we’ve done, they’re tuning in to see what these people have to say. That’s really what they’re doing. And they’re tuning in to see the fun. They’re seeing them poke at each other. I mean, and they really do poke at each other. And, you know, it’s at the point now where the producers know what to put on there. So, we know how the poking will go, you know, we know them so well.

I would say that we’re probably the only show that’s been in development for six years. We’ve made our mistakes. And I think, as Brian said, the industry is starting to really recognize us. And again, that’s how a lot of those — the other two shows — that you mentioned that I did started the exact same way as this: slow build, slow build, make your mistakes, figure out who your audience is, boom. And then take off.

And Tegna, god bless them, have been nice enough — smart enough, too, I would say — to let this thing percolate, percolate and grow. And as Brian said, I know I’m repeating, but Dave Lougee and Lynn Beall are the ones really behind that that let us do what we do.

How, in that process of percolation, how important has social media become for the show to keep its brand vivacious?

Burt Dubrow: Oh, well, that’s a darn good question. And Brian and I are looking and laughing at each other. Brian should answer that. But I think you have to have social media today because it’s something that’s very relevant. It presses certain buttons and if you don’t have it, you don’t appear to be relevant.

But I’d have to say that social media did not drive the audience watching this show. Promotion, publicity and doing a good show and letting it grow on its own is what made it happen. Don’t get me wrong, we have a nice social media footprint, but it’s not … I would say the person who could figure out how to take social media and let it make the audience bigger on broadcast is going to be a trillionaire because it really it just doesn’t translate. They’re two different audiences.

Brian Weiss: Yeah, I’ll echo that, Michael. And we are laughing because this is a conversation Burt and I have quite regularly about where our resources go, what our priorities are.

What I would say is that the idea, the show as it was formed, it was this idea that it would be extremely interactive. It would use a lot of social media. We do things like right now, if you watch the show online or on YouTube, you’ll actually be able to interact with the hosts during the commercial break.

So, there’s definitely a social layer and a digital layer. We have a really good following on Instagram. We’ve actually had some really good, successful moments on TikTok, some really short, pithy interactions that are sort of hilarious and show our hosts sort of ribbing each other, which have gone hyper viral on TikTok, which have been great.

That said, we keep shoveling coal on the fire of social media with the hope that it’s going to drive a younger audience to tune in. And as Burt said, I think that remains elusive, not just for us, but for linear television in general. And it remains an ambition and sort of a priority. But no one has really cracked the code on how you deliver, particularly a younger audience, to tune in, you know, say, in the afternoon. It’s a hard equation, but important.

Burt Dubrow: I think one of the important things for this show, for me anyway, and for Brian, is that we know our audience. We do not hide behind anything here. We know who’s watching at daytime. You know, I can give you a long list of things that I do horribly and a pretty short list of things that I do decent.

I know this audience and I’ve known them for a long time, and they have not changed. A lot of them, maybe politically, it’s you know, they’re a little bit more aware. But we are not afraid to say who our audience is, and we speak to them. That’s probably the first thing I did when I joined the show was get the audience together.

And that audience being demographically?

Burt Dubrow: Fifty-plus women.

Burt Dubrow: Fifty-plus women. That’s who’s home.

Let’s take the last leg of this conversation into the wider realm of the syndication market overall, which, you know, to say that it’s constricting would be putting it very, very mildly. Are we done seeing that dynamic or does syndication still have further pounds to shed?

Brian Weiss: It remains a question that we ask ourselves as well. By the way, Tegna, a collection of 56 local news stations, needs to fill programing, right? We need to put compelling programing on the air every day. And as we look at the landscape, it’s no secret that the traditional Hollywood studios have canceled a lot of marquee shows. They’ve pulled back on some of the ones that are still around. They’ve gone sort of library or half library. And we’re waiting to see, just as the rest of the industry is, whether those studios are going to reinvest money in daytime talk shows, syndicated shows, that sort of thing. Or will they put it toward streaming or movies or whatever else it might be? We’re sort of waiting on that.

What I can say is. The days of station groups like ours and our peers investing huge amounts of money in a new show with a really top-tier name associated with it upfront before we really know if that show will perform and really drive audience, I think those days either are past or are slipping away.

If something really great comes, we’ll certainly be interested, we’ll certainly be open and talking about it. But I think shows more similar to Daily Blast Live that are produced affordably, that are topical every day and new every day, and also, they are adjacent to news, which remains our core product, I think those shows are really the ones that will be in it for the long run.

We’ll still evaluate everything that comes out. We’re in conversations with other groups about new shows and things that they’re considering to bring out a year from now. But I think that the days of us sort of betting in hopes that the audience will be there, that’s very unlikely.

And one thing I would just say is, you know, to use Denver as an example, Daily Blast Live does better numbers than Dr. Phil was doing, Drew Barrymore, the list goes on. It was beating the sort of marquee name shows. And so, if station groups are suddenly being offered compelling shows like Daily Blast Live that performed just about as well as those shows. And I want to be very transparent about this. Right now, we’re offering the show at no cost to station groups. That’s a much better equation than writing a seven-figure check. So, that’s where I think the landscape is really evolving.

Burt Dubrow: Can I jump in?

Go ahead.

Burt Dubrow: Do you mind? Yeah, I have to say this because I really feel very strongly about it. It’s a bit personal, but if you look at these other shows and take the other two that I did, when I started those shows, nobody knew who those people were. No one knew Sally. I thought Sally Jessy Raphael was three people. I had no idea. Nobody knew Jerry.

If you make a list of these shows that were successful—name vs. no name — I think you’d be quite surprised. If I could snap my fingers and get in a room with every general manager and just explain to them that that celebrity thing works the first three or four weeks or even the first three or four weeks before you go on the air because you get all this publicity. But when all is said and done, that person has to know how to do a show, has to be compelling enough, and you must hire producers that know how to do talk.

And I think part of the reason that this is sort of eroding is a lot of it is these shows are lousy. They’re not good. I mean they don’t know how to compel an audience. I think there is a way to do talk that works. So, I think that goes into what Brian says. That’s all.

Well, the problem is there’s not very much in the pipeline anymore in syndication. I mean, I think few people would argue that the $25 million talk show has much of a life in front of it. I mean, they’re just not working out. They’re too expensive. Obviously, costs are winnowing down a lot. So, it’s interesting that a show like this or, you know, the shows, Burt, that you worked on before started as local shows where people are trying that again now. They’re trying local talk shows. They’re trying things to see, OK, this works in this market. Can we widen it out to the region? And if it works in the region, maybe does it have a chance for national play? But, you know, Brian, to your point about waiting to see what the studios are going to do, do you really have a lot of faith that they are going to take any of their chips away from streaming and reinvest in syndication?

Brian Weiss: Well, here’s what I would say. Do I have a ton of faith? I’m not sure I have a ton of faith. What I would say, though, is I think all of those studio groups are looking at their profitability statements. And actually, in many cases, the pendulum is swinging back to what has worked for them in the past, where streaming is not necessarily the profitability boon that they expected it would be.

And so, you know, a lot of them are shifting back to doing things like traditional licensing. And so, it’s possible. It’s possible. I don’t know if it’s probable, but it’s possible that some of them may say, you know what, linear television remains a force in viewership habits.

It may be changing, the landscape may be evolving, but linear television is here to stay and we’re going to invest but do it in a leaner way. Do it in a way that perhaps the talent isn’t paid, you know, an absolute fortune upfront, but benefits on the long tail. There may be different ways to think about those things.

I also think a lot of studios will begin to engage with their broadcast partners about doing these things, potentially as joint ventures, as partnerships, that sort of thing, where maybe two broadcast groups come in on a show and help them build it from the ground up. That, of course, is not the frothy economics that it used to be for a studio that gets to keep effectively everything, but it reduces their risk, and it encourages the parties to commit to have distribution for a long term.

We’re not doing that. I can tell you there’s nothing like, you know, that we’re prepared to announce, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where the dialogue goes. And I just want to point to, you know, the news peg that we’re here today to talk about is the idea that our friends over at Sinclair — and we give them a lot of credit — they’re picking up Daily Blast Live in 20 markets. That is an example of broadcast groups collaborating with each other in perhaps a way that they have not before.

Well, I think there may be a scenario where if our friends out in Los Angeles aren’t as willing to create compelling television for our needs, we’re going to do it for each other. Now, we have not been keen to take other groups’ news programs, for example, but shows like Daily Blast Live, which are much more a topical opinion and talk show, do have sort of the characteristics that other broadcast groups are excited about. And so, I wouldn’t be surprised if more broadcast groups start to say, “You know what, maybe we should just lock arms together and develop programing like this for each other.”

On that front, Brian, so Sinclair, which is picking up this show across a lot of its markets, they’re working on syndicated material themselves. They’ve got Anthony Zuiker developing documentary material, a game show, other things. Are you receptive to potentially buying programing from them?

Brian Weiss: Definitely. And we’ll continue conversations about those things. I would say, you know, the game show example, you know, we have not had specific conversations with Sinclair about any of their game product. But generally speaking, we know that game shows work for our audience. They continue to be pretty stellar performers. And so, if there is a show that, you know, Sinclair or another group is producing that that’s sort of in that genre that doesn’t, you know, intrude on our news values, that has really total separation. That’s the type of thing absolutely we would at least consider, especially if the economics are right.

My last question to both of you, given a sort of inexorable winnowing down of the syndicated marketplace, what is going to survive? What do you see as the pillars of programing that will continue to have viability?

Brian Weiss: Well, let me take one stab at that. And I would like Burt, who, you know, has a lot of, you know, sort of sage wisdom for what he knows works on television. What I would just say is, you know, Tegna and broadcast companies, you have seen — and you will continue to see — us investing substantially in local and substantially in news. And I think you’re going to see that across our broadcast peers where, you know, sort of our moat remains, that we have a connection with the local community. We do very well in terms of their trust with our news. And by the way, advertisers really like news. And so, it wouldn’t surprise me if station groups really invest heavily in more news content, higher quality news content, more investigative news content.

And where we produce shows that are that are filling the void of syndication, it will be the sort of topical conversation that Daily Blast Live does. I’ll just use an example. We have a Mom Squad show that’s produced out of Cleveland. That’s a really good example of moms talking about local issues. That’s the type of programing that I think is going to remain, where maybe the A-list celebrity driven, expensive, high-polished talk show doesn’t or is dramatically reduced, we’ll fill it with that, which is topical programing that really genuinely matters in our communities.

Burt, I think you will have better perspective just in general about what will make good television, because ultimately, we want to put on great television.

Burt Dubrow: [Look, I think everything that Brian said I would agree with and would have said not as well, but I would have said the same thing. You know, game and news during the day is sort of a good thing, and it always has been a good thing. I don’t think the economics have changed, but I’m not sure people’s tastes have changed all that much. Give them something good and compelling with hosts that are likable, and I think you’ve got a good shot as long as the economics are right.

My good friend, who we lost a while ago, Bill Geddie, who created The View and was with Barbara Walters, called me, oh, gosh, about six, eight months ago and said: ‘Do you realize what you’ve done?’ And I thought, Oh, sure, what did I do now? He said: ‘Your model is perfect for what’s going on now, what you’re doing and the economics of it and the production quality and the production value is exactly what the market needs now.’

And I said to him, I’d love to let you know we planned the whole thing. We knew exactly what was coming. And of course, we didn’t. But I do believe he is right. And I think that’s what Brian was saying earlier. I mean, kiddingly, you know, just jokingly, I could look at a GM and say, look, we’ll give you just as bad a rating as any other show. It just won’t cost as much. You know, but the reality is we’ve got a quality program with five people that are brilliantly talented at what they do, and the price is right.

OK, well, we will leave it at that. Burt Dubrow and Brian Weiss, thanks for joining me today to talk about Daily Blast Live and the syndication market at large.

Brian Weiss: Thank you so much for having us.

Burt Dubrow: Thanks for having us.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. There’s a new episode of Talking TV most Fridays. You can catch our entire back catalog at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel, also in audio version and most of the places where you get a podcast. And see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Is ‘Daily Blast Live’ The New Model For Syndies? appeared first on TV News Check.

Even though reporters often suffer the same psychological fallout as other first responders, only recently has that been somewhat acknowledged. And even then, most news organizations are at a loss about what to do about it.

Dave Seglins, a veteran CBC investigative reporter, suffered his own bout of PTSD after covering a particularly wrenching murder trial. The experience led him to do his own investigation into trauma, a process which eventually led him to become the organization’s “well-being champion.”

Now in his second year of that position, Seglins has been advocating for better trauma education and proactive newsroom responses when there has been trauma. In this Talking TV conversation, he explains how the industry is still only in the most embryonic stages of engaging the issue and what first steps any newsroom can take towards addressing a problem that is worsening continuously as attacks on journalists proliferate.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Hello. This is Talking TV. I’m Michael Depp, the editor of TVNewsCheck. Today I’ll be talking with Dave Seglins, a veteran investigative journalist at the CBC in Canada, and as of the past year, the organization’s “well-being champion.” What that means is he’s essentially the CBC’s point person on journalist mental health.

Journalism has always been a tough job, and like many other first responder jobs, journalists see some pretty horrible things that can take a toll on their mental health. Add to that the considerable uptick in attacks they’re subject to both online and in-person, and that toll is getting more severe.

Coming up, a conversation with Dave Seglins that tries to take the measure of this problem, what an advocacy position like his entails and what proactive steps TV newsrooms can do to look after the mental health of their journalists. We’ll be right back.

Dave Seglins, welcome to Talking TV.

Dave Seglins: Hello.

Dave, stress and trauma isn’t something new to journalists. So, what’s making this a problem that people like you are foregrounding right now? Is it an acknowledgment of the depth of that stress that wasn’t there before, or is the stress getting worse, or both? Some combination?

I think our awareness and our literacy around these things as a society. I mean, the pandemic put people through lots of stress and mental health became a thing everywhere. And so, we’re talking about it and understanding it differently. I think, too, there is growing awareness in the scientific community and the psychological and psychiatric communities about the implications of vicarious trauma, and that is for professions whose job it is to, you know, look at and digest the aversive details and the graphic imagery.

So that can be everything from police, firefighters and soldiers to courtroom workers, judges, lawyers and journalists. I mean, when the rest of the world is fleeing from the danger, our job is to go and look at it and cover it and be there. So, this idea of vicarious trauma, it was you know, it’s been developing, and it was sort of identified only a decade ago as being a contributor and a major risk factor for psychological injury and PTSD. So, that’s changed.

But I also think there are some other factors that are driving up the stress levels in the industry, and that has to do with the tech. Technology has changed how we file, where we file, to the number of platforms, the speed at which we file, you know, when you can be sitting in a courtroom and somebody with a simple tweet can kind of render your scoop old news within a few clicks of an enter button, suddenly we are propelled into a news universe that has to be instantaneous.

It’s not just 24/7. It’s so rapid, and so all of these stressors come together, and with our increased understanding of mental health and literacy, I think it’s time that we as a profession which has historically not taken very good care of itself or its people, we start looking at this critically and finding ways to make it more healthy, more sustainable. The stress is always going to be there, and news is always going to cover trauma, but there are certainly ways that we can strategize and best practices that we can develop and adopt to make sure we’re doing it in a healthier, more sustainable way.

And I want to come to those in a little bit. But historically, how have journalists and newsrooms coped with this profession’s stress?

Well, there’s always a kernel of truth in the bad caricature of the chain-smoking guy who’s got his sleeves rolled up. And he’s got a bottle of rye or scotch in the in the cabinet drawer. The tough, very masculine, macho culture of journalism goes way back. And it’s not coincidental that a lot of people thought of it as being men in the business who didn’t have responsibility for families and lives outside and picking up the kids and bringing them to soccer — all of these these kinds of things where you actually have a real life as well as a job.

Obviously, we’ve become more health conscious. Fewer people smoke. Drinking is even now in the sights as a public health issue. You know, lots of discussion around the amounts that journalists have historically drank alcohol to quell the anxiety, to kind of medicate the stress. We are shifting, but those are the coping mechanisms.

I guess the other thing that I would say is that really people in our newsrooms, the leadership we have always sort of promoted based on the craft, the story, the people who are really good at getting the story, the people who are really good at getting the scoops, they’re not necessarily people managers, they’re not HR executives. They’re not trained in mental health and wellbeing.

So, prioritizing the people as opposed to the story has never really been part of the culture. And I think that that is starting to shift. There are some big reasons for it, and we can talk about that. But number one, it’s been unhealthy. It’s not put people first. It’s always been about the story, and we’re seeing a shift in that, and if we don’t make a shift in that, I think it’s going to drive more and more people away from the profession.

Let me circle back to that. The worsening of the problem as you see it — you talked about the digital age and the absolute speed of that being an added stressor. What other factors are at play right now that are worsening this toll?

OK, so that was about filing. What’s worse these days is the entire legitimacy of media and mainstream or legacy media. The concepts of truth are under fire. The trust and traditional media are under fire. There’s a total fracturing of audience. So, that is a challenge for an industry that has generally sort of spoken from the pedestal of the TV station and given out the news as that that newsroom saw it.

And what that has fomented in the echo chambers of social media has been great polarization politically, a lot of anti-media sentiment, which translates into harassment out in the field. You know, we used to wear press badges and that was a position of pride, to be in the press.

And number two, it was carte blanche to sort of get into spaces and places and people, respected journalists and journalism. Now, we often will hide the fact that we’re journalists and reporters for fear for our own physical safety, because there are a lot of people who don’t view journalists and journalism and news professionals with the same level of deference that used to exist, in fact, outright hostility. So, those are yet again, another layer of stress upon stress that is making this a tougher job.

And in your conversations with colleagues, with people at other news organizations in this position you now have, how are you seeing those effects playing out symptomatically with journalists? How are they being expressed, this exacerbated stress that they’re under?

We see in lots of news organizations higher levels of anxiety, short-term disability, people on leave, absenteeism. These are some of the symptoms. I know that through the research that we’ve conducted here in Canada, we did a big national study and we had more than 1,200 news professionals respond to an extensive survey, and we found out some really interesting things.

Such as?

Number one, rates of anxiety and depression are about four times that of the general public. We learned from all of our respondents that more than 50% of respondents say they have sought medical assistance and gone to a doctor to deal with work-related stress. I find that surprising, and I think the other thing that we looked at is the level and frequency that people are exposed to traumatic events and stories about tragedy and human suffering and natural disasters.

And the reality is we’re a business that is trauma soaked. People in this business confront horrible stories, details, images, frequently, and they report feeling burnout, anxiety, fatigue, depression routinely from the exposure over and over repeated in the course of their work. And so that’s what the data and research that we’ve conducted here in Canada tells us, and it really sort of identifies where I think we need to be focusing our efforts.

You convinced the CBC to create this position for you to engage this issue. Why you? Why did you personally decide to do that? And then also, what was the reception that you had to this proposition?

Wow. There’s a whole history there. Number one, a decade ago, I developed PTSD in the wake of I mean … I was covering all sorts of tough stuff, but I covered a really gruesome court trial about a mass murderer. And it crippled me emotionally, mentally, and got me down a path of trying to understand trauma and trying to understand what that means in the context of being a journalist. So, number one, that personal experience.

Number two, during the pandemic, I’m a 25-year veteran of journalism, breaking news and investigative journalism. I reached a point where, you know, I was covering all sorts of death stories about COVID, long COVID, doing in-depth investigations. And then I was assigned because it was a breaking news story on a child murder. Historically, the case was solved, and I got thrown at it and I put up my hand. I said, you know what? I’ve got so much going on, I don’t think I’m up for this and I was told that I didn’t have a choice, that I must work on this story and that this isn’t the way it works.

And I thought, if I as a 25-year veteran who’s trying to express and advocate for my own mental health and like, look, I’ve got enough trauma on the plate right now thank you very much. If I can’t put up my hand, who can? And I really decided at that point that if I’m going to move forward, you know, at CBC or in journalism, that we need to have better ways, we need better protocols and methodologies in dealing with people.

The answer can’t be just suck it up all the time. Because when you reach a breaking point and I knew enough, you know, from my previous PTSD experience, I’m not going there. I’m not doing that again and sorry. I love my job. I want to be excellent at it and I want to be a breaking news reporter when necessary, but also when I know that I’m about to be injured or I’m feeling, feeling the toll. I don’t want to be told you have no other choice but to basically injure yourself. So, I, just decided. That’s the why.

Now the reception: CBC, to its credit, it is a news organization, it is a corporation and like other news corporations, it has a long culture and tradition of journalism that hasn’t prioritized mental health and well-being. But to their credit, they have been very open and very supportive of my work. And frankly, when we began talking about, OK, so what can we do to improve things, the key piece for me begins with education. And they said, Great, why don’t you teach a course?

But I didn’t know anything. I’m just a journalist. So, CBC supported me going to school, doing some in-depth studies about mental health and trauma, studying it, learning it, doing a fellowship at the Dart Center at Columbia’s Journalism school, and over time developed a bit of an expertise calling around to news organizations around the world to ask, What do you do? And education is key among it, better protocols and assignment are key to it, all sorts of improved supports. All to say that CBC has been very supportive of this, but it doesn’t come without its challenges because I’m often fighting an uphill battle.

How so?

Well, when you call for change and say we need to change the assignment process. Not everyone’s on board. Right? And it’s a culture change. It’s going to take time. When I say, look, there are some practices that we currently do like firing people out of the cannon repeatedly, day after day after day without sort of assessing, hey, have they had time to, like, catch their breath? Has there been a down moment? Because processing the things that we cover also has to be part of the human scale of the job. Well, that’s going to cost money. That’s going to take time.

So, these are these are kind of structural obstacles. And I can think of a whole host of issues where I’ve wanted to write articles or speak out about certain aspects of how we do the business that I think are harmful to mental health. And there’s great trepidation and there’s great concern. Oh, my gosh, how is this going to reflect on us, that sort of thing. So, it’s a fine walking balance of being an advocate internally for change and trying to be a positive agent of change without pissing off the bosses that they don’t want to hear it or they’re going to shut me down.

Just to get a practical sense of what you do on the day to day now, you’re still a journalist. You’re still filing stories for CBC, right?

Well, I tried that for the first year of this job. I’m now into the second year. And the reality is, no, I’m not. I’m not because there’s too much work to be done.

This is full time?

This is now a full-time thing for a year. We’re seeing how it goes. There are three buckets to my job. Number one, I do training, and I do that through courses for all sorts of news people at CBC. I also, you know, parachute in a do segment in our hostile environments training for a lot of our foreign correspondents and crews that will go overseas and to warzones, that sort of thing. So, teaching is one.

Number two is internal support. And so that’s everything from I will consult with teams that are — for instance, I just came back from Yellowknife in Canada’s north, where we held a series of debriefing, talking circles where this entire community, the capital city of the territory, Northwest Territories, had to evacuate because of wildfire threat. Now, for the teams that were on the ground, as reporters who live there, they’re not only reporting on this, but they’re living through it. And suddenly they were ripped from their homes and had to flee for their lives. So, you know, I sat with those groups of people, and we went through a kind of lessons learned debriefing, talking circle, which helps them heal. But it also takes some lessons for how we could be better prepared for future emergencies.

And then the third bucket of what I do is I work sort of cross industry, not necessarily only in CBC, but what can we do externally? What can we do with other media partners? And so, I’m working on development of some training courses for other media organizations. We have a pilot project that there’s now a training module of three hours that other news organizations could subscribe to and can get that training.

We’re also creating some educational tools, for instance, some training videos that will, in partnership with the Dart Center, that will be tools for any newsroom, tools for journalism schools to begin thinking about both how do we take care of our people, but also how do we do better journalism when it comes to covering people who’ve been affected by trauma.

I’m glad you brought up the cross-industry component of this, because CBC is a very — I think it’s fair to say — a progressive organization in many regards. So, it’s easier to see it being receptive institutionally to this idea than perhaps some other organizations. So, I wonder, are there other newsrooms or news organizations you’re aware of that have stuck their neck out on this issue a bit and created a position similar to yours or had some sort of institutional response?

There are examples of it. Look, CBC is a public broadcaster, so we get money from taxpayers. We’re arm’s length from government. So, there is a public mission to this and so the idea of uplifting the rest of the industry is sort of baked into our mandate. And so that’s where I get support from doing that.

For a private corporation that is trying to keep afloat in a really hostile time for the news industry, I find that they don’t have the same kinds of resources. So, in some ways I’m trying to use this position to serve all to try to help my colleagues in the private, if I can put it that way. Yes, there are there are glimpses of individuals, but again, they tend to be in large organizations.

I can think of a colleague at The New York Times that is doing all sorts of mental health support within their security and resilience department. I can think of people at the BBC that are building peer support and networks across their news service for better kind of internal colleague-to-colleague support. There are examples.

The reality is, though, this is a fairly new discussion for the industry and what that looks like institutionally. There are all sorts of programs and benefits for mental health coverage. But in terms of actually changing the way we do our day-to-day work within newsrooms and having people whose function it is to look out for the wellbeing and the mental health of journalists being sent out the door or camera people or video editors, there aren’t a lot of examples.

Well, I’m not surprised to hear that BBC and New York Times, they’re sort of always listed at the vanguard of things like this. I think they’d have a fear of missing out if they weren’t involved there. But, you know, pragmatically speaking, as you mentioned, for commercial news organizations that have serious market pressures upon them and have to exist in maybe some more rigid lanes on the day-to-day and have to think about the resources to expand in a position, creating a position or initiatives like this — how should the broader industry, do you think, pragmatically be engaging mental health issues in a broader sense right now? What are some of the best practices you would suggest that they could put in place right away?

Hold a town hall with your staff and ask the question: How can we improve well-being in the news industry? Have that discussion. Record people’s responses. Conduct a survey. Ask people: How do you feel?  What’s working here with regards to wellbeing? What are the challenges? What would you like to see? Get input. Listen to your people. That’s one thing that we can do.

And then bring education. And that doesn’t have to be… you know, I offer a full day course to colleagues here at CBC that will be cost intensive for any news organization. But you can have guest speakers speaking to large groups of people. Improve the literacy around — number one, what does stress and trauma do to the brain? Number two, what are the best practices when it comes to assignment and monitoring trauma exposure and stress exposure on the job? What can we do better in terms of preventative actions? Because there are best practices, you know, in terms of risk assessments and in terms of better planning when it comes to covering big breaking stories that are going to involve human suffering. Those are some simple things that don’t cost as much money. But it will cost money. That’s the truth of it.

Right. Well also in the time that they have to take off and the attrition and things like that, for sure. I have also heard about psychologists coming to newsrooms sometimes in the wake of a specific traumatic event that may have affected people more broadly. Is that something that you hear much about?

Certainly. CBC has practiced that at certain times, and it can be either having a psychologist or psychotherapist who’s in a group setting, or it can be somebody who has, you know, a sign-up sheet and you can go and talk to them one on one. I think there is a growing understanding through studies of critical incident debriefing, you know, in other frontline professions like emergency services and soldiers.

Group sessions aren’t always a good idea, especially in a news culture where people have a tough exterior and they want to project strength, because to not do that can potentially have professional repercussions in journalism if you don’t appear up to it. So, in those kinds of settings, people don’t want to let their guard down or appear weak. It’s not weakness, I say.

But anyway, group therapy post incident isn’t a great idea, but what you can do is you can hold space for people just to talk. Don’t sell it as therapy. Don’t, don’t, don’t make it into more than it has to be. Sometimes all people want to do is get together, you know, order a pizza and say, hey, you know, what worked there? What didn’t? What are the lessons we’re learning from this? And that gives people a kind of non-emotional way of venting, reflecting and maybe taking a lesson which helps people sort of think about the future and move forward and get them more forward thinking as opposed to being trapped in the horrors of whatever the thing is that you’ve just covered.

So, now you’re in your second year of doing this. Do you feel that there is some serious momentum here as far as the industry leaning into this as a problem and actively doing something about it?

Yes and no. Yes, I think that this is a more prevalent conversation. It’s a higher corporate priority across many news organizations, not just CBC. Mental health and how to better support our journalists is a thing. The question is how are we going to address it? And I’m not sure that we’re far enough along the road in figuring out the solutions.

But I know based on the number of conversations that I have and the number of people that are gravitating towards this issue, calling, contacting me, the kind of social media discussion amongst journalists about trauma and stress and burnout. I think that there is a reckoning going on. What the solutions are … that still remains a bit of a challenge, bit elusive. And I’ll forever say, education is the beginning piece because the more literate we are on all of these issues, the more people will figure out the fine print of how do we do this in our newsroom, if people just understand stress and trauma better.

Well, it’s certainly very important. Hopefully, we’ve gotten a conversation rolling along here that we can continue and check back in with your work in a little bit down the road and see if broadcasters, commercial broadcasters particularly, can find a way into this and make it feasible as part of their efforts, especially as in the U.S., we go into a very stressful election year where coverage is going to be challenging, to put it mildly. Among other giant stories and calamitous climatological environmental stories, people have to deal with traumas coming in from all directions right now, it would seem.

Dave Seglins, journalist at CBC, its well-being champion. Thanks so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me. Nice to see you, Michael.

Good to see you. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. We have new episodes of Talking TV most Fridays. You can catch it and all past episodes at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel as well as most places you get your audio podcasts. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Tackling Journalism’s Mental Health Crisis appeared first on TV News Check.

A number of station groups — E.W. Scripps, Gray and Nexstar in the front of the pack — have been making aggressive moves to win rights and recapture viewers with the drama of live sports — and any sports will do.

Peachtree Sports, launched on Oct. 1 by Gray Television’s WANF and WPCH in Atlanta, is the latest entrant into the sports race. It’s being positioned as a soon-to-be-statewide network running a decidedly mixed bag of Georgia sports ranging from the Ultimate Disc league to minor league hockey and a swath of college and high school games.

In this Talking TV conversation, Erik Schrader, the stations’ VP and GM, explains the impetus for the network, the bet it’s making to capture the sports-curious viewer and the evolutionary track he sees Peachtree Sports following.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Ever since the dissembling of some major regional sports networks, broadcast TV has gotten a glimmer in its eye over the matter of sports rights. Local sports were, for decades, a mainstay of broadcast in a symbiotic relationship. Teams saw local TV as a tool to cultivate new fans. Local stations got a nice boost in the ratings as fans tuned in for the games.

Now, from the ashes of the RSNs those relationships are rising anew led by E.W. Scripps, Gray and Nexstar, the most vocal groups about expanding their sports content. Peachtree Sports Network is a new endeavor from Gray Television’s WANF and WPCH in Atlanta, Georgia, where the network launched on October 1st featuring live local sports programing. The channel will soon expand to Gray’s other markets in Georgia, including Augusta, Albany, Macon, Columbus and Savannah.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, my conversation is with Erik Schrader, WANF and WPCH’s VP and general manager. We’ll talk about the business model for this new local sports network, the perceived demand for it among advertisers and audiences and how they’re pulling it all together. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Erik Schrader to Talking TV.

Well, thanks for having me, Michael.

Erik, I have a lot of nuts-and-bolts questions for you, but first, a big one: What was the thinking behind this network?

You know, the things that broadcast television do best are really live events, live local news and live sports. And there are so many teams out there right now. And there’s been a fundamental change over the last few years where teams are able to put together their own, their own not broadcast, but their own production of their games. And we have an opportunity to then provide them with a much larger bullhorn and get it out across the state.

All right. So, give me a sense of what’s being included here. We’re talking about minor league teams, some professional teams, some college and then down even into the high school level?

It could be just about anyone. The teams that we have agreements with right now are mostly in sports that are not part of the Big Four or that are minor leagues. For example, we have the ECHL, which has two hockey teams in Georgia. It has the Atlanta Gladiators and the Savannah Ghost Pirates. We’ll be airing some of each of their games. But we’re also going to show high school sports. We are in talks with some different people about college sports. So, all those things are on the table. I mean, there is literally not a sports league that I wouldn’t consider airing on that because that’s what we want to be about is live sportscasts.

And you’ve got ultimate Frisbee in there, right?

We have the Ultimate Disc League.

Ultimate Disc League — different people, OK, sorry, sorry.

Well, I believe that Frisbee is one of those words is actually a proprietary name. So, the professional league, I have learned is the Ultimate Disc League, which think about Frisbee or disc meets football or soccer. It’s more of that. I know sometimes people think maybe it’s like golf, but it’s more of a soccer-type game. If you watch ESPN, sometimes it shows up in the top 10 plays of the week.

Yeah, I’m confused, but I’m intrigued because I have not seen this played. So, that’s interesting.

That makes you the target, Michael, you’re the target. You know what we want is people to learn about these leagues and sports that exist that they could become fans of. And so maybe just from my eloquent description of things or just your general curiosity, you’ll watch and maybe you’ll become a fan.

So, there’s a certain, ‘what the hell is this? I’m going to stay tuned to watch more’ kind of factor that might be a driver here for audiences?

I certainly think there’ll be a curiosity factor on some of the sports we carry. I think each of the sports comes with its own cachet and its own group of fans. But I think just like any sport and just like every sport had to do, somewhere along the way, you have to get new fans.

I mean, there’s no question we know where professional football was in the 30s and 40s as opposed to some of the other sports. And look where it is now. It’s the most popular sport in the country. And it got there almost exclusively because of broadcast television.

Sure, it was undoubtedly historically a very, very powerful tool in audience development. For most, or maybe all, of the things you’ve got now on this network, how many of those might one have found those elsewhere on television or on some sort of streaming channel beforehand?

Well, certainly they would have found them. They would have found the Atlanta College Station Skyhawks, which is the G-league team. And we would have found high school football both on Peachtree on WPCH. We were airing both of those already. I think almost all of these are streaming online someplace. But in terms of being available on broadcast television, I think those are the only two at that at this moment.

How much of an undertaking was it to secure all of these rights? How long of a process has that been so far?

You know, we’ve been talking for quite a while with some of them. I mean, the devil is definitely in the details, and we’re not done by any means. We’re still talking to other people. This is the group of teams that we were able to have secured when we were ready to make the announcement. But I will tell you this, every single team we have talked to has been really excited about this idea.

I would think so. Now, who is actually handling this? Did you bring somebody on staff to negotiate these rights or were you doing it?

No, I’m handling those. Yeah, I’m handling those. Michael.

Where are you literally putting this? Is this going on your D2? And if so, what diginet had to roll off in order to accommodate this network?

It’s going on 17.2, which is Peachtree’s dot 2. Right now, Court TV is on there. We’re in a situation here in Atlanta where I think Court TV is on multiple stations. So, we are moving Court TV out and we are putting Peachtree Sports Network on there. Gray owns broadcast stations in every single market in Georgia, and we will be on all of those. We’re not there yet. We are only going to be Atlanta on October 1st. But in addition to being available over the air, we will also be on Comcast and Spectrum from day one.

In those other Gray markets in Georgia, is it going to be Court TV that gets the push in each case, or is it a case by case…

It’ll be a different situation in every market.

1. And sorry, the streaming component is there as well?

No, we’re not going to stream it. We’re not looking to compete against all of these leagues, all of these teams have their own streaming situations already in place. So, we’re not going to compete in that round. This is this is solely broadcast.

Gotcha. Because Gray does have a very robust streaming operation at all of its stations. Conceivably, you could put this there with the VOD option.

Absolutely, we could do that. But again, we don’t want to interfere with the business model that already exists with these teams. I’m a big believer in broadcast, and I am 100% believer that to become a fan of a sports team, broadcast has to play a major role in that.

You know, my parents were not the biggest sports fans in the world when I was six and seven years old, but I became a hockey fan by watching games — NHL games in the afternoon on a broadcast television station.

And I think that’s how it is for almost all of us. I mean, maybe a few people have become fans over the radio, but almost everybody became a fan over broadcast television. And I know we have a lot of leagues going behind paywalls now, and I think that you can bring existing fans behind a paywall, but I don’t think you can grow new fans that way. And so, I think broadcast is just by far the best partnership for sports at all levels.

OK, now you’re billing this as live. Are all of these games going to be live or anything going to be recorded and shown into your “live” feed?

I mean, that’s a great question. The goal is to air as many of them live as possible. Now, with as many teams as we have, there are going to be conflicts. We’re going to have certain nights that two or three teams are playing and we’re going to have to make a decision about who gets aired live and who is aired on a delayed basis. I also think I see a world where we’re going to air some of these games multiple times, you know, obviously people on slot, but because we want to hit as much of an audience as possible. So, I think you could see a situation where the game runs live on Tuesday night at 8 p.m., but then Wednesday morning and maybe even Wednesday afternoon, we give it a couple extra plays.

From the jump from early October, what are the expectations for daily content right now? How many hours of original material are you going to be showing?

Well, I mean, we’re going to be a 24/7 network. We’re lucky to be Gray, and Gray has Raycom Sports and Tupelo Honey. We have a pretty big catalog of sports that airs already across the country. And we’re going to be able to tap into that. We’re working on a couple of other things I’m not ready to talk about just yet, but we’re going to be about sports. You’re not going to turn into this, tune into the station and see something that doesn’t match up with sports. That’s what it’s going to be.

Some of it’s going to roll in a wheel then, like if I missed the Ultimate Disc earlier, I might catch it at 2 or 3 in the morning potentially?

Like I said, I think we will try and do that. I’ve still got to work out some of those details with some of those teams and we just have to put it on its feet and see what the audience is receptive to. But yeah, that is definitely one of the original plans.

What kind of production operations did you have to spin up in order to make this happen? I mean, is that coming from the respective leagues and the teams or are you working with outside vendors to produce and commentate on these games?

Well, now, like I said, I mean, we very much want to keep the teams home commentators. They’re the ones who know their teams best. So, we wanted them to be a part of it. And like I said earlier, we’re really at a time in 2023 where people are doing their own productions and so we don’t have to, you know, bigfoot that a lot of these productions are very, very solid quality.

I mean, I have to laugh. I have friends who have sons and daughters in Little League baseball or softball, and we all will be out, and they’ll be like, oh, hold on, you know, they’ll [watch the] Little League team, which is being streamed somewhere. The ability to produce sports is something that a lot of people have at their fingertips now. So, we’re going to capitalize on that.

So, you’re just getting these feeds. You’re not having to set up any of your own cameras or have your own people on site in any of these scenarios, then?

No, we’re not having to do that. I mean, that would throw off the monetary model. I mean, the whole goal here is we want these teams to be able to get this audience. And so doing it this way is the way we can do that best.

You know, just spitballing this. I mean, I know there are some vendors, I’ve talked to them fairly recently, where you could they can put a camera into … if you’re talking about even expanding this further out and having more and more original [content], you could theoretically do this at any kind of game, at any level. Pop a camera in there, it’s powered by AI. It can draw highlights from that. It can even generate AI-driven commentary if you want. Is that a road that you would consider going down as this evolves?

I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I think that probably AI is so far away from that right now. I mean, you’ve seen some of the stories. There are there are people trying to use AI and it’s led to some pretty horrific news reporting along the way.

There were missteps, definitely.

Absolutely. Do I see that as being something that could happen? Maybe. Probably. But do I think it’s something that is going to happen in a short enough window that it’s going to impact us, you know, in the next five, 10 years? Probably not.

Let’s talk about the audience then. Why do you think you have a sufficient audience for this? What makes you believe there is a strong enough core of people across the state of Georgia, Atlanta first, and then ultimately across all of Georgia, who are going to find this interesting?

I think the one thing that we know is this country is a sports country. And again, to go back to one thing I said earlier, broadcast is at its best when it’s showing live events. I mean, live has drama, you know, be it live news or live sports. We don’t know what’s going to happen next.

And all of us enjoy watching Friends and we enjoy watching Seinfeld and we will stream things all the time. But there is a drama in live that you just don’t get with other things. And I think there will be an audience just like every other sport. I think people will tune in one day and there will be one player who catches their fancy or one storyline that’s interesting and the next thing you know, they’ve watched 15 games.

So, I definitely think there is an audience. And I would say this too: We’re in a state right now that doesn’t have legalized gambling, so that is not a factor at all. But I would say, someday I think all 50 states will probably have legalized gambling. And if they do, I think that that even grows the sports audience dramatically.

Although that advertising does have a lifecycle. It kind of plateaus. And then lots of people in other markets, I’m sure Gray, can tell you how that goes.

Oh, I’m not talking I’m not talking about being providing a vehicle for advertising for gambling outlets. I’m talking about, you know, depending on what kind of fan base there is, almost any sport will eventually have a line and they will have opportunities for gambling to take place. I mean, again, we’re in a state that doesn’t do it. And I don’t know that that for us is going to be a factor any time in the near future. But I definitely think across the country that certainly that’s a factor. I think we’re seeing that all the time.

Well, speaking of advertisers, what kind of advertisers are you launching this with? Who wanted to come on board?

I mean, a lot of our traditional advertisers who advertise with this on broadcast are the advertisers we’re going to kick things off with. We only made the public announcement, you know, back in late September. So, right now, our sales team is talking to people about what they want to do. We’re very interested in seeing how that goes.

And you make a great point. I think we will get advertisers targeted towards the viewing audience of sports, which is a little bit demographically different from, you know, the overall broadcast lane. I think we will see some advertisers who dip their foot in who haven’t been with us traditionally.

For the male demographic…

The age I think we all we could conceivably appeal to [is] different than the traditional 25 to 54.

Well, it is certainly intriguing, and I’m interested to see how this develops, what kind of audience you end up attracting, who sticks around and what kind of advertisers lean into this as you as you get it going along. So, stay in touch about it, please.

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to hear from you when you watch your first Ultimate Disc League game and let me know how that turns out for you. I’m sure if the next time I see you, you’re wearing an Atlanta Hustle jersey, I’ll know that this all worked, Michael.

I’ve got to get my minor league hockey engine revved up and I would be totally on board to watch that, so. All right, Erik, thank you so much for coming on, talking about Gray’s new Peachtree Sports Network. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV all in one place, at TVNewsCheck.com or on our YouTube channel. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. See you next time.

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Brian Morris, chief information security officer (CISO) for Gray Television, says top leadership needs to be completely invested in propagating a culture of cybersecurity across the company. But he hastens to add that awareness and understanding need to be bidirectional between the CEO’s and CISO’s offices for that investment to truly take root.

In this week’s Talking TV conversation, Morris shares tips for building a culture of cybersecurity amid more frequent and clever attacks. He says the nearing of an election year should make vigilance all the more urgent. And he says reenforcing the positive in cybersecurity, rather than making it a punitive cudgel, makes all the difference.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The threat of cyberattack remains one of the most serious facing broadcasters today. The problem is that arming themselves against such attacks is a fast-moving issue requiring constant adjustments in strategy. So, what do broadcasters need to be doing today and every day to be ready?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Brian Morris, chief information security officer, or CISO, for Gray television. We’ll be talking about how to build a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcast company and critically, how the CEO needs to be a critical instrument in establishing and maintaining that culture. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Brian Morris, to Talking TV.

Brian Morris: Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.

Good to see you, Brian. How grave is the threat of cyberattack that broadcasters face each day?

Well, it’s grave, and I’m sure that’s not a surprise to anyone. I think one of the things that we have to get used to is that it’s not a single threat. You don’t fix it and walk away. It’s constantly changing, constantly evolving, constantly something that we have to adjust ourselves to be able to relate to and to be able to protect ourselves against.

Now, I mentioned at the top cybersecurity is a moving target, which you’re speaking to right now. Can you explain why that is and how a broadcaster needs to be continuously adapting to threats?

Well, I think it relates to as threat actors get better at their job, we get better at our job. Not only us, but cybersecurity vendors do. It was just a few years ago, pretty much everything was malware based. If you had good endpoint protection, if you had EDR, you could knock out 90% of the threat.

Well, now today that’s changed. It’s fileless, it’s non-malware based. Today the credential is the golden tool for getting in. A compromised credential is how a threat actor gets in the phishing campaign.

A few years, those were mass volume coming out. Nowadays, it’s a spear phishing campaign. Spear phishing, smishing phishing, all designed to reach instead of a mass group, the individual target. The threats are more personal to the end user, therefore they’re more effective.

Let me roll back here. Is a spear phishing is targeting an individual person, not just sort of phishing across the whole company?

Exactly.

What is motivating these threat actors primarily? Is it money or are they just trying to ransom or is it something else?

It depends on whether you’re talking about cybercriminals. In many cases, those are monetary driven. That’s the ransomware. But then when you get into state actors, it changes a little bit. You know, North Korea is focused on ransomware. China is focused on information. Russia, they’re just disruptive right now. So, it depends on where it’s coming from as to where the target is within a company.

Are the state actors targeting media more than other categories of business or corporation?

I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re immune to that. I’m actually surprised that we don’t see more of it from a media standpoint. Of course, with election year coming, that’s going to increase, I believe, the ones that you see a lot. Health care, government and such are the big ones that are getting hit. But I think we are seeing a rise in it, and we will continue to.

Is AI making the threat of attack any worse right now?

Somewhat. I don’t think it’s quite the boogeyman everybody points it out to be, yet. It’s done some things to make threat actors a little bit easier. Some of it’s been documented. Well, helping to generate better code is one. Another one is just the general phishing campaign. There is a language barrier for overseas phishing. And a lot of times you can spot phishing emails just because the grammar and spelling is poor. With generative AI, you can put it in English and get it in something that looks a little bit better. And so, that is a threat. But then again, on the other side to that, it’s not just the threat actors that have AI, we also have it on our side and security companies stuff are using that to help identify these threats and help remediate.

And so, when you talk about on the two sides here, is it sort of just always leveling up like increment by increment? The threat actors are on a par with the level of the defenses that you bring to bear. Does anybody ever get the edge there?

Well, I think the threat actors always have the advantage because they always think of the next thing and then we have to follow up and figure out how to block it. We’re never sitting here thinking, OK, what can they do next? Let’s come up with something. So, we’re always a bit on the defensive. But, you know, that’s the nature of the beast.

Those damned threat actors. So, protection is largely about employee training, isn’t it? A big part of it?

It’s becoming more and more about that. It’s less the fact that you can put a tool in place and color it covered. Not to say that has any less importance that’s still there. It needs it. But the employee you know, employees, are your biggest threat. They’re your biggest area. That’s not really a valid statement. Employees in concert with a good security program are some of our best protection. Employees can notice things long before the security department notices.

I know in our phishing emails, a lot of times the ones that get through our email security are caught by, I can almost put in a handful of employees that’s going to tell me right away, Hey, Brian, this doesn’t smell right. Take a look at this. And so, they’re very helpful in covering that.

How does the training come in to building an overall culture of cybersecurity? Does it need to be a constant, recurring thing? Is it something that you do in in regular intervals?

It is. And there’s been security awareness campaigns, you know, monthly trainings or something like that, and then simulated phishing campaigns and such going out. But that’s evolving, too, nowadays. We have to develop a security culture within our business. It has to be more than sending out a training video and assuming that people are going to have that and they’re going to they’re going to follow it. People are in a hurry. They do their job. And unless the response to, say, a phishing email is automatic, there’s a good chance they’re going to click on it. So, we have to build a culture that that means security is just part of the way of life for us.

Are you still testing people, though, that, you know, you could put out false phishing or spear phishing attempts to test individuals, and if they fail the test, you kind of pull them in for more direct training?

Well, we are doing simulated phishing, but my view on that is a little bit different. I think simulated phishing for the most part is not to tell us if the employees are doing their job, but to tell us if we’re doing our job. Are we building the culture where people are looking for this? Are we building a culture where they’re on our side, where they see themselves as a part of the overall security landscape and they want to do it rather than trying to catch somebody doing something wrong and then clobber them for it?

What are some of the other best practice facets of building up a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcaster?

Well, I think one of the first things we need to do is to make security a positive thing, not a negative thing. I always joke that I’m the “Office of No,” and to a certain extent that that tends to be true. But we need to make it something that people embrace. We need to develop champions within each department. As I said, I have I have certain people out amongst our stations. If they see something wrong, they’re going to hit me up right away and let me know.

We need more people like that, and we need to encourage that rating to reward that. We need to make sure that we brag on those people and let them know training needs to be fun, less tedious than what it is. And there are vendors out there that are working hard at making training something that people look forward to rather than something that people dread.

The other thing we need to do is we need to be better at communicating. We need to get out and let people know, hey, this is what we’re seeing. This is what you need to look out for. Not scary, but just informative to get people involved in it.

Now, getting C-suite buy in is absolutely critical to all of this. Why?

It is because cybersecurity is no longer an isolated department that covers one little area. You’re not just covering email and endpoint; it becomes a broader spectrum. You’re talking about an enterprise risk, you’re talking about governance, you’re talking about compliance.

And now with some of the regulations that are forthcoming for publicly held companies, recommendations to CSA from the White House and such and the FCC. Now we’re having to become more formalized in what we do, our documentation, our vendor reviews.

And that means we need to be able to justify what we’re doing to the C-suite and then up to the board. And so, getting C-suite involvement, the CEO involved in that and supporting it is critical to being able to go out and reach all areas of the enterprise and not just select employees or select departments.

What does responsible CEO behavior look like in this context? What’s the onus on the CEO in both a more macrocosmic and a daily sense?

I think the first thing we need to expect from a CEO is to support the security program, support the CISO, and let it be known that the CISO is an important part of the business and that the influence needs to go across the entire company.

But it’s also on the CISO to understand the business from the CEO side. You know, we sit here, and we say, Well, here’s a tool to do this. Here’s a tool to do this, here’s a tool to do that. We need to be able to look at it from the CEO side and say: Why is that important to the CEO as it is to us? So, we need to become more savvy that direction.

Well, fascinating stuff, Brian. I know that we will be getting into a lot of these issues at TVNewsCheck’s Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat at the NAB New York show this October, which you’ve been involved in. This is a convocation of CISOs and other security executives, all done off the record with no media coverage. And the conference sessions are interspersed with private information exchanges in which people like me aren’t even allowed in the room. So, if you’re interested in this event for you or your company, there are links in the story attached to this podcast with information where you can get more information on tickets and details of the event. Brian, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can always watch our extensive back catalog of episodes on TVNewsCheck.com or on our YouTube channel, as well as on most places where you get your audio podcast. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Building A Cybersecurity Culture For Broadcasters appeared first on TV News Check.

That feeling is infectious around Baker, a reporter for Nexstar-owned KXRM in Colorado Springs, Colo., and it has translated well on TikTok and Instagram, where she has a large and growing following for videos of her on-set antics at the station and Weird News segments that mine the bottomless pit of human folly that she posts directly to social.

In this Talking TV conversation, Baker explains she’s shed the rigid TV persona from her career’s earlier days for good and that both station management and viewers have embraced the off-kiltered authenticity she revels in now.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. It’s an anxious age for TV news and we’ve spent many of the more recent episodes of this podcast wading into the gravely serious issues the industry is facing right now. From TV journalist burnout to generative A.I. to the battle over vMVPD negotiation rates, when you may ask, are we ever going to have any fun?

Well, the answer is right now. Right now, we are going to have some fun with a TV reporter who looks to me to be having way too much fun doing her job. Julie Baker is a reporter at Nexstar’s KXRM in Colorado Springs, Colo. She also moonlights as a radio host at a top 40 station in Springfield, Mo., as the host of The Julie Baker Show. But many more people know her for her videos on TikTok and Instagram, which is where I first saw her.

Now, there’s nothing worse than having someone to describe to you something that they thought was funny. So, let’s just watch a couple of those videos right here. Coming up, a conversation with Julie Baker about a different way to approach the job of TV reporter and how such reporters can relax and be more natural on social platforms like TikTok. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Julie Baker, to Talking TV.

Julie Baker: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Julie, you’ve been doing this TV reporter thing for a while now, at least 10 or 12 years, working for Nexstar, most recently the ABC O&Os and at other places. And yet you don’t seem infected with the syndrome that afflicts so many TV reporters — that rigid, plasticized delivery syndrome. How did you inoculate yourself?

I think certainly there was a time in my reporting career where I felt I had to be those things. I guess I could start in college. I always felt stories that were different and told in different lights were more impactful, that people would remember them more. But as I got into my career, I looked around the newsroom and thought, Oh, like nobody’s doing stories like, I think stories should be done. I should really conform to this very, like, suit and tie, serious news journalists. And I did that for a number of years, and eventually I kind of found myself in a state of burnout. I didn’t enjoy it. I felt inauthentic. I felt like I was shoving myself into a box. And there was a time I remember sitting on the anchor desk thinking, yeah, I could do this for the next 30 or 40 years. I could probably make decent money at it, but I think I might die a little on the inside.

And so, I took a break from TV news and got asked to start a radio show, but really quickly realized how much I missed TV news. But I looked around and I thought, I don’t know if I can pull it off the way that I want to pull it off. I was fortunate to find a station that said, hey, we see you. We see your style. We want it.

You’re a person who seems to be very relaxed on set with your colleagues. We saw a little bit of that at the top. Let’s watch a little bit more of that right now. So, Julie, what’s the trick here? What’s the mindset that a TV reporter or just anybody who’s regularly on air should adopt to avoid falling into that rigidity trap?

I think for me, I got to a point where I said, self, you’ve just got to entertain yourself. And if you feel good about it, if you feel authentic, if you feel like you’re just who you are, great. If other people like it, awesome, they are welcome to tag along on the journey. If they don’t, that’s OK, too. But you’ve got to be true to yourself, I think is the thing that was so important for me to realize and to really grasp.

Well, now that you are being yourself, how do your bosses and your colleagues react to you being you on set and in the field?

I think my current station, I was really transparent with them, with who I was, and they said, great, we love it. This is our style. I think I really work with a unique and dynamic morning team at Fox 21 here in Colorado Springs, and everybody on our show is allowed to be who they are.

And I think that is, you know, our ratings prove that people at home enjoy that. They soak it up, they love it. We have a really interactive audience, which, you know, might not be the case in other TV stations that are, you know, fit that more traditional, rigid-mold-type thing. Everyone’s allowed to be who they are. We’re all funny. We all love each other. We all care for each other. And we all want to see not only ourselves succeed, but the show succeeds because of that.

What do the viewers tell you about you being you?

You know, the majority of our viewers like it. They think it’s a breath of fresh air. Some people don’t like it. Some people want that more traditional, rigid approach. And that is OK. I think for me, I’ve recognized I don’t like everybody in the world. I can’t expect everyone to like me in the world. And that’s OK. If they don’t like it, that’s for them to take up with themselves.

It’s not my business what other people think of me. I want to spread joy. I want to spread positivity. Of course, there are going to be stories where you kind of have to have that more sincere tone, but that’s not the case every single morning. And so, you kind of have to adapt to that. But you know, you’re always going to meet that [person who wants to tell you a piece of their mind. You take it with a grain of salt.

I hope they do so politely.

You know, sometimes they get a little out of control, but that’s their prerogative. That speaks more to where they’re at in life. It doesn’t say a thing about me.

You have a pretty expansive presence on TikTok and Instagram, about 223,000 followers on TikTok, 46,000 or so on Instagram. Do you put up the same content on both platforms?

I do, but different days. So, a couple of years ago I started looking at TikTok, knowing that, gosh, there are so many dumb news stories in the world, why can’t we just make a joke out of it? And I thought that was a really good avenue to put that type of work up. So yeah, I will take all that stuff and put it across multiple platforms, Facebook and then on YouTube I’ll take longer clips and post it. Same content, different days. So, what you might get first on Instagram, you might get first on TikTok another day.

What works there? What do you find people are most responsive to in what you put out?

When it comes to social media, you really have to niche down. You can’t be all over the place. You can’t be all things to everyone. And, of course, that fractures you online where people see one type of version of you, and they assume you’re like that all the time. But that’s OK. I think that’s really important, but people enjoy authenticity. If I’m not laughing at myself, I can’t expect an audience to laugh with me. I can’t expect my audience to do something that I myself am not doing, I guess is maybe a better way to put it.

You have this recurring bit that you do on social, you just mentioned, Weird News. How do you find those stories or how did they come to you?

Goodness gracious, stupid news truly is of abundance. It is everywhere.

It’s an embarrassment of riches?

It is. But truly, it’s a content farm. You know, I read different headlines with my radio show. We have a service. Sometimes they’ll give me ideas, but I get a lot of ideas from my audience who follow me on TikTok, or they follow me on Facebook, they follow me on Instagram. They’ll send me stuff. Recently, I had someone send me a stupid news story that’s kind of in the suburb of my hometown about a woman who lit her house on fire with a spicy tortilla chip. And so, you will get stupid news online seeking it out yourself. But then other people will see it and they’ve been avid followers of you, and they enjoy your take on it and they’ll send it your way as well.

How can you light a house on fire with a tortilla chip?

I didn’t know this prior, and this is one of the cool things about stupid news is I’m always learning stupid facts. Apparently, the grease content makes it just combustible enough. She coupled it with a soda bottle full of Coke or excuse me, a soda bottle full of gas that she had poured on, lit the chip on fire, threw it on the clothes. And of course, that’s all a contributing factor to her house going up in flames. But you learn something new every day.

Wonder what the thinking was there.

I have no clue. She did say to police, according to what I read, I did it on purpose. So, at least she owned her crime.

A lot of younger journalists, aspiring journalists who are in school right now, don’t want to go into TV anymore. Would you try to convince them otherwise?

There was a journalist that I followed one day for my internship. I interned in St Louis, and she said to me, If you don’t absolutely love this job, don’t do it. You have to love this job. You have to love it. Otherwise, it will eat you alive. So, if this is just something where someone in college thinks I just want to be on TV, it’s so glamorous, they are not thinking correctly because the glamour ends where the power button begins. It is an illusion that it’s glamorous. It is something that you have to really want.

Fortunately for me, I’m very nosy and I love waking up in the morning. I take that back. I don’t always love waking up in the morning. That alarm goes off really early, but I love waking up in the morning, digging in, put my nose in to the grind, if you will, and see what’s happening in the world and looking for takes to tell people in a creative way what’s happening in the world.

From your own experience, what else would you say to convince a younger journalist or an aspiring journalist on TV that it is worth a try?

Ooh, what would I say? Well, it’s really rewarding. You know, you have the power to make a difference in a community. We just approached the five-year mark of Hurricane Florence 2018. I believe it was right on five years. My math is not good. I’m a writer. And for me, that’s been the most impactful coverage of my entire career. I was able to be on Atlantic Beach, which is kind of separated from the mainland of North Carolina, before anyone could have access to it. So, in two and a half hours, myself, my photojournalist and the late fire chief there of Atlantic Beach, literally went from house to house to house, showing people who had requested on social media to see their home so they can anticipate what they were returning to, exactly what was going on.

Now, of course, Hurricane Florence carries a much more sincere tone. It’s not really a joking situation and you can determine those story by story, but it was impactful. I later went back six months later and the fire chief who took over said, because of your coverage, we were able to do X, Y, Z. I will still have people reach out to me on social media and say, because of your coverage at Atlantic Beach, I was able to … do insert what they were able to do. So, you get a chance to really help out the community in a way that you might not otherwise think. You know, somebody’s home gets hit by a tornado. You were there and it is telling the neighbors how they can help out.

For me right now, I can go to a small business, and I know because of our TV broadcast we can make a difference for that small business. We can get more customers to their door. We can talk about how great they are. Otherwise, people might not have known about that business. So, it really is an opportunity to help out your neighbor. You’re just doing it in a way that’s maybe much different than work in the nonprofit world or kind of something like that.

What do you hope to be the arc of your own career? What are your ambitions?

Oh, that is a fantastic question and that is something that I’ve pondered since my return to TV news. And I really just love telling people what’s happening in the world and making them laugh. So, if there is a way that I can do that in a larger setting, I think of things like how impactful The Daily Show was for me watching Jon Stewart and then Trevor Noah, stuff like that. Even like Saturday Night Live Weekend Update. I remember in college thinking, gosh, I learned something, and I laughed. How can I do that type thing? So, I hope to do that on a larger scale, inform people, but also remind them like, hey, I’m human too, you’re human. Here’s what’s happened and here’s what’s up.

Well, Julie Baker… you can find her on TV screens in Colorado Springs on KXRM, on Instagram as AndJulieBaker. Julie, thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV with far less levity, but where the host is almost always being himself, at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: How One TV Reporter Goes Niche For Win On TikTok, Instagram appeared first on TV News Check.

Chris Nagus has emerged as one of the key architects in that overhaul. Nagus’ title alone — senior director of storytelling and content strategy — speaks to what the company is prioritizing as it bulks up its reporting staff at even the smallest of its stations, trims away anchor positions and focuses on getting more relevant stories, and a lot more of them, out of each of its markets.

In this Talking TV conversation, Nagus explains his role and how he works with individual reporters to better focus their search for stories and better frame them once found. He shares how Scripps is working to execute that labor-intensive process at scale and what the company’s expectations are for a stronger product that puts the “new” back in TV news.

Michael Depp: How does a local TV station win with content? How does it make sure that it’s covering the right stories, asking the right questions, talking to the right people to truly address what’s important to the community?

And how, when you’re telling the story, do you make it new?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. These are questions confronted daily by my guest today, Chris Nagus. Chris is the senior director of storytelling and content strategy for the E.W. Scripps Co. He’s on the front lines of the company’s strategy to reaffirm its relevance in local markets, to break TV journalism’s worst habits and conventions and find its way towards a daily news product that will reconnect with audiences.

Coming up, a conversation with E.W. Scripps’ Chris Nagus about how he’s trying to reboot local TV news by going back to bedrock journalistic principles and more engaging ways of telling stories. We’ll be right back.

Welcome. Chris Nagus.

Chris Nagus: Michael, thank you. It’s great to be here today.

Good to see you, Chris. Your background entails over 20 years in this business and extensive experience as an investigative reporter. Your job title at Scripps is senior director of storytelling and content strategy. What does that mean and what do you do every day?

Yeah, it’s a really good question. You know, I’m the first person at the E.W. Scripps Co. to hold this title, to hold this position. I’ve been doing this job for approximately two years after what you just mentioned, a 20-plus-year television career in various markets, mainly in the Midwest. And it is my job to work with reporters across all of our markets, our smallest markets like Helena, Mon., to our biggest newsrooms, Detroit, Phoenix and Tampa. And I work with our reporters and our anchors to elevate the storytelling, to elevate the journalism.

Michael, you’ve been around this industry for a long time. And one of the things that we hear from our viewers is it oftentimes will scratch the surface of a story that we’re not digging deep enough. We’re not making that story relevant in the lives of our viewers, the communities we serve. So, it’s my job to work with those reporters, work with those anchors and turn them into the best possible storytellers they can be to better serve their communities. And in many cases, that includes the added depth, those investigative elements, those pieces that I’ve picked up along the way. And now I’m charged with trying to pass that knowledge along to the next generation of reporters.

You just mentioned you’ve actually been in this position for a couple of years, but there’s a new urgency to what you’re doing within Scripps. And now there are positions reporting up to you that aim to widen and deepen this effort, including a new position of executive reporter. How is that working?

We just hired our very first executive reporter in our Tallahassee, Fla., newsroom. His name is Channing Frampton. He was the main Monday through Friday evening anchor and now he’s working behind the scenes on the other side of the camera with the reporters in that newsroom to help them with their storytelling. And really, if I had to define that role in one sentence, it’s to make the journalism better, period. You know, and it’s a tough task. He’s working in a small market. Most of his reporters have under a year of experience. So, it’s really making sure that they’re going back to some of those basics — who, what, when, where, why of journalism and making sure that those questions are answered for the viewers in that market.

But it’s not just Tallahassee. This is a role that we are hiring across many of our newsrooms. In fact, we’re doing that right now in Fort Myers, Fla. We’re getting ready to do it in Waco, Texas. Omaha, Neb. You know, Green Bay, Wis. Lansing, Mich. I mean, just a few. And the hope here is to roll this out across most of our newsrooms, even in our middle and large markets. Even our seasoned reporters benefit from that additional conversation.

How do you make the storytelling, the journalism better? Look, none of us have all the answers to any one story or any one question. I’ve always found that I’m better with collaboration, and I find that most reporters are as well. And so that role is really there. You know, think about what an executive producer did for the shows, for the producers. That executive reporter role now applies to our newsrooms and the reporters will report to that individual who then reports up to the news director. But again, it’s about making the storytelling in those newsrooms better.

As you mentioned, a big part of your job is going to be going to stations all the way through the medium- and smaller-sized markets and working very closely with the reporters there, looking at how they’re structuring their day, finding their sources, finding new stories. Can you take a recent example of this and walk me through what that looks like in detail?

Absolutely. So, when I go into a station, the first thing I do is I meet with the reporters. Oftentimes, I’ll hold a group storytelling session. We will look at examples of best practices. We’ll take a look at other stories that are being done in markets that they might not be watching because I find that we often get tunnel vision. We work in our newsroom. We work in our market, and we look at what our competition is doing, but we’re not necessarily watching what’s happening in other cities. That’s step No. 1.

Step No. 2, I meet with those reporters one on one, and we will sit down and review their work. And I always say, please do not bring the greatest hits reel. Don’t bring the sweeps piece that you did three years ago. Bring me two or three stories that you did last week. And even if it’s a story that you’re not particularly proud of, let’s take a look at it. Let’s get that feedback, that conversation going, and talk about ways that we can improve the next time around. And sometimes this is getting out into the field. I call it, you know, a reporter field trip.

I was in Green Bay, Wis., recently and met one of our — we call it Neighborhood News in that market. I met our neighborhood news reporter that covers Door County, Wis., and I said, I’m going to drive out to her. It’s about an hour from the station in Green Bay and we’re going to show up at the courthouse. We’re going to show up at the sheriff’s office. We’re going to make introductions. We’re going to get to know the people that work in these buildings, these officials, and find out what kind of stories we might be missing. And during that example in Green Bay, I went with a reporter that’s been out of school for six or seven weeks at this point. We met the county clerk. We learned how to go through court filings. We looked up felony charges that had been filed that day and we were able to pull out relevant stories that were happening in the community that week.

I remember the feedback I got from the reporter, and she said, gosh, this is a place I just haven’t looked before. So, my job in a lot of ways is teaching people how to fish. I need them to be able to do it over and over and over again to make sure that we’re not missing those stories in those communities, because even small communities deserve good journalism. They deserve good television news. I mean, that’s what we’re trying to teach and what we’ve got hundreds of reporters.

Michael, I’m one person. You mentioned that I’m bringing somebody else on. Yes, I’ve hired another director of content in storytelling. She’s currently a photographer in our Cleveland newsroom. She brings that visual component of it, but she’s also a journalist that’s been in the business now for a number of years that can help these young reporters know where to look, how to tell better stories. So, together as a team, we’re going to try to elevate the journalism in person in as many newsrooms as we can.

In the case of the younger reporters, the newly minted J-school graduates, I assume, in most cases, is there any message you’d want to relay back to J-schools about something that they might do to better prepare those reporters as young reporters for the realities of the journalistic market right now and how they should be practicing? Are they not to be critical necessarily, but is there something maybe that they’re missing? Because, you know, they’d like to hear back from people actually in the field.

I’m so glad you asked this question. You know, I went to the University of Missouri, you know, journalism school 20 something years ago at this point in Columbia, Mo. And one of the things that helped me was obviously getting out in the field, right? You learn the daily deadline pressure, as you understand that that deadline comes every single day. But the one thing that I think journalism schools forget to teach or maybe they just don’t know to teach is curiosity, because I run into a lot of young reporters that get stuck. You know, they’re like, OK, I know what the story is. You handed it to me on a silver platter, but now how do I execute? What questions should I be asking? Who do I go talk to? Where do I get information to add depth?

I really think those exercises would help immensely when reporters get out into newsrooms, and they start doing this for real every single day. You know that again, deadline, you know all the pressures that the business brings. I think the journalism schools are pretty good at teaching that. But I think that one thing that is lacking with a lot of reporters that I see, they’re right out of college is, oh, my gosh, where do I even go for information? Who do I ask? And it’s hard to teach that sometimes until you have the life experience and you’ve been there, you’ve been in the field, you’ve done it. But anything we could do to teach that, to get people more curious about their communities.

One example I’ll bring up, you know, I get neighborhood reporters and I’ll always ask them, what’s the population of your neighborhood? And I get answers ranging from, oh, I don’t know, 5,000 people to five million. You’ve got to know that stuff. You’ve got to be curious about the place you live in, the community you serve. So that’s something I really love to drive home to young journalists that are getting out of college, getting ready to enter the workforce.

That kind of press release-driven journalism is really a trap that a lot of newsrooms fall into, isn’t it?

Right. I think that a lot of people think, look, I’ve been spoon fed some information here, but how do we go beyond that? We’ve got a reporter in our Nashville market who I think is fantastic at taking a press release and making it real news. Right. We all get the news releases. But how do we go beyond that and dig down into the information what’s really being said?

That’s the curiosity that I would love to see out of our young reporters. OK, the city of Nashville told me they’re putting in new LED lights, but what neighborhoods are getting them, and which neighborhoods are being left behind? Right. Like there are all these questions that we have around the original news release, and it’s making sure our reporters know how to ask those questions and where to go for that information.

The lament of so many reporters is often, if I only had the time. And it’s a completely understandable dilemma. I mean, most of them wake up every day. They have very rigorous quota of day turn stories that they need to render across multiple media. And that beast has to be fed incessantly. So, how does a reporter break out of that pattern?

One of the things that we’re doing is going to help reporters in that regard, and this is a wholesale change in the industry, at least at Scripps, taking place. You know, show me a reporter and I’ll show you a bunch of gratuitous live shots right where we’re out there holding up a building where something happened five hours ago. We are really trying to get away from that live-for-the-sake-of-live reporting. I can’t tell you how many times I was out in the field doing, you know, live shots at 4 or 5 and 6. And, gosh, when is there time to actually do the journalism and do the story? If we can take those live shots outside of breaking news, those live shots that are live for the sake of live off their plate, No. 1, that gives them time back in the day to not worry about doing that aspect, that performative part of the business, and instead work on the informative aspects of their job.

So, we’re trying to free up time in that regard. And you know, Michael, one thing that we’re also doing in a lot of our smaller markets writing back in beat days. That is a luxury that reporters for a long time have gone without in broadcast news. We are hiring. We are increasing the number of MJ and reporters in our small markets. In some cases, we had three or four. We’re ramping that number up to 12 and 13 in some of these markets.

So, what does that mean? It means every one of our reporters doesn’t have to be on the air every single day. That gives them time to cultivate a story, cultivate sources, go out in the field and do what I just mentioned in that Green Bay example. Spend an hour or two with the county clerk, bring them a box of donuts, make them your best friends. Old fashioned reporting that we didn’t have time for in the old model.

All of a sudden, we’re shifting back into let’s put some time not only into the investigative, the depth, all of that, but back into the reporter’s day so they can do better journalism. I think it makes perfect sense, right? I mean, when we look at what we’re going to get out of a journalist, well, the more time we give them, the better the story is likely going to be. I say to every one of our reporters, spend more than five or 10 minutes with the person you’re interviewing. Get to know them.

You and I have talked before and I said, gosh, Michael, if you and I spent an hour together or two hours together over lunch or a long meal, I’d learn all kinds of things about you. I want our reporters to be able to do the same. Time is their most valuable resource, and we’re trying to give them more of it.

Sure. And, of course, staffing up threefold in a small market would dramatically change any newsroom. There’s a question to be asked there about how you afford to pay for that, especially in a small market, but I suspect you are not the person to answer that question given the remit of what your job is. But affording to expand your staff is a question for another Scripps executive for a later date.

Yeah. One thing I’ll say about that, you know, the nice thing about adding reporters in these communities and think about this in a place where we only have three reporters, we’re covering the bare bones, the basics, 12 reporters, all of a sudden that gives us more opportunity. And we can be picky with those stories and make sure that we’re covering all of these communities, our urban centers and our rural surrounding communities more effectively.

But again, this is about increasing the content and giving our audience more access to the news that has, quite frankly, been missed in some of these markets in the past. We’re trying to change that or trying to change that model. And, you know, it is an investment in these reporters. We have increased salaries of our members because we want them to be able to make a home and live in a small market.

You know, the old model was start small market, go to the large before you could make, you know, a decent income or a decent living. We’re trying to change that because again, we understand these smaller communities. Small markets deserve good journalism, and we’ve got to have some seasoned folks covering the news in those places that have that experience, that depth of knowledge of that marketplace.

Now, there’s a second major element to what you’re doing. You started to anticipate a little bit about what I want to ask you next. That’s the construction of the news stories themselves. Tell me about how you’re trying to compel journalists at your stations to look at that process with fresh eyes.

I think that any of us that have watched enough local TV news over the years — and this is not something just in small or middle markets. We see it in large markets. I talk about that gravitational pull to the track, SOT, track, SOT, track, SOT storytelling approach. What I’m trying to do, not only myself, but with this person, Bridget from Cleveland, who I’ve just hired and subject matter experts that I tapped from our other stations, is to get out in the field and teach nontraditional interview framing.

I am a huge proponent of leaving the mic on our central compelling characters and just being a fly on the wall. Just observe part of their day. We’ve got a photojournalist in Nashville that’s fantastic at this, so put the mic on them. She won’t even do a traditional interview and she’ll get a heck of a story just by listening to that. What that person’s saying and watching them engage with their environment.

I’m trying to teach that approach with so many of our reporters to get away from those. You know, I don’t want to [do] staged looking interviews, but it’s where we set up two chairs in the corner of a living room. We’ve got a blank wall behind them. Let’s get these people out there. Let’s get them engaged in what they’re doing.

Or the walk and talk. That’s pretty awful to behold.

Yeah. I just want to see people engaged with what they’re doing. And I want to break up that traditional-looking television story that we’ve become accustomed to seeing. And that takes a lot of different a lot of different forms. We’ve got a lot of creative reporters. And I think about the material. I’ve got triplet boys that are going to turn 13-years-old. And I think about the content they consume and the way they swipe through videos and what catches their attention.

I’m not saying that we’re trying to design, you know, television stories for 13-year-olds. But what I am trying to do is figure out a way to captivate our audience and make sure they’re engaged, because if they’re not engaged with us, they’re not watching, and we lose those viewers. Audience erosion is real. We know people have choices, so we’ve got to bring them back. And that means getting away from some of that old, stodgy-looking news coverage that we’ve been accustomed to over the years and figuring out a way to make it visual, making sure that that story pitch is relevant. Making sure that we have depth.

I want people to see our product and understand that it is a Scripps station. It’s a Scripps brand. I think we live in a world where people look at local news as the same. So, we’re trying to differentiate the product, and we’re doing that by getting into these newsrooms, having these conversations, giving that feedback and continuously trying to raise the bar with the reporters.

You’ve described how you went to the county courthouse or the clerk of court and made acquaintances and tried to broaden the sources there. Putting the stories together, will you sit with someone editing something? Will that be part of it where you kind of talk to them when they’re there and they’re shooting the story? Make some suggestions about where to put the camera when you actually go out in the field and work on some of those pieces with journalists?

The answer to those questions: Yes, yes and yes. Yes, I will go out in the field with reporters. I will suggest shots. Now, do I do it with every single reporter? No, because when I’m in market for a couple of days and I’m working with nine or 10 reporters, time doesn’t allow me to be out in the field three or four hours with every single one of them. But yes, I have done that. I will do that.

The director of content and storytelling that I’m bringing on board here, she will absolutely do that. Her job will be very tactical and very hands on. She will be out there showing them better shot selection, how to frame an interview, how to edit. She is well versed on all editing systems. So, if it requires that level, if we go into a Tallahassee and we’ve got a reporter that’s struggling with editing, let us sit down and show you how to do it. So, yes, that tactical hands-on approach is absolutely going to be applicable with some of our reporters.

Scripps stations share content daily with Scripps News, the company’s national network. Is this effort benefiting that network by improving the pipeline of local stories that have potentially national currency? Is framing stories to a broader audience part of what you’re trying to do when you’re working with these stations?

Absolutely. Listen, you know, Scripps News and the locals really need to work in tandem to provide the best content to our viewers on our various platforms by having more than 40 local markets. Think about that. We have 40 bureaus. You know, think about the way network news is set up. We have reporters. We have newsrooms in 40 mid-size, major, small markets all across the country. We have a diverse geography, whether it’s urban versus rural Southwest, Southeast, Northeast. We’ve got stations all over the place. So, just by the size of our stations and our group, that’s going to help us with both platforms.

But, you know, yes, absolutely. My hope is that if we take stories at the local level from the network, I want to see them take stories from the locals and apply those to the network as well. Think about it: All national news is someone’s local news, right? All of it comes from somewhere. And if it’s a compelling story that has broader reach beyond Tulsa and it’s worth sharing on the network side, absolutely.

Well, it’s just a matter of the framing and the storytelling, really.

Exactly. You know, a story about, you know, a tax levy or an increase in South Tulsa is probably not interesting nationwide. But if we’ve got a positive story that we’re highlighting about somebody doing something good in that community and that character is relatable, why wouldn’t we share that across our platforms?

Sure. This is a very big undertaking, trying to effect systemic change to the fabric of a newscast and the efforts of a newsroom. So, how do you follow up with newsrooms and how do you keep this process going, keep spinning the plates and keep the connections charged after your visits?

I try to be present. I don’t want them to forget about me. I want to be that voice in the back of their head that’s like, OK, Chris told me that this might work if I do it this way. One of the things that I do is I send out an email that goes across our company every Friday. In fact, I just send it out about an hour ago. I call it “Winds of the Week,” and I highlight three really good stories across our company. I’ll pick one generally from a small market, a middle and a large. And my hope is that our news directors and our general managers share those wins with all of our newsrooms. That’s got my signature on it. And as a result of that, every week, I get reporters that are submitting their nominations to me saying, Chris, I saw your email. Here’s what I did this week. So, they’re all working to raise the bar together. They want to be featured in that email because their work then gets seen across the company by all of our corporate executives, a lot of people internally within the company.

When I actually visit a station, my follow up is pretty simple. I’ll work with eight or nine reporters over the course of a couple of days. Before I walk out of that newsroom, I put those reporters on my Outlook calendar, and I send them a Zoom invite. I said, I’ll be seeing you again in three weeks. And you and I are going to work. I’ll be virtual. You’ll be back here in your newsroom and you’re going to share two or three stories that you’ve done since my visit. And let’s see if you’re applying what I’ve told you. Let’s see if it’s showing up in the product.

Of course, the news directors follow up with me, the general managers, the executive reporters. They’re going to be following up with me. But again, it’s making sure that we keep this going, because my biggest fear is that, you know, I walk in, and things change for a couple of days and a reporter takes all of that. They’re excited, they’re motivated, and then we fall off, right? We revert back to what we were doing. And that does happen. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it doesn’t, of course it does, but it’s trying to be present as much as I can be in the lives of those reporters and letting them know that, you know, they can reach out to me. Yes, I work for the corporate office, but I was a reporter for 23 years. I know what it’s like to be challenged in the field. I know what it’s like when a story doesn’t go your way.

I’m always available to them to talk things through. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a reporter in Milwaukee call me, and he was about to door knock an individual that he was a little bit apprehensive about door knocking. And he’s sitting outside of his house. He calls my cellphone, and we walk through it. We talked about all the scenarios. Here’s how you can approach that. Knock on the door, walk off the back porch, stay safe. I mean, all of those things that I try to offer to them, but I want to be that resource as often as I can for our reporters. I’m on the phone and I’m on Zoom a lot.

Well, Chris Nagus, what an interesting and challenging job you have in front of you. Thanks so much for coming here to talk with me about it today. I appreciate it.

Michael, I really appreciate your interest and again, I look forward to following up with you as well in the future.

Thanks. You can catch all of our past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We also have an audio version of the podcast available most places that you get your podcast. We are back most Fridays with the new episode. Thanks for watching this one, see you next time.

The post Talking TV: How Scripps Is Helping Reporters Be Better Storytellers appeared first on TV News Check.

Brian Morris, chief information security officer (CISO) for Gray Television, says top leadership needs to be completely invested in propagating a culture of cybersecurity across the company. But he hastens to add that awareness and understanding need to be bidirectional between the CEO’s and CISO’s offices for that investment to truly take root.

In this week’s Talking TV conversation, Morris shares tips for building a culture of cybersecurity amid more frequent and clever attacks. He says the nearing of an election year should make vigilance all the more urgent. And he says reenforcing the positive in cybersecurity, rather than making it a punitive cudgel, makes all the difference.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The threat of cyberattack remains one of the most serious facing broadcasters today. The problem is that arming themselves against such attacks is a fast-moving issue requiring constant adjustments in strategy. So, what do broadcasters need to be doing today and every day to be ready?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Brian Morris, chief information security officer, or CISO, for Gray television. We’ll be talking about how to build a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcast company and critically, how the CEO needs to be a critical instrument in establishing and maintaining that culture. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Brian Morris, to Talking TV.

Brian Morris: Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.

Good to see you, Brian. How grave is the threat of cyberattack that broadcasters face each day?

Well, it’s grave, and I’m sure that’s not a surprise to anyone. I think one of the things that we have to get used to is that it’s not a single threat. You don’t fix it and walk away. It’s constantly changing, constantly evolving, constantly something that we have to adjust ourselves to be able to relate to and to be able to protect ourselves against.

Now, I mentioned at the top cybersecurity is a moving target, which you’re speaking to right now. Can you explain why that is and how a broadcaster needs to be continuously adapting to threats?

Well, I think it relates to as threat actors get better at their job, we get better at our job. Not only us, but cybersecurity vendors do. It was just a few years ago, pretty much everything was malware based. If you had good endpoint protection, if you had EDR, you could knock out 90% of the threat.

Well, now today that’s changed. It’s fileless, it’s non-malware based. Today the credential is the golden tool for getting in. A compromised credential is how a threat actor gets in the phishing campaign.

A few years, those were mass volume coming out. Nowadays, it’s a spear phishing campaign. Spear phishing, smishing phishing, all designed to reach instead of a mass group, the individual target. The threats are more personal to the end user, therefore they’re more effective.

Let me roll back here. Is a spear phishing is targeting an individual person, not just sort of phishing across the whole company?

Exactly.

1. What is motivating these threat actors primarily? Is it money or are they just trying to ransom or is it something else?

It depends on whether you’re talking about cybercriminals. In many cases, those are monetary driven. That’s the ransomware. But then when you get into state actors, it changes a little bit. You know, North Korea is focused on ransomware. China is focused on information. Russia, they’re just disruptive right now. So, it depends on where it’s coming from as to where the target is within a company.

Are the state actors targeting media more than other categories of business or corporation?

I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re immune to that. I’m actually surprised that we don’t see more of it from a media standpoint. Of course, with election year coming, that’s going to increase, I believe, the ones that you see a lot. Health care, government and such are the big ones that are getting hit. But I think we are seeing a rise in it, and we will continue to.

Is AI making the threat of attack any worse right now?

Somewhat. I don’t think it’s quite the boogeyman everybody points it out to be, yet. It’s done some things to make threat actors a little bit easier. Some of it’s been documented. Well, helping to generate better code is one. Another one is just the general phishing campaign. There is a language barrier for overseas phishing. And a lot of times you can spot phishing emails just because the grammar and spelling is poor. With generative AI, you can put it in English and get it in something that looks a little bit better. And so, that is a threat. But then again, on the other side to that, it’s not just the threat actors that have AI, we also have it on our side and security companies stuff are using that to help identify these threats and help remediate.

And so, when you talk about on the two sides here, is it sort of just always leveling up like increment by increment? The threat actors are on a par with the level of the defenses that you bring to bear. Does anybody ever get the edge there?

Well, I think the threat actors always have the advantage because they always think of the next thing and then we have to follow up and figure out how to block it. We’re never sitting here thinking, OK, what can they do next? Let’s come up with something. So, we’re always a bit on the defensive. But, you know, that’s the nature of the beast.

Those damned threat actors. So, protection is largely about employee training, isn’t it? A big part of it?

It’s becoming more and more about that. It’s less the fact that you can put a tool in place and color it covered. Not to say that has any less importance that’s still there. It needs it. But the employee you know, employees, are your biggest threat. They’re your biggest area. That’s not really a valid statement. Employees in concert with a good security program are some of our best protection. Employees can notice things long before the security department notices.

I know in our phishing emails, a lot of times the ones that get through our email security are caught by, I can almost put in a handful of employees that’s going to tell me right away, Hey, Brian, this doesn’t smell right. Take a look at this. And so, they’re very helpful in covering that.

How does the training come in to building an overall culture of cybersecurity? Does it need to be a constant, recurring thing? Is it something that you do in in regular intervals?

It is. And there’s been security awareness campaigns, you know, monthly trainings or something like that, and then simulated phishing campaigns and such going out. But that’s evolving, too, nowadays. We have to develop a security culture within our business. It has to be more than sending out a training video and assuming that people are going to have that and they’re going to they’re going to follow it. People are in a hurry. They do their job. And unless the response to, say, a phishing email is automatic, there’s a good chance they’re going to click on it. So, we have to build a culture that that means security is just part of the way of life for us.

Are you still testing people, though, that, you know, you could put out false phishing or spear phishing attempts to test individuals, and if they fail the test, you kind of pull them in for more direct training?

Well, we are doing simulated phishing, but my view on that is a little bit different. I think simulated phishing for the most part is not to tell us if the employees are doing their job, but to tell us if we’re doing our job. Are we building the culture where people are looking for this? Are we building a culture where they’re on our side, where they see themselves as a part of the overall security landscape and they want to do it rather than trying to catch somebody doing something wrong and then clobber them for it?

What are some of the other best practice facets of building up a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcaster?

Well, I think one of the first things we need to do is to make security a positive thing, not a negative thing. I always joke that I’m the “Office of No,” and to a certain extent that that tends to be true. But we need to make it something that people embrace. We need to develop champions within each department. As I said, I have I have certain people out amongst our stations. If they see something wrong, they’re going to hit me up right away and let me know.

We need more people like that, and we need to encourage that rating to reward that. We need to make sure that we brag on those people and let them know training needs to be fun, less tedious than what it is. And there are vendors out there that are working hard at making training something that people look forward to rather than something that people dread.

The other thing we need to do is we need to be better at communicating. We need to get out and let people know, hey, this is what we’re seeing. This is what you need to look out for. Not scary, but just informative to get people involved in it.

Now, getting C-suite buy in is absolutely critical to all of this. Why?

It is because cybersecurity is no longer an isolated department that covers one little area. You’re not just covering email and endpoint; it becomes a broader spectrum. You’re talking about an enterprise risk, you’re talking about governance, you’re talking about compliance.

And now with some of the regulations that are forthcoming for publicly held companies, recommendations to CSA from the White House and such and the FCC. Now we’re having to become more formalized in what we do, our documentation, our vendor reviews.

And that means we need to be able to justify what we’re doing to the C-suite and then up to the board. And so, getting C-suite involvement, the CEO involved in that and supporting it is critical to being able to go out and reach all areas of the enterprise and not just select employees or select departments.

What does responsible CEO behavior look like in this context? What’s the onus on the CEO in both a more macrocosmic and a daily sense?

I think the first thing we need to expect from a CEO is to support the security program, support the CISO, and let it be known that the CISO is an important part of the business and that the influence needs to go across the entire company.

But it’s also on the CISO to understand the business from the CEO side. You know, we sit here, and we say, Well, here’s a tool to do this. Here’s a tool to do this, here’s a tool to do that. We need to be able to look at it from the CEO side and say: Why is that important to the CEO as it is to us? So, we need to become more savvy that direction.

Well, fascinating stuff, Brian. I know that we will be getting into a lot of these issues at TVNewsCheck’s Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat at the NAB New York show this October, which you’ve been involved in. This is a convocation of CISOs and other security executives, all done off the record with no media coverage. And the conference sessions are interspersed with private information exchanges in which people like me aren’t even allowed in the room. So, if you’re interested in this event for you or your company, there are links in the story attached to this podcast with information where you can get more information on tickets and details of the event. Brian, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can always watch our extensive back catalog of episodes on TVNewsCheck.com or on our YouTube channel, as well as on most places where you get your audio podcast. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Building A Cybersecurity Culture For Broadcasters appeared first on TV News Check.

Deji LaRay’s show rewires the half-hour show format, and David Hudson could see that from its earliest iterations on the page and in a nascent, self-produced pilot.

Hudson, head of original programming for Scripps Networks, sees Johnson as exactly the kind of show that will elevate diginets from repositories of library content to vessels of compelling, original programming blocks as well. The trick is having an eye for the right emerging talent, the right angle for a docuseries, the right synergies across Scripps-owned networks.

In this Talking TV conversation, Hudson shares the qualities he’s looking for in a potential hit, his vision for Bounce and the other Scripps diginets and what a show needs to be competitive with deep-pocketed streaming shows.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Johnson is a show now in its third season on Scripps’ Bounce Network. It focuses on four lifelong friends in Atlanta who all share the same last name and have come to a point in their decades-long friendship where they are moving in very different directions, pulling on the ties that bind them.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with David Hudson, head of original programing for Scripps Networks and the man who greenlit the highly popular Johnson as well as Act Your Age, another strong performer for Bounce right out of the gate that we featured in an earlier version of this podcast. We’ll talk about what he saw in both shows initially on the page, what he sees as the essential elements of a potential hit and what scripted linear TV needs to do to stay competitive with the streamers. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, David Hudson.

David Hudson: Thank you, Michael.

David, what’s different about Johnson than anything else we might see in scripted television today?

Well, Johnson, since its inception, was designed to show real life issues that Black men face in an authentic manner, really providing an opportunity to shine a light on the positive aspects of our community and culture while still delivering entertaining and relevant storylines, capturing Black men as they really are and not those trope-y characters or characteristics and stereotypical storylines that we’ve seen Black men and women portrayed in in the past.

We really strive to be authentic, and Deji LaRay has really delivered on his promise. I want to congratulate you. I thought your interview with Alyson Fouse with respect to Act Your Age was really, really exceptional. You know, both shows are really trying to portray Black and female characters as they are and we’re really trying to move away again from, you know, stereotypical roles that we typically see on television.

Can you walk me through how the pitch first came to you and what you saw in it in its initial iteration?

I met with Eric Rome, Cedric the Entertainer, Deji LaRay and Thomas Q. Johnson. We met on, I think it was the middle of the afternoon, in Los Angeles. I’d heard about this idea. I had seen what one could say is a pilot, but I think it was more of a sizzle reel. And I’d heard about the conceit as it had been floating around for a couple of years. After spending a good hour and a half with them, I saw the vision and I saw what they were after. It evoked confidence in me that with a few tweaks and some direction, that these guys really had something. And it was you know, it was memorable, that meeting.

Was there something about the creator and star Deji LaRay himself that was unique, that stood out or something? You mentioned the authenticity factor.

Yeah, yeah.

Something in the scripts that right away struck you as capturing that authenticity?

Yeah. As I mentioned, I saw a sizzle reel, which was the beginnings of the pilot. And, you know, there were just there were some missteps that I think were easily overcome. But again, that authenticity and that sort of true nature of who Deji was and the story that he was trying to tell and really the sort of earnest approach he took in the portrayal of Black men in our culture, that’s what grabbed me. And I could see that, you know, this is a guy with a lot of ideas and really just needed an opportunity with some guidance that the potential was great. It was it was very obvious to me, at least.

The show does intersect with loads of issues, but issues can be kind of problematic dramatically, right? Your characters have to be compelling. They have to feel they have a texture to them. And if they become sort of manifestations of an issue that can be very, very tedious television, potentially.

We’re all dealing with streaming platforms, non-ad driven programing. And there is magic in really trying to create storylines and tell stories with commercial breaks and act breaks. And that used to be the standard. Now it’s not. I think, you know, on some level we’re at a disadvantage and so you know, approaching things, you have to be very thoughtful. You have to be reminded that a good portion of your audience spends a good amount of their time watching non-ad driven programing.

So yeah, every bit that you’re doing in every act, there’s a formula. You’ve got to stick to it. And as you said, you know, you have to have interesting characters who can deliver, you know, on storylines and themes in a manner that keeps the audience there and focused and engaged.

And I just want to make the observation: It’s a very different looking show for half an hour show. You know, it’s shot in Atlanta. It’s got that lighting, has a certain kind of a cinematic kind of quality to it. It does not look like the kind of thing that you would …

Typically see in a broadcast television show? That’s exactly right. And that was by design. It’s a single camera shoot. And we referred to it as a dramedy because it’s a mixture of drama and comedy. We love our DP. We think he’s really excellent. Everything matters. Again, I think we would like that filmic look and feel. And again, you know, to be competitive in this day and age, you’ve got to deliver that kind of sort of next-level visual style again, because the competition is fierce. And so, all aspects of your production have to be, again, at that next level.

What does Johnson mean for Bounce as a network? What does it signify or carry in terms of Bounce’s ambitions?

I think Bounce and Act Your Age, all of our programing, we’re striving again to bring forward this authenticity, that relevance with respect to portrayal of in this case, you know Black men and Black women.

We also engage, you know, in certain generational aspects where, you know, we’re trying to, again, portray authenticity and move away from what we perceive as sort of trope-y, stereotypical storylines and characters and really give an opportunity for the viewer to see people as they really are. And that in itself is a big move.

You know, I think we’ve been pretty successful with it. We’re sticking to this plan of doing elevated programing and delving into a subject matter that’s important, that’s relevant, that is thought provoking, that pushes people to watch our programing as a family unit, to have discussion, post viewing, sort of, you know, a little bit of a throwback to what, you know, my experience was growing up watching television.

And speaking of that kind of post discussion, it seems there’s now a web series called The Kickback that has sprung from the show where the main cast members are talking through some of the issues that Johnson raises. How did that come about?

That conceit came about even in the first season because, you know, you’re limited in 22 minutes and we’re throwing out big, hot topics that we want to discuss. And so, the guys were up for it, and we had a conversation. We said, look, let’s utilize technology and the new formats that are presented for us. There was a willingness there. We wanted to have after discussion, I mean, we found that, you know, after taping and after read throughs. And we were looking at all sorts of angles and we had different opinions, you know, coming from cast members and crew members and there was discussion. And so, we said, well, why don’t we create a format to really explore this? And so that that’s how it came about.

What do you know demographically about who is tuning into Johnson? I mean, the show has so many male characters, you see nary a female character in the episodes I’ve seen anyway, definitely skews to a male perspective. That’s what the show is about. Is it an overwhelmingly large male audience? Do you have any women tuning in to this?

Typically, as television is, it’s dominated by the female viewer. That said, you’re correct. You know, we slant towards a male perspective. But I think, you know, there’s a little bit of a ploy here in that we believe that women are interested in understanding men. And so that’s our approach.

The show still skews female this season. We’ve gotten some preliminary numbers. We’re seeing a little bit more interest coming from middle-aged men. But typically, you know, with all of our programing, we still skew female. Ages range. It’s generally a 40-plus crowd, although we’ve started to venture into an audience that’s a little bit younger, especially through our streaming platform and Bounce XL, where we air the show as well. It’s definitely an opportunity to see a male perspective.

And, you know, in season one and two, there is female presence. I mean, obviously, you know, the men are engaged in relationships both personally and professionally, where they’re dealing with cast members who are female, and the storylines incorporate those females. One of the characters is probably down the path of divorce. One is struggling in the relationship. One is trying to find a relationship. So, they play heavy parts, you know, females play heavy parts in the storylines.

In what I saw they were discussed a lot. I just didn’t see them.

Yeah. Right.

Now, Johnson is about as different as it gets from Act Your Age, the new comedy you mentioned earlier that just wrapped up its first season on Bounce. It follows another group of old friends in their 50s tapping a kind of Golden Girls vein a little bit. Now that show is a much more traditional three-camera comedy, much more old school in pacing. What did you see working in in that show, again, back in the earliest days, when it was still on the page? I know Bounce wanted a show and then tapped the show runner, Alyson Fouse but you know, they’re very different. How do you reconcile?

You know, the idea, when we first shared it with Alyson Fouse, I mean, look, she’s a comedy genius, a fantastic writer. This is about chemistry. And so, you know, we could have gone down the path of a single camera like we did with Johnson, but we just thought it’d be advantageous, given the construct of the show and the talent, the level of talent that we had, that it deserved a multi-camera setting. It was poised to be comedy.

And so, you know, exposition of comedy, I think, is easier done in a multi-camera situation. We had a fairly lengthy debate about doing this show in front of a live audience or not. Much of that was determined by the situation with COVID at the time. I’m not sure that there’s reconciling, per se. It’s just a choice that it felt like it was a better fit in the multicamera situation given the characters, given the writing and just the setup of the show.

We tend to think about diginets, you know — which is a term most consumers would never even know or have heard of consciously at least — we think of diginets as vessels, you know typically for older library content. Obviously, Bounce is moving away from that. How much more original content are you hoping to produce? What do you see as the ideal percentage of original versus library?

Ideally, I would like to be in the upper single digits to low double digits with respect to our acquired programing. You know, from the get-go, I’ve talked about having a block for one night, again reverting back to that sort of must-see-TV set up and owning a night and being able to expand. I mean, given the current situation with the strike, I’m looking at some unscripted programing as well. But I love the idea of original programing leading into other original programing. I like the idea of block. And so that’s where we’re headed.

We’ve made some advancements, as you know, in our interest with sporting events. Ion, one of the sister stations, now carries WNBA on Friday nights. I think you’re likely to see some more sporting events coming in the future. What networks that appears on I’m not entirely sure yet, but. And maybe there’ll be derivative programing coming out of that.

Are you using those sports opportunities, WNBA notably, to heavily promote these original shows?

Absolutely.

How has that been as a driver?

It’s been great. You know, actually, we just went through this process with the National Spelling Bee, where we engaged with the WNBA, inclusive of former national champion Zaila Avant-Garde, who’s an aspiring pro basketball player who, you know, holds several Guinness Book of World Records for dribbling and is a top prospect for the WNBA. So, we created some opportunities for her to engage with WNBA stars.

That sort of cross-promotional event was very helpful, and we’ll continue to do that. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know, the future of some of our original programing delves into, you know, the WNBA. We’re open to any and everything.

Where else are you finding [audiences]? I mean, I guess serendipity is part of it. You’re just flipping through linear channels when people might come on some of these original shows. But what have been the other important drivers? What other of promotion? You know, you have streaming as well. So, these shows are available on a VOD context there. But how are you finding an audience?

Well, I think that for broadcast networks a huge component for this is social media. And in the case of, you know, both Johnson and the cast of AYA, they have been just amazing in pushing out and sort of creating this sort of watercooler talk around the show. You know, our PR team did an amazing job in terms of getting cast members out in front of press.

I mean, you know, it was top shelf when we went into the premiere of AYA, for example, and our cast members were making appearances on The Today Show, Colbert, etc. It’s word of mouth. Can we put this out in as many different places as possible. But at the end of the day, and I would say this specifically about Black culture, a lot of it’s around word of mouth.

Well, we’re talking a lot about Bounce here, but as I said at the top, you’re the head of original programing for all of Scripps Networks. What can you tell me about what else is in your development pipeline for some of those other networks? What are you working on?

We’re working on true crime with respect to Court TV. We’ve had a very successful couple of seasons with a show with Tamron Hall. We’re looking to further develop that show and get into some other ideas around true crime. Always interested in looking at doing original procedural series for Ion. As I said before, we have expanded our coverage of the National Spelling Bee this year and we went from just airing semifinals and finals to doing coverage of preliminaries and quarter-final rounds for the National Spelling Bee. I think you’ll see we’ll try to expand. Always looking to see if we can’t really cover the Bee, which is not just a week per se, but it’s an event that starts in September and the beginning of the school year.

I feel like there’s a docuseries in there.

Yeah, exactly, that’s exactly right

If you do it, it started with me. I just said it.

OK, you can…

I’ll help you develop it.

We did a prelim special called Road to the Bee last year in advance of the competition. But you’re absolutely right. There’s something more there. And so, we’re looking, and I think there are other areas around young adults and competition that we’re particularly keen on.

You know, we have in the past sort of moved away from doing television movies. We’ve done some very some really good television movies in the past. We’ve also done some Christmas-themed movies. I think you’ll see also we’ll unveil maybe some more special events and award shows over the course of the next couple of years. And again, I’m always keeping an eye on how we develop our sports-themed programing and what kind of programing we can create out of that.

Networks such as those you’re programing for have to hold their own against a very crowded field of streaming services that are all very anxious about their own survival, engaged in a thermonuclear war with each other, let alone linear TV. So, as you hear a lot of pitches, I’m sure all the time from people who are looking to get their shows picked up, what are you always looking for and listening for that you can hear has the competitive edge to it, has the right finger on the zeitgeist right now?

I think you’ve captured it well. What’s out there that feels provocative, interesting? Doesn’t feel like retread. Always looking for that. Character driven. I think too, on the business side, we are hugely interested in co-productions. Within the United States, we don’t have ties to international distribution. At some point, I think we’ll be there. But for now, we’re not.

So. I’ve done another number of projects in Canada. I think there’s opportunity to share that programing. I also look at programing that that, you know, can air on multiple networks. Just structurally, it’s you know, you’ve got a dozen networks to work with. And so why not build things that can that are applicable for more than just one network? From a business standpoint, it just seems obvious to me.

But yeah, you’re trying to provide an opportunity also for emerging talent. That’s something we always keep in mind. You know, you have to be aggressive. And you’re right. It’s highly competitive. But we’re making programing that’s distinct and, I think, appropriate for our audience.

Well, Johnson is certainly very distinct. I think from the moment anybody sees it from the first frame, it looks different. It’s a very unique show. David Hudson, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much, Michael.

The third season of Johnson returned in August. It runs Saturday nights at 80 p.m. Eastern, and you can also watch it on demand on Brown Sugar, which is Bounce’s streaming service. We are back with a new Talking TV most Fridays, you can catch all of our past episodes at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. Thank you for watching this one and see you next time.

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Pia Blumenthal works with C2PA as co-chair of its UX Task Force, which she does alongside her day job also fighting disinformation as design manager for the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe. In this Talking TV conversation, she explains the work she’s doing in each capacity.

It’s work with which every newsroom needs to become acquainted as opportunities for their own news products to be manipulated proliferate. Content authentication will likely become an essential tool to help retain trust, which is already heavily eroding in an age rife with disinformation and misinformation.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The Coalition for Content, Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA, was formed to tackle the prevalence of misleading information online by developing technical standards for certifying the source and history, or provenance, of media content. Essentially, C2PA is building tools to ensure that content is actually coming from where it purports to come from.

This coalition, which is comprised of Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, BBC, Sony and others, has its work cut out for it given the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation and the ever-growing sophistication of the tools used to propagate it.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Pia Blumenthal, design manager for CAI at Adobe, where she leads design for Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. She’s also co-chair of the C2PA UX Task Force. We’ll be catching up to the very latest on where this provenance authentication is progressing and how it is adapting to developments in AI. It’s an essential conversation for every newsroom concerned with the authenticity of the content it receives and disseminates, which is to say every newsroom. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Pia Blumenthal.

Pia Blumenthal: Hi Michael. Thank you so much for having me today.

Thanks for being here. Pia, first, for the uninitiated, can you frame up the nature of the work that you do at C2PA? It’s not a droid. It’s an awkward acronym. It sounds a little bit like a Star Wars droid, but if you can frame up the work you do there and at Adobe and where this intersects with news content.

Of course. Well, actually, let me invert that order. So, the Content Authenticity Initiative is an Adobe-led initiative. We’re a community of, at this point, about 1,500 members, including media and tech companies, NGOs, academics, others working to promote the adoption of an open industry standard for content, authenticity and data transparency. So, the C2PA, on the other hand, the Coalition for Content Provenance Inauthenticity, is a collaboration between CAI and another previously existing entity, Project Origin, led by Microsoft and BBC. And so, these two projects merged to form what is the technical standards body driving best practices and the design of how we implement provenance across all media and content types or really any type of implementation from a publisher to social platforms handling a variety of concerns, especially today, AI being one of those concerns and how we might make content more transparent.

To your knowledge, are newsrooms sufficiently aware of what C2PA is and what this work is all about?

We do have a number of both wire services and news media publishers who are investing in CAI. We hope that they soon begin their own implementations of the C2PA standard and to assist with that. The CAI has developed a suite of open-source tools built on the C2PA aspect that really, again, anyone but especially publishers of these media can begin to integrate into their systems, to help their consumers — and really beyond just their platforms — understand where the content is coming from, who’s responsible, what may have happened to it along the way.

And as I understand it, there’s been a little bit of a road show going on the last year or so to kind of proselytize this, get the word out in media circles.

Yes, that’s certainly true. Our mission began to address myths and disinformation concerns, which, of course, are being accelerated with all of the new generative AI technology that we’re seeing today. But even several years ago, which is roughly 2019, when I was first introduced by Adobe, we saw what happened with the Nancy Pelosi cheapfake. It was a simple edit to slow the speed of a clip of Nancy speaking to make her look like she was slurring her words. That’s something that we call a cheapfake. And so, of course, those concerns are accelerated now. And it’s very hard to actually detect whether or not it’s something is actually a source of truth.

So, do you call it a cheapfake because it was sort of simply done and it wasn’t very sophisticated and easy to spot?

Correct. Exactly. You know, we don’t need a ton of sophisticated technology to still intentionally mislead people.

Right. OK. So, tell me about the progress that you are making, generally speaking, in terms of being able to authenticate more types of content, of media content, now.

Of course. So, I would say largely implementations have started with images, photos or images created in software like Adobe Photoshop. We are working towards, at least on this C2PA UX best practices side, implementations around video, provenance, audio. Soon documents like PDFs. We try to outline again how people need to interact with different media types in a variety of scenarios

So, the best practices have to really be super flexible to handle any type of content, content theme, a place where it could be surfaced, and more importantly, the types of information that could be unique to that content. So, anything from identity associated with the creators or editors to the types of edits that might have happened, the ingredients that were used to create those pieces of content, and then we attach that to the content itself. So, it follows it wherever else it may go, and then over time builds this rich trail of provenance information that someone can look back to and hopefully find the origin points.

Where does it follow it exactly? Is it sort of a metatag string, or how does it manifest inside of this piece of content?

What we do is we take all of this metadata, some of which already exists, and as much as possible, the C2PA relies on existing metadata frameworks like schema or exist for cameras or IPC, of course for photography, and we package that into the content itself. I think the biggest differentiator for us between other types of metadata is that we apply a level of verification through a digital signature.

And so that really means that there’s a responsible entity, the signer who says that this is the state of this data at the time that it was exported or saved or created, and then that data either lives within the content itself or is referenced on an external remote cloud so that if the data is ever stripped, there is actually a record that can be repaired through something that we call soft binding or digital content fingerprinting.

So, we basically look at that content and say this is actually what it matches on the cloud itself. And therefore, if that data is stripped off, we can refer back to it through the cloud.

How does the content originator make that digital signature? Is that something that’s embedded in the Adobe program, for instance, on which it’s being edited?

This could go a little bit beyond my expertise as a designer. Our signature model, our trust model, is based on the existing one that you might see across the internet. How do you know a website that you go to is trustworthy? You look for that little browser lock, right? There’s an SSL trust certificate that a series of different entities disseminate and also look forward to respect in the absence of that trusted certificate. It signals to you as the viewer that, you know, you might not want to look at this or you proceed with caution.

And so that’s essentially how our trust model works. Adobe is in and of itself a trusted entity that’s issuing signatures for applications like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, where we have a beta experience being developed and any of the other upcoming soon-to-release features. Adobe in this case is the signer. Photoshop would be the machine validator of any sort of edits that someone might take on a piece of content and then kind of going down at the trust signal list. We also have anything that a person can manually enter about their content. That’s where identity comes into play.

But in order to support your identity claim, we, at least within the Adobe ecosystem, have created a series of connected accounts. Social media or Web3 accounts that someone can head off into and then include in their content credentials to help give them that social proof. Kind of in the absence of having a verified identity service, which is something that we are collectively working towards.

So, this will serve as a good proxy until you can get that retinal scan?

Hopefully it’s not to that level as certainly that would be off-putting for many. But there are countries in the E.U. that already support verified identity. We’re looking at those as models, even states within the United States that are moving towards a more digitally secure identity service.

AI and its ability to generate images and videos is complicating this whole process, it would seem. Can you describe how?

Well, AI has reached a level of adoption and sophistication where it’s in the hands of many. And there isn’t much regulation around the world, although there’s certainly an increased effort in the EU and one trending in the United States. And so, at scale, there’s a huge concern that as the technology just continues to get better and better, it’s harder and harder to detect. That’s the biggest concern right now. And so, we offer a proactive way for people to claim attribution and transparency about how something was made. And we think that this is going to be a really powerful way for consumers of content all around the world to be able to look for that provenance data and then make more informed trust decisions about that content.

Maybe this is a little too sci-fi a question, but is it getting closer to the place where it could outsmart you on the user authentication front, that it could generate these triangular kind of identities that you verify and make you think it’s an actual person?

I think we are moving in that direction as these tools get better, the detection mechanisms need to also keep up, and it’s going to outpace that effort, I mean, fewer and fewer detection processes. You may be able to catch this type of content at scale.

Are you building tools that can delineate content that has been built by AI specifically?

Well, in the case of Adobe, where we have our own generative AI platform called Firefly, we have built content credentials directly into the core experience. So, Adobe is tackling this in a number of different ways from sourcing the content for training ethically using Adobe Stock material and open licensable imagery to, of course, including something that we’re calling an AI disclosure and that’s within the content credential itself. Every Adobe Firefly image comes with a content credential that says this was made with an AI tool.

Is this more difficult when some of the content has been created with AI but not all of it?

Yes. There is now in Adobe Photoshop a beta feature called Generative Fill that essentially takes an existing image and then allows users to fill in areas of that image with new generated content. It’s also called inpainting. There are other tools that allow you to do this. And again, as part of the larger initiative, they are also thinking about this type of CGP disclosure that says some or all of this content was made with an AI tool on the C2 side. How we tackle that is again, looking at an existing framework created by IPC called Digital Source type. You can say this is a synthetic composite. We can have a little bit more nuance in terms of the type of labeling that you might expect to see based on how these tools are being utilized.

And that warning or that caveat is visible to the user. I mean, you’ve got to make sure, of course, that that gets to the consumer when you’re talking about a news context here, because if a consumer can’t see that, then the caveat is meaningless.

Absolutely. So, I think the way to think about content credentials and really the implementation of C2PA data more broadly is that there are multiple parties. There’s the creator side that chooses the types of information they want to include in the content credential, which then appears on the consumer side. The consumer side is really the more challenging aspect to design for because we need to make sure that for the uninitiated, this information is understandable.

There’s also an incredible behavior change, which is how do we let people know that this type of data is available? How do we inform them of the trust model? Through the CGA UX Task Force, we created a series of progressive disclosure experiences, starting with just an icon that indicates the presence of a content credential data followed by this lightweight summary, which is where you would expect to see that type of disclosure. And then for those who need to dig in more and see the entire provenance chain, they should be able to do that. And then, of course, for the forensic experts who need to see the raw code itself and really the rest of the rich information that just might not be consumer friendly or understandable, they should also be able to do that.

It seems like there’s a lot of work that needs to be done here, not just in terms of individual newsrooms catching on to this system, but consumer literacy here. And media literacy is already a pretty challenged area, almost everywhere. So, this can’t be too complex of a system for the average consumer to understand.

Absolutely. We like to talk about content credentials from this perspective as being part of a three-legged stool. You have detection, of course, but you have to help bolster that with a proactive measure. That’s where we have content credentials. And then the last leg is the need for better and increasing digital media literacy that now helps people understand what AI is, how it works, where they might experience that.

And on that front, the CAI has actually created a suite of educational materials for middle school, high school and higher education. We are actively working with academics to create that content and to disseminate it into classrooms around the world.

But that dissemination is tough because there’s not a central United States curriculum. And so, you’ve got to do that at every level of a school board almost, you know, and sometimes states or in Canada provinces why they have they have some media literacy programs in place, but not really at scale almost anywhere. So, that’s going to be a hell of a slog.

I mean, I would say nothing about what we’re working on is easy. But the best part is that there are multiple extremely intelligent individuals from many different companies covering a wide variety of verticals, all thinking about these problems. It truly has to be an industry-wide effort, but it also has to require government support from different countries that can trickle down to, you know, to classrooms, academics, researchers. It’s not one company can solve this problem. It really takes everyone to invest.

Do you foresee media companies, actual newsrooms, getting involved in direct consumer education on this front as well? Do you think that they’ll have to absorb part of the burden and go to their viewers or their readers and explain this periodically?

I can’t necessarily speak to their direct relationship to academic settings, but I can say that again, through the C2PA UX Task Force, one area of recommendations we’re actively working on is how to help implementers talk to their different audiences about what we’re doing. So again, that is a core concern for us, is we need to make this experience simple and understandable. A lot of research is involved in continuing to optimize for those things and so ultimately, we’ll have the set of best practices that we hope implementers can utilize for faster results based on our new understanding and design.

OK, I’m going to stop drawing you away from your end of the pool quite so far. I want to ask you about Adobe’s Do Not Train tag, which you’ve added for content creators to use if they don’t want AI to train on that piece of content. Can you explain why that would be something that they would want to employ and how that works?

Yes, of course. This is something that was introduced in a C2PA spec, and there’s kind of a number of different subtle, subtle differences in the ways that you may not want to train your content. But ultimately, we know that from Adobe’s perspective, our audiences are our creators who work really hard to develop a style and unique perspective on their art. We want to help them protect that content from web crawlers, just looking to build training models to train AI algorithms on. And so, the idea behind the Do Not Train is that this would be part of a content credential setting that web crawlers would respect and then exclude those images from their training models.

Is it suggestive or is it an absolute “you’re verboten to train on it” by the way it’s set up.

I would say, for implementers, it would be a hard preference to respect. But of course, this requires adoption at scale for the future, which, based on our volume of members between C2PA and I, we do anticipate would be the majority of places that you go to consume content.

Do you have the sense overall that you are able to keep up with the proliferating ways in which content can be convincingly fabricated?

I hope so. Yeah, certainly we work very closely within Adobe with the teams directly responsible for all of the new Firefly features. Content credentials has been a core part of developing those features and making sure again we’re doing it ethically with complete transparency.

All right. Well, you are fighting the good fight, Pia Blumenthal, so keep it up. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We also have an audio version of this podcast available in most of the places where you consume your podcasts. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

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The four-year-old company says it has now picked up 3.2 million monthly viewers and is continuously adding new distribution outlets to its arsenal.

In this Talking TV conversation, CEO Ahron Young, who does double duty as the network’s primary anchor, explains why FAST was the, er, fastest way to market, how his growth trajectory is squarely targeted at the U.S. and how native advertising has been his most promising revenue driver.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Ticker News bills itself as the world’s first native FAST channel news network. The Melbourne, Australia-based company has been around for four years and says it has a global viewership of 3.2 million monthly.

Ticker News produces between three and nine hours of daily news programing, along with two weekly, 15-minute mini-documentaries from its micro bureaus, one of which is now located in New York. The organization is presently trying to make inroads in the U.S. and broaden the array of FAST channel options on which it iterates. It hopes that its take leaning into context and analysis on major global stories and its younger-leaning target demographic will help gain it momentum on these shores.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Ahron Young, CEO of Ticker News, about its unusual platform strategy and its content value proposition. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Ahron Young.

Ahron Young: Hi, Michael. Thank you so much for having us.

Aaron, why the name Ticker News? Is this a reference to a news ticker kind of on the bottom of the screen?

I think so. But also, I love the idea of news with heart. I had been working for a corporation, and I think like so many of us in the news industry, we’ve been watching what’s been happening over the last probably 10 years. You know, I often say to people, you know, where did the idea of Ticker come from? They’ll ask me, and I often point to your website, would you believe, because as an avid viewer from all the way over here in Australia for probably the last 10 or so years, ever since I discovered that you guys existed, you know, it’s been a regular digest of ongoing change in the industry in so many ways and not always great ways, right? And as a journalist, it felt like it was time to put my money where my mouth was.

Why is Ticker News a FAST-first news organization?

We were first FAST before we knew what FAST was. To be honest, when you look back to mid-2019, it wasn’t exactly a four-letter word that people were talking about. We were definitely in the linear game, and we were in streaming. Streaming was exciting, not just because of Netflix and some of, you know, all the things that were happening in 2019. But for the first time you didn’t have to have a satellite in the sky or a huge antenna on top of a building to be a broadcaster.

We were in a world of niches, and so we found ourselves in a place. And as we continued to speak to different platforms and partners around the world, the word FAST started to come together and we went, we’re actually a FAST channel before we actually even knew we were one.

And where can viewers find Ticker News currently?

I’m in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve lived here for most of my life, aside from a year in Russia and another year in the U.K. when I was younger, would you believe. And that meant that, you know, my love for Australia was fantastic, but I call it the Olivia Newton-John strategy, which is if you want to make it big here, you’ve got to make it big overseas first. And so that kind of belief in what we were doing was truly unique for platforms, and it didn’t have to be something that was trapped in a geographical area.

We see our audience as almost stateless. They are international citizens. They travel a lot. So, we had to be in as many places as possible. To answer your question, right across Europe, in the United States, obviously here in Australia, throughout Asia, on different platforms, I could go through naming them all there on our website, obviously. But the big platforms like Samsung TV Plus, Fubo, we’re about to join Sling in the United States. We have ongoing conversations in Australia, and we just continually add different platforms.

Now, many TV news operations and even some newspapers and digitally native news organizations are launching FAST channels, but they’re doing so in more of an ancillary way. They’re a companion to the iterations that they already have on numerous other platforms, and most look at FAST channels as more of a passive, smaller revenue stream that draws most of that revenue from programmatic ads. Is that the case with Ticker?

No, we kind of look at it the opposite way around, actually. So, these companies, I’m aware of them. It feels like every day a new one launches and you kind of have to keep looking at the business plan saying we’re going to be OK, right. And I think that that has been in our DNA is that we were designed not to be an old-fashioned company dipping our toe in to different things. There are big media companies still relying on cable who can have the money to just try things. Let’s throw everything at Snapchat or Instagram and, that didn’t work. Didn’t make any money, hey, it’s OK.

Our view is you have to be in everything, but you have to keep your cost base low and working in FAST and being a FAST-first channel means that there is plenty of scope. Our audience continues to grow between 10 and 20% month on month, which is the numbers we get from these FAST platforms.

But in terms of revenue, we know it’s going to be a slow burn to rely on FAST. But what are the choices there? I mean, look what’s happening to cable, look what’s happening to traditional advertising. For us, essentially, it’s preparing us for a future where there will be a lot of players and the way to survive is to stay pretty slim.

Are you relying wholly on programmatic right now or the is the advertising direct sold?

Gosh, if we were reliant on programmatic right now, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford this shirt. We’ve from the very beginning had to make sure that we had a really diversified revenue stream because when we started, as I say, programmatic was a dream that it would even happen. Getting on platforms, you know, it was like, you have a choice. I remember speaking to someone who was looking to invest in Ticker in the very beginning, and she said to me, you know, Ahron, we don’t invest in media businesses that rely on advertising or subscription. And I said, honey, what else is there? And she said, honey, you tell me. So, I jumped on my bike and said, I’m not going to start this business until we can come up with a different revenue stream, a different way of finding ways to make money.

And the first thing that really happened was on Day One, I had about a thousand emails from different PR pitches saying, We really want to get our clients out there. And we had a lot of interviews in those first few weeks. And what we realized is that they all wanted access to those interview clips to be able to put it on their LinkedIn, to put it on all their different platforms and things. And that was it. That was part of our business strategy, was to be, I suppose, the home of business from around the world, trying to tell the world what they do and also to, I suppose, elevate themselves to be full leaders in that. That’s part of our commercial.

Just to clarify, you’re basically describing video native advertising then.

Yeah, exactly. So, people who come on, tell me about your business. Tell me about the industry that you’re in. What are you seeing is as a change, be a thought leader, etc. That’s probably about 5% of our on-air programing, far less than traditional advertising, but it pays a lot more than programmatic.

Since you’re spread out across the world, at least for your viewership, who’s doing the selling? Are you just working with outside contractors in strategic locations? I mean, you know, the world is a big place…

We have we have a bunch of different sales teams in different countries. Sometimes they compete against each other to sell Ticker to different platforms and to different advertisers. We have our own home-based sales team as well here in Melbourne that deals with different companies where we do kind of co-branded programing.

It’s very obvious to the viewer, but we might talk about, for example, going to show funding futures about people who are young, who are looking to invest. What’s the best way to go, etc. We want it to be very editorial. It just happens to be sponsored by a company. But again, that isn’t the huge way of making money in this world. You’ve got to balance, as you know, viewers who want to watch with advertisers, who want everything. And if you give the advertisers everything, you can lose your viewers. So, you’ve got to make sure that you get the balance right. We’ve spent a lot of time getting there.

How does that revenue pie break down, say programmatic versus native versus or is native, I suppose the only kind of direct sold or do you also direct sell just conventional advertising?

We’ve looked at heaps of different ways. So, obviously when you’re running a small media business which is growing, you’re trying to find different ways to, you know, anything, right? And you know that programmatic will work, but that’s all based on volume. It can be really hard to be able to give the advertisers the exact numbers the exact day that they need them. That’s been the biggest issue with the FAST industry.

You know, I was at a conference in Las Vegas where another FAST person said, can you tell me how many women over 35 are watching my channel in the three biggest markets? Because no one seems to be able to tell me that that’s an ongoing issue for the industry. For us, we’re able to break it down thanks to our EDMs, thanks to a lot of the research we do about our audience as well to work out who are they, where are they, how are they watching and how long are they watching for? And to be able to give that to our advertisers, too.

All right. That’s the business. So, let’s look at the journalism product.

My favorite part, by the way.

All of our favorite parts in some ways. You’ve got about eight reporters, I’ve been told, fanned out across these micro bureaus across the world. It’s a big world, and that’s not a lot of people. So, how do you use these journalists in a way that creates value for viewers?

Well, because we don’t just rely on our journalists. You know, we’ve had reporters in Singapore, we’ve had people in Paris and in London and we’ve had reporters that we’ve paid to travel into Kiev. We’ve had reporters who have been, you know, as you mentioned, we’ve got an anchor who’s in New York hosting a daily program. We also work with a whole bunch of other places, too. I’m speaking as a journalist, just relying on getting your news through the old-fashioned ways of journalists and politicians and policemen. There are so many citizen journalists out there these days that you can rely on during that breaking news.

The fact is, is that we didn’t want to just be a breaking news channel. We worked out very quickly, as you just said, that there’s plenty of people doing that. There’s CNN. There’s all these fantastic legacy broadcasters with so much history that there is no point launching a company to try and compete with them.

What we try to do is actually add conversation and context to what’s happening. There’s so much assumed knowledge in journalism that people know what we’re talking about when we go on air. So, we actually decided to bring in all these different programs. I host a bunch of shows. In America, Today‘s hosted by Veronica Dedeaux out of New York. You know, she’s ex-CNN and NBC and worked for a bunch of different places. What we worked out was that if we interviewed people about these topics into a bit more detail, kind of like The Economist magazine, for example, it’s not exactly news of right now. It’s talking about giving context to events happening.

And that is something that I think you can do with three people, so long as they’re really good. You can do it with many people or as few people. Right now, we’re seeing redundancies happening right across the media landscape. It’s safe to say that a huge team is going to be with legacy, but it seems to be a world of pain there.

Well, let’s just kind of drill into that value proposition a little bit further then, because if that proposition is to bring context and analysis, of course, a lot of other news organizations have plenty of that, too. CNN has, God knows, loads of analysis, as does Fox News, MSNBC, and for that matter, local news often has elements of context or analysis. So, what’s different about how that plays out at Ticker News? Can you give me an example and drill into something specific about how your particular brand of analytical discussion or contextualization might look?

Well, I think for one, it’s about being multi-platform, right? So, you’ve got the journalism side, which I’ll talk about in a minute. This morning, I had four interviews with four different people, about eight different topics that we that are news at the moment. So, from today, the big story was Hunter Biden, obviously the submarine which has been missing, and trying to work out the story from the business angle or from the tech angle of what’s been happening.

We don’t cover general news the way that perhaps CNN does. We focus on the business side or the political side or the tech side, depending on what angle we can actually bring to the story. We don’t want our website to look exactly the same as everybody else because we don’t want to be adding another voice just for the sake of it. We want to actually look at a different side to the story.

For example, we have a look at the submarine that’s happened, and I know that this is being shown a bit later. We don’t right now know what’s happened to that submarine. But the traditional way is to have a reporter in Boston to be going live on the hour, saying the same thing all the time, waiting for something to come through. I see that from the business side as probably a bit inefficient the way that things are today and actually have a team of experts that we can call upon at any time when that is happening.

That is something that we can do. And to put it out really quickly in as many different places as possible. And we obviously want to increase our original reporting, which is why we have documentaries. So, we will have a full show about a topic which will be backed up by a documentary that our team turns around within a couple of days. So, the submarine, you know, it’s kind of like that hive belief of throwing absolutely everything at it as it’s happening.

These are twice weekly, 15-minute or so documentaries, typically?

Yeah. And it’s basically to give a bit more context to something that we find interesting. Our viewers love Elon Musk. Our viewers love Richard Branson. Our viewers, you know, 25 to 45, predominantly male. They might work for one of the big four consultancy firms. They might work for a big bank or an airline. They love aviation. And so, they’re kind of looking for things that can sit on YouTube, considers a podcast, can sit on our website and be on our FAST network as well. And I think that’s the key point. You know, everything that goes on our FAST platform is also being repurposed at the exact same time. It goes on YouTube, the same time that it goes on the FAST network. We don’t prioritize the television side more than we do any other part.

So, on a documentary, let’s say Elon Musk, I mean, there is loads of content about Elon Musk. In 15 minutes, just with this one example, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to sort of diving into one element, recency with Twitter, for instance? How do you make a 15-minute documentary about a massive subject be effective?

Well, we can have a bit of fun with it. We did our first documentary, we got about five on Elon Musk that we’ve put together over the past couple of months. But the first one was called Billionaire Blowups, and it was about billionaires. Elizabeth Holmes was one of them. Kanye West was another, but Elon Musk led it and it was kind of about how he’s got the power and the money to be able to go bang, I’m going to just do something like buy Twitter and just see what happens and rockets because hey, I can do that.

Now, what happens to that documentary? It doesn’t just go on our platforms, but the platforms that I mentioned, for example, Samsung TV across Europe, they actually highlight that because it’s in the news. So, while everybody else might have a news story that is going with that, we have our documentary sitting right there. Not only do we have our news interviews about what might be happening that day, but we have the documentary sitting there. And also, when we have a big story about Elon Musk, and he quite often leads our programing because, as I say, it’s something that people are talking about, we make sure the documentaries are actually attached in our programing.

The strategy for the FAST channel then allows people to watch that first 15 minutes about what’s happened today and the second 15 minutes straight away from those documentaries as well.

What are you hoping to be the business trajectory here?

Yeah, it’s a good point. I think that we want to be the safe place for FAST channels, right? So, I think that over the past few years, maybe longer than that, maybe 10, 15 years, a lot of news networks have kind of shifted left or shifted right. They’ve had to find a niche, but the niche has been politics. My view is there is a huge group of people who don’t watch those sorts of networks because they’re not really that political. They don’t mind politics, but it doesn’t make them angry. It doesn’t have a side. What they have is a keen interest in world events. What they have is an interest in technology and business and we want to be the place for them.

So, we’re not trying to be like a NewsNation, trying to find a place between CNN, etc. We don’t really look at that. We love that. I find that interesting as journalists. But I think that from the business side of what we need to do, we need to provide an alternative, and that is for people who are flicking through and watching a political interview and saying it’s not quite for me moving on to something else and finding maybe a documentary or finding an interview with someone who can break down what’s happening with the Fed Reserve at the moment when interest rates are going to change.

We’re talking to an audience that is looking to buy a house, you know, so many of the news conversations happening in newsrooms these days is our audience is old, they already own the house. They’re not worried about paying their mortgage. They’re worried about their superannuation, as we call it here in Australia. Their 401k.

So, I think that making sure that we appeal to a younger audience that has all the devices, has the TV in the lounge room, the iPhone or whatever it might be in their hand, and they’re consuming media in different ways. We want to try to be in as many places as possible as quickly as we can.

And are you looking to staff up, widen the coverage net or deepen what you’re already doing?

I call this a bit of the AUKUS network. AUKUS is the alliance between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., which was announced a couple of years ago from a military standpoint. We love the United States. That’s why we built our first actual anchoring studio from there with Veronica. We’re looking at the U.K. As well. Thankfully, the time zones make it really easy, but we also had to be able to program news for people watching at a certain time of day. So, in America, Today can be broadcast in primetime. We have Australian content when America is asleep, for example, and British content in the late afternoon Australia time as the U.K. is starting to wake up when the United States is asleep. So, we program out our hours based on where people are. Yeah, we want to open in the U.K. We definitely want to staff up across the United States. We love the U.S. Obviously, so many stories that happen there are of interest to the very people that we’re looking at around the world.

And from a distribution standpoint, is it your goal to just stay in the FAST lane? I can’t believe I just said that horrible pun.

I’m going to put that in my pitch deck, that’s fantastic.

I’m kicking myself for that. But are you going to stay there or do you want… I know you have a website as well. You can watch it there. But do you aim to have a more conventional OTT channel with VOD options? What’s the play there?

You probably can’t see behind me. But yeah, we’ve got Apple TV. We’ve got, you know, anywhere that there is a place to put an app. You know, we’ve been working with Comcast, NBC on apps for them. I think it has launched. I keep asking our team, has it launched yet? But you know what these things are like, everything takes time. Our view is that we just want to be where eyeballs are. And if they’ll take us, we’d be happy to be on.

Our aim is to provide news that is happening at the moment to as many people in a different format. We don’t have billionaire backers, but we do believe in a really good story. And I think that storytelling means everything to a viewer who doesn’t have much time. And that’s basically how we want to go. Whether it’s traditional cable show, whether it’s FAST.

But we found a great home in FAST. I think that the way that we’re seeing connected TVs continue to grow, the way we’re seeing more viewers shifting across, looking for particularly as we’re on the cusp of recession, as we’re seeing more viewers making their way across to other options. We’ve found a sustainable business model. We just want you to watch.

I’m kind of picking up some resonances of Cheddar News here, when looking for a closest correlate from what your ambitions seem to be. 

It’s interesting you say that. So, I was aware of Cheddar back four years ago when I started Ticker. The lessons from Cheddar are fantastic for us because they are always going to be four years ahead of where we are. I know quite a few people at Cheddar, quite a few people have worked for Cheddar, and I hold them up the same way that I hold up a CNN or an NBC.

But I think the point is, is that, you know, what Jon Sternberg did was absolutely fantastic. It was kind of the first thing, the first time that a Cheddar had been launched, a streaming news network. What it taught me was you could be an independent news network and really make a go at it. The difference is we don’t have our studios on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Markets isn’t in my DNA. News, world news, is in my DNA. So, I think that a bit like how KFC and McDonald’s are both fast food chains, you can be on the same street, but we certainly sell different things.

Right. Different kinds of chicken. OK. Well, Ahron Young, it is a very interesting model. Thanks for being here today to talk about it.

Thanks so much for your time, Michael.

Talking TV is back most Fridays with a new episode and all of the episodes are on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We’ve also got an audio version in all of the places you find podcasts if straight up listening is more your thing. Thank you for watching and listening to this one. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Ticker News Chases A Purely FAST News Model appeared first on TV News Check.

Mark Critch’s upbringing in 1980s Newfoundland, Canada, has its own vividly unique palette of family woe. He’s used it to color Son of a Critch, a comedy series based on his memoir of the same name. Based in St. John’s, a city about as far on the edge of North America as possible and culturally as remote, Critch’s show navigates touchpoints of pubescent awkwardness, heartbreak and elation common to us all from a particular landscape unfamiliar to most.

Son of a Critch launches for U.S. audiences on the CW this month hoping to find a similar embrace that met another Canadian export, Schitt’s Creek. But the shows employ a vastly different comedic tact and tone, with Critch opting for a sweetness, wistfulness and good heartedness that eludes most comedies.

In this Talking TV conversation, Critch discusses his own influences informing the show, the enduring draw of the ’80s for television and what it’s like having Malcolm McDowell play his grandad, while playing his own father in the series to boot.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Mark Critch is a well-known name and face to Canadian audiences, where he has been a mainstay of its long running comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. The native of St John’s, Newfoundland, is the author of a memoir, Son of a Critch. It has been adapted into a series of the same name now going into its third season on the CBC. That series is a 1980s coming-of-age story of Critch’s family, and in it he plays his father, Mike.

Son of a Critch has just been picked up by The CW, where it’s hoping to find the same kind of breakaway success that another Canadian series, Schitt’s Creek, found when it made its way across the border.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Coming up, a conversation with Mark Critch about Son of a Critch. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Mark Critch, to Talking TV.

Mark Critch: My great pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. So, Mark, your show is Son of a Critch. It’s following on the heels of Schitt’s Creek, an enormous success in the U.S. Why are you Canadians always trying to swear in your show titles without technically swearing?

Well, you know, this one was a little different in that this was the title of a book first. And I never expected that this would be a television thing, you know. I’m known in Canada for TV. So, I thought I was branching out and doing something different by writing a book, which is now become more TV. So, yeah, it does seem like we’re making swears, but cute, Canadian polite swears, you know, things that aren’t that offensive.

Yeah. Very polite. You are a native of Saint John’s, Newfoundland, one of the harder to reach corners of Canada and occupying its own extremely bizarre time zone. That is one-and-a-half hours ahead of Eastern time for those who are unfamiliar with that fact or that zone. It would seem that the half-hour difference makes for a kind of lifelong off kiltered-ness for Newfoundlanders. Do you find that to be the case?

It is a little different. Newfoundlanders love their unique things like, you know, we used to be our own country until 1949, had our own passports and our own money and things like that. And we’re known for icebergs and whales and being out in the Atlantic, separate from the rest of Canada. So, we have an outside-looking-in kind of an attitude, which kind of makes for good comedy, I think.

Son of a Critch is an autobiographical show of your 1980s childhood there. What were the ’80s like in Newfoundland?

The ’80s In Newfoundland were kind of like the ’60s everywhere else, I think. We were, you know, a lot of Catholic and Protestant type stuff going on. We’re based on the fishery, big cod fishery here. Now it’s all oil. But back then primarily it was it was the fishery, which collapsed in 1992.

So, economically things weren’t that great at this time when I was growing up. But we always got through hard times with humor. I guess it’s kind of the lot of Irish people, they’re Irish and the English settled it. So, a lot of dark humor, a lot of storytelling, big, long winters. A lot of people perform music, a lot of people are funny, a lot of comedians are from up here. So that’s one way we dealt with that, I think. And that’s inbred, the ability to make people laugh and to keep each other laughing. I think that’s a lot where a lot of the story comes from.

I suppose winter cannot be overstated. The enormity, the length, the darkness of that in Newfoundland. Can it?

Absolutely not. You know, it’s, you know, like I say, we’re out in the middle of the Atlantic and it’s a place where a lot of people live in isolated communities and stuff like that. So, the only way to get together and get through all that sometimes is through community, helping your neighbors. And I think Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are known to be very friendly people. There’s a Broadway musical, Come from Away, about how Newfoundlanders welcomed the world during 9/11, so that’s looking out for each other, which is a big sense. There’s a lot of sense of family here, which I think comes through in the show.

I want to come back to the place in a second, but first to the time, there seems to be this enduring TV pop culture interest in the ’80s, probably the biggest recent example being Stranger Things. I mean, I grew up then myself, so I have my own biases. But what is it, do you think, about that decade that keeps the pop culture hunger for it carrying on as strongly as it does?

Well, I think there’s an explosion of pop culture then to where maybe it was OK to like some cheesy things at that time, you know, the ’80s and Reagan and Must-See TV and Rubik’s Cubes and it was like big neon, they’re in your face. And, you know, consuming things was big, you know, but I think everybody has a style just for whatever time they grew up in.

And our show, some think it’s like an ’80s -set show. But for me, when I was a kid watching The Wonder Years, it was set in the ’60s and I appreciated that, but I was the same age that Fred Savage, his character, was in the show. So, for me, I was watching kids my age fall in love, get bullied, be anxious about going to a party, and beer might be there and all this stuff. It was all of those things. I think you can watch it for nostalgic [reasons], people our age, but younger people, I think we find, are watching it for the storylines about the young people.

We get the great thing with our show is we’re lucky that we get a lot of multigenerational [people] watching it. We get people’s families watching it at the time that it airs, old school. And the story I keep hearing is that kids, when it first came on were saying to the parents, I like this: Hey, click play next. Like, let’s watch the next one. They said, you can’t. It’s coming out in a week and they’re like no, mom, you’re such an idiot. You just click play next. And so, they were having these arguments in the first time, kind of analog watching together as a family.

I’m glad you brought up The Wonder Years, because it does seem to be watching it that there are resonances of that show. I also felt like a little Jean Shepherd, A Christmas Story, in there.

Christmas Story big time. I mean, I remember seeing it as a kid, and it was like a light bulb went on in my head. It’s that same thing about talking about another time, which was my parents’ time in a lot of ways. And yet you can relate to the characters in it because every generation goes through these same things, the same quest to become somebody, and you had to go through all these trials. So, I related to that the same way I relate to The Wonder Years. And I think when I was in the ’80s, watching The Wonder Years, the ’80s are now farther away than The Wonder Years were to me in the ’80s, if that makes sense. You know, it’s even further back in time.

The show is actually shot in Newfoundland. Was that hard to put together? Was there a TV and film industry in place to support you, or did you have to kind of help build it?

When I was a kid, I wanted to become an actor and a comedian because of a locally shot TV show called The Wonderful Grand Band, which combined music and comedy. And yeah, there’s always been performers here, but the TV industry really grew here. There have been lots of Canadian TV shows like Republic of Doyle, and it was a big show from here, shot here.

But more and more films are coming. Ben Stiller was just here shooting a feature. Peter Pan and Wendy shot here recently. People may know the film with Dame Judi Dench, The Shipping News, shot here. I was in a movie here with Brendan Gleeson recently, not that long ago called The Grand Seduction.

And so, yeah, there’s always a big film industry here for the size of the place and Newfoundlanders, I think, we have a way of hitting above our weight, things like that. So yeah, it’s very easy. If you were a grip or a lighting person and you wanted to work here in Newfoundland/Labrador, you easily could have had a career working every day for the last 30 years.

And you just walk down the road to shoot from your house.

Yeah, like when I was a kid, everybody told me, you have to go away. You had to go to the States. You have to go wherever to become an actor. And now I leave my house and I’m on set of our school set, which is an actual school in, I would say, a five-minute walk from my door, which is something I never thought could happen. It was impossible, really, when I was the young Mark you see on TV now. So, all my life I was looking at that TV screen to see the show and dreaming about being on TV. And now I’ve remade that house to be on TV right where I live. So, it’s quite unique.

Quite a few meta experiences, it seems in this. You have rebuilt your childhood home on a soundstage there, haven’t you?

Yeah, with a lot of things from my childhood home. Our house has been hasn’t been there since 1994, something like that, it’s been gone. So, I sketched it out, show a lot of photos, things like that. And I had a lot of furniture for my parents’ house kind of in my basement, some of it. So, if you’re watching to show the dining room furniture is the stuff from my parents’ house, The pictures around it from my family home, the layout is exactly the same. And even the radio that my family listens to in the kitchen is the radio that I listened to as a kid that my father, who was on the radio as a newsman, I’d listen to him every morning on that same radio.

So, sometimes I play my father in the show, sometimes I’m wearing his red blazer, which was the color of his news station with a crest, sitting at the table looking at the radio that he used to be on when I was a kid. And in the corner of my eye is our dining room furniture. And I’ll sit and I’ll think, what have you done, you madman? Surely therapy would have been cheaper than all of this. It really can be melancholy at times because my parents are no longer with us. But then I’ll hear Benjamin laughing, the kid who plays me, with Malcolm McDowell, they’re teasing each other, and the house is kind of there again and filled with laughter again. And this kind of new family has formed, and these new connections are there. Any kind of sad feelings are gone in a minute.

It sounds like a healthier kind of rebuilding of your childhood than from Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal on HBO. That’s a dark, twisted version of that. You’ve got sort of a more mentally balanced version, it sounds.

Nathan’s a really good friend of mine. We worked together on the show 22 Minutes in Canada for years. And yeah, we are kind of doing the same thing, but in a sweeter way. I’d never thought of that before. That’s a great point. But the skeleton, the spine of every story is true. A lot of it comes from my real-life experiences. A lot of stuff is in the book. And but you can err on the side of kindness and sweetness and maybe turn something ever so slightly differently the way you wish it had gone. And that’s a real nice little gift to give yourself in a way sometimes, you know, to make things this time around work out a little better for everybody. It’s quite nice.

You play your own father, as you’ve mentioned, on the show. What is that experience like?

Well, it’s interesting because you grow up kind of making fun of your dad or maybe one of the first roles anybody ever plays is their parents, kind of imitating them as a kid. And for me, I had, you know, written stories about them in the book, and I’d always known my dad was very well known in Newfoundland because he was a radio news guy. And everybody in town did an impression of my father because of his really distinct, Newfoundland voice.

But playing him is even different than writing here, because it really forces you to look at everything through his eyes, through his perspective, through his point of view, and sympathize with him a lot more than you may have done. And it certainly has drawn me closer to him, I think, than I’d ever been, because you really start to realize, oh, you know what? I see why he was like that now. Or I can understand Mom and Dad’s relationship a bit better this way. And well, that makes sense to me now, a bit more.

And it causes you to reflect on a lot more. And I think, you know, we all have issues with our parents. But certainly, the more I thought about them, the more reflecting on everything like that, you certainly appreciate them more and sympathize with them more and are certainly more thankful for everything they did.

And your granddad on the show is played by Malcolm McDowell. Are you sneaking in any Clockwork Orange references?

I was very tempted to put a Clockwork Orange poster in my older brother’s bedroom, but then I thought, you know what? That will take you right out of it, you know? And at one time, Singing in the Rain was going to play or something. But Malcolm’s like, oh, like in the movie. I was like, oh, right. No, you have an iconic Singing in the Rain scene. We can’t use that because it will pull people out of it. And that’s the thing, you know. Malcolm is such an icon and looks so scary and has done so many scary roles, but he is a sweet, sentimental, loving, kind, wonderful man, a real pussycat of a guy. And he’s still got that twinkle in that eyes, a bit of wickedness. But I thought Pop would be, you know, harder and crankier and whatnot. And he immediately started playing a more fun-loving and sweeter and much more of a twinkle, which is something I didn’t expect, but is exactly the right thing to do.

That’s great. You’re pretty well entrenched with Canadian audiences on CBC. You’re going into your third season where this show has been among the country’s top five comedies. You’ve been a longstanding cast member of the very popular This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Now you’re going to be on the schedule of a very overhauled CW network in the U.S. What are your feelings about introducing yourself to U.S. audiences?

Well, I think you kind of double down on the authenticity and specificity of the place, you know, whether it’s Derry Girls or Fargo or what have you. I think American audiences will embrace things that are from a different place and a different story. And, you know, that’s what people I think are looking for these days.

But the thing is, with Newfoundland it’s different, is odd, it’s unique. But, you know, if you’re from Boston or someplace, you’re looking at that. There’s a lot of similarities, and I think there’s lots of people in America will be able to see their own kind of working-class family in it. And I think everybody’s felt like an outsider and everybody, even the more popular kids in school, probably at times feel like an outsider, like they’re living up to something that they’re not really.

There’s lots of room there for people, even though it’s an odd place in the middle of the Atlantic with a different time zone, they can look and see that there’s far more similarities than there are differences. The way we grew up watching The Wonder Years that happened in the States in a different time, but I connected with the people, and I really hope that people will see a bit of themselves in Son of a Critch.

Well, it’s interesting that you’re sort of burrowing into the specificity of the place that Schitt’s Creek, on the other side, you know, didn’t need to be Canadian. You might, you know, be forgiven for not knowing that it was Canadian specific. And this show is so, so much about its place and time specifically.

Do you have an ideal number of seasons you’re looking for with Son of a Critch?

Well, we’re at three now, I think six would definitely wrap it up quite nicely, because each year we’re doing a different grade. So, we started in grade seven. This year is grade nine. Next year we go to high school in Canada. Americans will be starting soon on season one. But I would like to see them graduate high school and then, you know, spoiler alert, I live.

So, I mean, there’s lots of adventures yet to come. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth plays me and he’s an incredible young lad and very, very gifted. He was the voice of Pinocchio with Tom Hanks in the Disney recent version of Pinocchio they did as well, shooting a film now with Bryan Cranston. He’s a busy young man, but he seems quite content here, enjoying his summers in Newfoundland. So, we’ll hang on to him as long as we can.

Right. And so do you have kind of a bookend event, like Derry Girls, for instance, was always kind of moving toward the Good Friday peace accord. Is there a singular event that you have in mind to kind of, that’s the point at which it ends?

Not a historical one. I have a personal one, definitely, and know how I want it to end. But we will have to wait and see, but not necessarily historical while we’re having great fun. I think really with that too, the timeline, it would match up with the cod moratorium in Newfoundland and Labrador, which was the closure of the fishery. So that would probably be our version of that.

A dark note on which to end a very light show.

Well, that was I’m not a fisherman though it was bad, but nobody in our family fishes. But my great-grandfather was a fisherman. All the Critches were fishermen up until the character of Pop that you see in the show. So, in a way, it is sort of the new Newfoundland. The future of the place is diversifying and, you know, take a chance to follow your dreams. Growing up, I mean, my great-grandfather was a fisherman who drowned, and for him in Newfoundland, Labrador at the time, the idea that you could follow your dreams, it didn’t exist. I mean, you had to eke out an existence. So, you know, it’s pretty neat that I’m able to do this thing and tell his story and their stories to a whole new country, you know? They fished for fish and I’m fishing for laughs.

Well, Son of a Critch is a very charming show. It’s a very lovely show. And I mean that in the best way. Coming soon to the U.S. in July, coming to TV screens on the CW. Mark Critch, it has been a pleasure speaking with you.

A real joy. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you. You can watch and listen to past episodes of Talking TV, no matter what time zone you’re in, at TVNewsCheck.com, on our YouTube channel, along with an audio version on all the major podcast platforms. We’re out most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for joining on this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Canada’s ‘Son Of A Critch’ Looks To Charm U.S. Viewers appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Papper and Henderson share some of the reams of anecdotal feedback they picked up from news directors in compiling the survey that point to the severity of the problem. They share the mindset of young employees who prefer to bail on broadcast rather than hang onto untenable situations. And they highlight the exhaustion of news directors themselves, most of whom lack the power to improve the conditions wracking their newsrooms.

Most importantly, they discuss the likeliest accelerant for burnout — woefully insufficient salaries, especially at the starting level in small- and medium-size markets.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: TV news is suffering from a serious burnout problem. According to this year’s recently released RTDNA/Newhouse School of Syracuse University survey, almost 70% of all news directors see more evidence of burnout among their employees than in the past.

For anyone who works in a TV newsroom, there’s probably nothing surprising about that number at all. And given the survey’s other headline that local TV news employment is up 5.1% over last year, maybe it’s not quite at a crisis level yet. But that figure doesn’t take into account the closure of five Sinclair newsrooms this spring, which might themselves go a good distance toward wiping out that gain. The point is burnout is a massive problem and we need to talk about it. A lot.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Keren Henderson and Bob Papper, the two Syracuse University journalism professors who conducted the survey. We’ll get into what they heard from news directors about the burnout problem and what, if anything, those news directors have been able to do to stem it. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Keren Henderson and Bob Papper, to Talking TV.

Keren Henderson: Thank you.

Bob Papper: Thank you.

Michael Depp: Keren, 68.9% of news directors are seeing more burnout among their staffs, with the average being a little bit better in the top 25 markets, 59.4% say it’s worse there, presumably because those folks are being a good bit better compensated for their misery. Can you paint a picture of what your survey respondents are telling you?

Keren Henderson: I guess in a sense, they’re telling us that that they’re having trouble recruiting, retaining employees, making those who are still there feel wanted, happy, appreciated. Their hands are tied in some cases. It’s a really stressful time for workers and management alike, it would seem.

The word “exhaustion” seems to come up as a constant refrain in the report. Related to that, so does taking a lot of sick time. Why are they so exhausted, Bob?

Bob Papper: Well, you know, this industry has always demanded staggering hours. You know, I mean, I started in this business full time over 50 years ago, and it was it was bad then. But, you know, we did it because that’s what you do. Because that’s what the ethos of the times said that you do. Times have changed, people have changed, demands have changed. And I think it really has probably become a crisis. I don’t think we’re at that that stage where we need to worry about it somewhere down the future. I think we need to do it now.

Someone was telling me recently that it used to be the case that you’d have this real flurry of activity build up to something, you’d have those intense hours and then you’d get these pauses and there would be respites between kind of hurling into the next giant story or the next very serious coverage that bled into your life. Those pauses are the things that have gone away. Have either of you heard that kind of sentiment expressed?

Bob Papper: Oh, sure. I mean, when I started, news was a half hour at 6 and a half hour at 10. I was in Central Time. And that’s what you did. That was that was local news. You know, we now relentlessly produce local news hour after hour. We do it morning, we do it midday, we do it early, mid-afternoon, we do it late afternoon or into early evening and then again late evening. Because once you’ve spent the money as a station, once you’ve spent the money to establish a news department, the incremental cost of adding more news is comparatively small. The problem is that stations keep adding that kind of news. They don’t add that number of people. So, the burden is higher and higher and higher every year, relentlessly year after year.

People used to be pretty terrified about breaking their contracts. Is that less the case now?

Keren Henderson: I don’t know if they’re more or less terrified, but they’re certainly willing to check that they can.

That nuclear option is more readily available to them now?

Keren Henderson: I belong to a lot of Facebook groups for journalists, and the conversation steadily has increased to have that discussion. “Can I break a contract? Can someone from company X, company Y? DM me. I’m concerned. My management is threatening to make good on the buyout. Will they really come after me?” I just know I’ve seen a lot of that talk.

Bob Papper: At least some of it is that at the salaries some of these people are making, especially in small and medium markets, it’s kind of, you know, how much do they have to lose?

Well, that brings up my next question, because in the litany of anecdotal reasons that you share for burnout in the report, I didn’t notice money in there at all. Did anybody talk about money?

Bob Papper: Yeah, they do. You know, especially in small- and medium-sized markets. Starting pay is painfully low. I looked up the number, I was curious. The average starting salary for a college graduate nationwide is $55,000. That’s about double what the average starting salary in TV news is. You know, it’s gotten worse. I played around with some of these numbers. I started full time in 1970 at $175 a week. And the station was embarrassed that it was only paying me $175 a week. Adjusted for inflation, it’s over $71,000 today. So, if it’s more than double what they’re paying starting people today, is it a factor? Of course it’s a factor. I mean, this is, remains, one of, if not the lowest paying professions a college graduate can go into.

Keren Henderson: With one of the more expensive tuitions to have the common permission to do the job.

And the average tuition for a J-school being about what right now?

Keren Henderson: Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know offhand.

Bob Papper: It varies depending on if it’s a state school or private.

Like 50, 60 grand here, typically for a private school, j-school education?

Keren Henderson: But you don’t take into account living expenses and all of that. Sure.

Bob Papper: OK.

Your report also looks at how people are trying to start to begin addressing this. You cite some more anecdotal things that newsrooms have tried, notably their food-oriented efforts like cookouts and gift cards and staff fun committees. I mean, maybe I’m missing something here, but it seems like those are pretty flimsy Band-Aids to put over massive festering wounds.

Bob Papper: That’s an old day answer to a contemporary problem, and it’s not working. I mean, you know, years ago, I think you could probably get away with that, at least to a certain degree. You know, “we’re all in this together” and that kind of thing. But yeah, some places are doing still doing cookouts and bringing in food or food trucks or whatever kind of the modern version, I guess, of, you know, cookouts. But what a number of the news directors say is that it really isn’t working. It’s not even a Band-Aid, much less a solution to the problem.

Keren Henderson: I would say notably though, there’s also a good number of references to mental health efforts.

Right. And I want to talk about that. I mean, on the more efficacious side, there does seem to be an acknowledgment that there are widening mental health needs in this profession that need to be addressed. So, on that front, what are some of the more substantive efforts that you have seen underway there in your discussions?

Bob Papper: Well, I mean, there’s counseling, bringing in counselors, and there are companies that are doing that as a policy and bringing counselors in on a regular, I think monthly probably is the most common basis, to deal with people. Whether, you know, is that a long-term solution… no, I don’t think so. But is it helping? Probably. But that still doesn’t answer, is this job working for me in that grand scheme of life? You know, counseling, I think, helps you cope. But I don’t know that it addresses that bigger problem.

To put a finer point on what the counseling scenarios were that you came across, I mean, this is kind of like a Ted Lasso situation where someone comes in to work with the whole team? They kind of get little sessions on the side?

Keren Henderson: Yeah, I think we saw both. I think there were some references to group conversations and some references to one-on-one needs. I mean, certainly I would think that it’s also we didn’t ask this, mind you, but we could. Health insurance and coverage in general… it’s wonderful that there are coverage offerings, but do those companies that offer medical coverage extend that coverage to include personal? My choice where I want to go to get my therapy for my life? I don’t know.

Bob Papper: Since you asked that, we asked about benefits, beyond salary, and we did it two years in a row. And normally you wouldn’t see any kind of difference from one year to the next. But we did in in a few areas, including health benefits, which have gotten better just in the last two years. And, you know, is that because of mental health issues? You know, we don’t know that, but it could be.

I know that drilling into those mental health issues wasn’t the focus of your survey, but inasmuch as you’re able to speak to this, how common are those efforts to target mental health concerns for journalists and how widespread? Also related to that is the acknowledgment that this has become a serious problem and it might now need to be addressed in this industry at scale.

Keren Henderson: I mean, I think just the energy from the responses would imply that there’s a need for this question. And the fact that you’re speaking to us right now is another good indication that there is a need for this question. But maybe you have a more specific answer in terms of the details of the results.

Bob Papper: Well, I got this email two hours ago. Literally two hours ago, was unsolicited. I didn’t ask. I haven’t even talked to this news director in ages. But doing this survey is really a year-round job. And we talk to news directors around the clock, which is where a lot of these questions come from is because news directors talk about the problems that they’re seeing in the newsroom, and they talk about hires they can’t make and that kind of thing. I need to protect the name of this person, so all I’m going to say is that this is a very successful, very experienced TV news director in a major market.

And let’s see, “I’ve been out of news for almost X number of months and I’m happier than I’ve been in a very long time. The burnout is real, the lack of resources and people is real. The mental health crisis, especially among younger journalists, is real. The lack of support from HR and senior leadership is real. Racism is real. Sexism is real. Retaliation is real. Your latest survey hit the bullseye. So, after a lot of years, most of them in management, I quit, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. Don’t get me wrong, I had many great days in my career, but the bad ones were outnumbering…

That is a pretty damning thing, especially coming from a news director. Some news directors are the empowered people here, are they not? Is it just that they they’re not sufficiently empowered to seriously address these conditions?

Bob Papper: Well, that is what we think. I mean, we view them as the empowered people. And as you can see from that news director, that person didn’t necessarily feel that way.

They’re kicking that ball in other directions.

Bob Papper: Well, you know, I remember back in the ’90s and the 2000s, I would talk to news directors about how little they were paying and how disgraceful it was, and they’d all agree with me. I mean, they all say, absolutely, but my general manager or my company, it’s always someone else but says, look, they’re lined up out the door to work here at these low salaries. Why should we pay more if they’re lined up to work? But they’re not anymore. Right.

That was one of the other findings in the survey, is how many unfilled positions there are in this industry. Yeah, the staff grew, but there are between 2,000 and 2,500 unfilled positions in local TV news that news directors say they could hire if they could find someone to do the job. So, it really is a crisis.

For which positions where was there the most acute area of need?

Bob Papper: The most acute areas were MMJs and producers, and they accounted for 41% of the unfilled positions. News anchors and news reporters as opposed to MMJs, we separate those. They combined for 20%, digital photographer and weather accounted for 8% each and that’s most of the total. It’s actually pretty across the board.

MMJs and producers are very stressful jobs with constant daily demand. You have to be able to play a lot of instruments to do those jobs. So, that’s not a shock. I mean, nothing here is going to come as much of a shock to anybody who works in a TV newsroom, nothing we’re talking about.

And you add to that they’re subject to constant threats and harassment, albeit largely by anonymous email and social posting, but sometimes it’s also in person. People are utterly flippant about calling their work fake with absolutely no substance to attach to the slurs. And, you know, as we’ve already touched on here, maybe worst of all, their daily workload seems to be orders of magnitude higher than the same job had a generation or even a decade ago.

So, you have to have a deeply held sense of mission or masochism or both to do these jobs. I mean, so as you look at all this, you get all this feedback, is this not a reasonable response for a professional to have in working under these conditions?

Bob Papper: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t think there’s any question about it. I think the bigger question is to what extent the industry is going to take this seriously and what they’re going to do to turn this around. And it’s not going to be easy.

Keren Henderson: I think that an additional problem is that we’re already seeing the consequences of decisions. So, it’s not what are we going to do soon? It’s what didn’t we do already, and we have to backpedal some.

Well, all right. So, this lays out a lot of problems there on the carpet. Who do you hope really sees the survey?

Bob Papper: Well, I mean, the key is the people who make the ultimate decision. We’re talking about corporate decision makers. We’re not talking about news directors. News directors aren’t making the budget.

Group-wide news VPs? Is that who we’re talking about here? Is it the C-suite?

Bob Papper: Yeah. I mean, it’s the people at corporations. It’s not just the corporate news directors, it’s the people they work with as well, because at the end of the day, these are major budgetary decisions. I would argue it’s going to cost a lot to fix.

Want to put a number on that?

Bob Papper: No, no. I mean, but everything costs money.

Well, we’re also talking about this in the context of a lot of these companies, these larger companies are publicly traded companies and their shareholders need to hear this, too. Will they give a damn?

Bob Papper: No, probably not. But why is it that the TV industry has to produce profits at a level far exceeding the average for American industry?

Keren Henderson: You asked for a number, Michael, it’s your organization puts out the numbers, right? Every year you give us a nice chart with the profits for every one of these companies.

We just ranked them in top 30 and what they’re worth.

Keren Henderson: That number is in there somewhere.

Well, OK. So, let’s say the C-suite. Let’s say we have their ear with this conversation, which we may very well have at a number of these companies. What do you want them to take away from reading this survey?

Bob Papper: There are a whole bunch of things that need to take place and everything costs money. The pay has to be higher. I mean, the reason that the crisis is at least a little lower in the top 25 markets is that, as you noted in the beginning, that they’re paid more, and that helps.

Let me just jump in on that. So, they’re starting at like around 25-ish or so, you were saying earlier?

Bob Papper: Well, we’re now up to closer to 30. That varies. We still have a lot of people starting at around minimum wage or well, there are companies that start at $15 to $18 an hour. So, if you block that out…

You can make that a McDonald’s.

Bob Papper: You can make better at McDonald’s. Most McDonald’s are I think in the $20 to $22 an hour range. Why in the world is TV news below that?

Let’s get prescriptive a little bit instead. What’s a reasonable starting place? Let’s start with that in a small- to medium-sized market. What should be the baseline salary?

Bob Papper: Oh, I think we probably should be looking at $40,000.

Keren Henderson: I would agree, something where you can pay your rent and know that you have food all week long and can pay or utilities and put gas in your car and keep your cell phone running.

Bob Papper: And not have to live with three other people in order and count on checks from home in order to survive. Because what happens is, you know, after a relatively short period of time, we’re turning over a huge percentage, I think, of our kids who were interested in doing this and found they really couldn’t afford it, or it just didn’t make sense for them.

Any other immediate prescriptive things that we can just leave on that note right now to start thinking about? Forty grand a year…

Bob Papper: Well, yeah, we’ve got to figure out work/life balance. The thing is, we’re running too tight as it is because we keep adding news, but we don’t add the same percentage of people that we’re adding in terms of news, which means that we’re demanding more and more time from the people who we have. And we have vacancies because we can’t recruit enough people because they don’t want to work under these conditions, which means that we ask even more of the people who were in our newsrooms because we’re short staffed. We can’t do that. I mean, that’s an absolute prescription for failure.

Keren Henderson: I don’t see how we can tease some of these things apart because I see so many people, again, anecdotally discussing their side hustles. If you have to now leave your very busy newsroom job to make enough money to pay your rent. And I assume you can’t do that in a minute or two after work. What work/life balance? You’re never not working. Wouldn’t even sleep.

Right, right, right.

Bob Papper: The industry needs to hire more people, which they say they’re trying to do. But, you know, there’s a reason they’re having trouble hiring people, which is that they’re not paying them enough. And they’re offering what has always been a family-unfriendly kind of industry.

Some heartfelt reexamination needs to be done here across the board.

Bob Papper: Yeah.

You’ve been doing this for some years. These surveys and these numbers keep going up, the burnout numbers seem to be dramatically on the uptick. You’re just grinding in the next couple of years on this. I said it’s maybe it’s not a crisis because we’ve got this percentage, you know, these other kind of countervailing numbers. But is it a crisis, and is it a crisis that’s going to come to a head in the next couple of years? Is the election year and all the stress that’s entangled into that and the Gordian knot of that issue going to exacerbate this to a point of no return?

Bob Papper: I think it’s already a crisis, frankly. And I think that mostly what the industry doing is a lot of Band-Aids to try to keep it going. If there’s a long-term plan someone has for solving this, I haven’t seen it. There have been some efforts and some real, meaningful things to change, not just the counseling, which I would argue is kind of a Band-Aid, because, you know, you’re counseling people in a lifestyle that’s probably unsustainable.

So, what you really need to do is change the lifestyle so that it’s workable. And I think that means you need to do some fundamental changes in the industry to be able to, which includes the salary. We have a couple stations that are experimenting with four days on, three days off. You know, what I haven’t heard anything on is how that’s working, although there are a couple at least anecdotal reports that that helps in some cases. I’ve got a news director who says he tries to give producers at least one day off, a week off.

One day out of seven or one extra day?

Bob Papper: Well, one day, theoretically, one out of five. But, you know, a lot of these things are well-intentioned, But, you know, people get sick. People are under stress. The station is short-staffed, and these things are well-intentioned, but they don’t necessarily happen on a regular basis.

I also think, you know, the people who go into this business, especially if the salaries they’re being paid, are doing it because they want to write, they want to communicate with people. They want to tell stories. If you don’t give them at least some time to do projects that really mean something to them, they’re not going to stay. Because that was why they went in to begin with.

So, I mean, it’s hard to pin that kind of thing down and then you have to let people do it. Well, years ago we complained to the news director that we needed more people because we were all working 60 hours a week. And he said, well, don’t make this show as good.

That’s a hell of an answer.

Keren Henderson: Yours said that to you in so many words. I think mine was more indirect.

Bob Papper: Inartful in those words. And, you know, and I think that was part of why I didn’t stay. You know, you can’t say that to somebody.

Keren Henderson: Yeah.

Bob Papper: Especially what you’re paying. You can’t say that to somebody.

And it’s pretty clear we’re not going to build the bridge over this chasm out of Starbucks gift cards to solve this problem.

Well, I’m feeling pretty bad right now. Definitely not an upper this one but needs to be said and a lot more needs to be said about it, including looking into these new terms that are trying some different schedules I think is something worth following on. And anything anybody has, any substantive ideas. People have to alleviate some of this pressure and achieve that work/life balance. There are some things that we need to hear about.

Well, Keren and Bob, I can feel my own blood pressure has risen considerably just talking about all of this. But thank you for discussing the RTDNA/Newhouse survey with me today. We’ll post a link to the survey with a transcript of this conversation. Thanks for being here.

Bob Papper: Michael, Happy to do it.

Keren Henderson: Same here.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We also have an audio version of the podcast that’s available in most places you get your podcasts. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Local TV’s Burnout ‘Really Is A Crisis,’ Says New Study appeared first on TV News Check.

Wilson recently passed the milestone of his 50^th episode and has gleaned much about the industry’s major currents. Among the key issues he keeps bumping into: the deeply consequential power of AI in production and content creation; the boom in FAST channels; a near-crisis shortage of skilled labor in broadcast ranks; and novel approaches to video storytelling.

In this meta-leaning Talking TV conversation, Wilson shares many of the insights he’s picked up and the red flags he sees on broadcast’s horizon line.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Making the Media, the podcast from Avid, recently celebrated its 50th episode, and Craig Wilson is its host. Just like this podcast, Craig has had conversations with some very interesting people across a wide cross-section of the media industry. He’s intersected some key issues along the way, including the expanding use of artificial intelligence, future proofing newsrooms, a skills shortage and emerging platforms.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Coming up, a very meta episode of this podcast via my conversation with the host of another media podcast, Avid’s Craig Wilson. We’ll be right back.

Welcome Craig Wilson, to Talking TV.

Craig Wilson: Hi Michael, it’s great to be here and see you again.

Good to see you, Craig. Your own podcast intersects a number of tech issues, but the one that rises to the surface most urgently of late is AI. Now, of course, AI has been around in broadcast for many years, and it has largely been beneficial in areas like speech to text, translation and compliance monitoring. But talk has become more sinister around AI in terms of supplanting journalists and perpetuating disinformation and misinformation. Where are you seeing concerns about AI evolve?

Yeah, I think you’re right, Michael. It’s the one topic that I think bubbles up everywhere you go these days. And everyone you talk about has a view and an opinion on it. And it’s interesting, you know, as you mentioned, at the start, we’ve got 58 episodes of the podcast, we actually talked about AI in the first season of podcast a couple of years ago, and then we revisited again in this season and it’s interesting how the views of things have changed.

I think depending on who you speak to, some people are incredibly enthusiastic and positive about what we can potentially bring in terms of a tool which kind of assists journalists, for example, so they can take away some of the time-consuming tasks they perhaps would do, allowing them to focus on that creative element that perhaps AI itself can’t actually do. I think we’re studying with some emphasis now on what is it that the journalists themselves bring to the product?

It’s that analysis, it’s that ability for critical thinking and questioning. And so actually, you know, it can provoke a different kind of conversation about what AI means for journalists.

The other thing I would say about AI is I also think there’s a lot of caution within the industry about what AI actually means. And I think we’re beginning to see that people are concerned about the models the AI has been trained on. For example, the need for copyright. If it’s being framed on organizations or on articles from certain areas. So, I was recently at an event in Berlin where it was one of the topics among the leading broadcasters there.

And the main thing that came through for me, there really was a bit of caution. Yes, it’s an exciting area. Yes, it’s something that everybody wants to look in to, but let’s hang back and let’s take a look at what it actually means before we go and implement things. So, I think it’s one of these ones where are hugely exciting, lots of possibilities of what might come, but a degree of caution about actually implementing is going to mean.

It does seem like the generative side of AI is the real red zone, whereas the other parts of it, you know, the transcription services, for instance, that’s where you don’t really have a lot of controversy. But the generative side is where you can get all sorts of trouble, including kind of encroaching on the journalist’s role and the disinformation, misinformation perpetuation going on.

Yeah, I think it is on that generative side that there is this new degree of caution about what this actually means for the for the industry. And I think not just from the perspective of scriptwriting, for example, or a journalist writing stories, but also around imagery, you know, the use of images. I think we’ve all seen some examples in social media in recent months of images that turned out to be fake.

And I think another element of the broadcast has been talking to people about your content, authentication and trust in journalism. And I think that’s what, again, people are looking for. And if I am working in a journalistic environment, people have to have trust in the content that we are producing, whether it’s on broadcast or on social.

And I think that’s where brands that will probably be combined, that cautionary element of utilizing things like generative AI, because what will that actually mean? What does it mean for the future of journalism? What does it mean about trust the audiences have in in news outlets, in producing content as well? So definitely, to go back to the point you were making about the ways that AI can perhaps assist journalists, other things are there. If you take an example of something like the Panama Papers, you know, a lot of AI tools were used to be able to analyze enormous amounts of information to try to uncover common themes that come out from it.

So, it’s those kind of uses I think people are trying to explore now about how they can assist the journalists, in those ways they can be very beneficial. But you’re absolutely right. That’s the whole generative area. There is a huge amount of caution within the industry.

Among broadcasters, FAST channels have become another extremely hot topic. Why are they so fascinated by it? And what do you think is going to happen next in that sphere?

I think one of the things that’s really interesting about broadcast is I think the vast majority of broadcasters now, they have, of course, some kind of social presence. They have an online presence. But in the broadcast space, there’s only 24 hours in a day and they perhaps have their main broadcast channel, and the weather forecast is there, that is the forefront to their operations. But a lot of them build very, very large archives of content.

And I think people are trying to make sure is that any opportunity we have to monetize the archival content is taken up. And in the past, if you’re going down the route of a traditional broadcast channel, that was certainly something that was quite complex to do. It required a lot of work, a lot of radio interviews to actually get that in place and probably diluting the benefits that you potentially would have from printing and distributing the content.

So, I think why people are so interested in FAST channels is the ease with which they can be they can be set up, the fact that they are advertising-supported. So, there is an income stream coming in as part of that. And actually, the cost of the content that we’re actually delivering to the extent has already been covered because a lot of it is archival content.

But I do think there is a slightly separate element to this, which is I think people are looking at now, in addition to the archival content. What happens if I actually begin to put new content on these channels? Is this a way of furthering engagement with the audience by delivering that? And I think that’s where people are trying to get to now is what is that balance between new content that we perhaps create specifically balanced with all this archival [material] that there is an audience for.

What’s the feedback you’re getting on that front from those who are making forays into original content? I know we’ve both talked to folks at the CBC, for instance, where they were launching a CBC News Explore, which was all bespoke for that channel. Are they getting an ROI soon enough or are they seeing traction in viewership? Because it is a very fragmented landscape. When you’re on FAST, you have to iterate on all these different devices. It seems like it’s a little bit tougher work to aggregate an audience there.

Yeah, I agree that it’s a fragmented marketplace, no doubt about it. But I think we’re seeing huge growth so fast, not just in the American market. I think we’re also seeing here in Europe as well. And I recently spoke to a couple of people, you mentioned the CBC there who have gone down the route with their channel as well, but with others. And I don’t see any deceleration, if you like, in the interest in sending out FAST channels. I think they are seen as a convenient way of getting the content out. And I think they’re also seen as a wave. It’s ability to spread the brand perhaps into different audiences that wouldn’t traditionally come to a broadcast channel.

The bigger challenge that I think broadcasters are trying to address everywhere, particularly when it comes to younger audiences who traditionally, now, are watching less and less traditional television. I mean, I still think that broadcast television has a place. It is certainly still a significant income generator for a lot of broadcasters around the world. When we talk about monetization and other platforms, you know, it’s still very much core to their business. But I think they’re just looking for other outlets where we can take the core content that we already have and we could actually then repurpose it and through repurposing it, spread the brand and hopefully generate further from that.

Let’s move on. One of the things you’ve tackled in your show is TikTok and how news organizations seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame, increasingly, but they aren’t getting any revenue for their trouble there. So, let’s touch on that a bit. First, who is emerging as really getting TikTok, really nailing it and understanding it on the news front, and what are they doing that jibes well with what the platform is all about?

One of the really interesting things about TikTok is a number of years ago, if you spoke to people, what were they trying to do? They basically thought, well, we can create content once and we can just try it on whatever platform, and it will be it will be successful. It just doesn’t work at all.

And I think TikTok, if you like, is this alchemy because it takes all sorts to merge. If you said to people that, you know, in a couple of years’ time, this is going to be one of the battlegrounds for news, I think people would have thought you were off your head. But what’s happening is that because of the nature of the audience that was there and because of also, I think younger people coming into the media broadcast industry and utilizing that, they all have it on their phones, that it’s gained a bit of traction.

I talked in the last answer that we’re trying to find audiences wherever they are. But it was another aspect to this, which is that the way that people consume news has really changed to the extent that I think people at times, don’t recognize they’re actually consuming news. They’re just watching something that’s on whatever platform it is. So, it’s combined to take those consistently. I think what’s happened here, switching the game to corporate customers and reporters is it’s a resource for innovation.

People can experiment and they can find new things, and that then offers them an ability to read and perhaps talk about different issues, perhaps talk about different angles within a story, present a story in a different way, that actually attracts an audience.

Certainly, from TikTok, it’s a very specific type of audience that you’re looking at. I think we’ve seen huge innovation in this. I know, for example, with ABC News in Australia, they’ve got a whole range of incubator projects on this through that innovation lab. While it’s a big focus for the BBC here in the U.K., I think in the U.S. and I think a lot of the newspapers in the U.S., The Washington Post has built a very large TikTok following actually with very few staff members involved in that. It’s a very small team that they actually have that is able to actually drive a lot of people to it. And I think the reason that they’re doing it is—and you’re absolutely right, they’re not making money from it.

Most of us are commercial organizations that want to make money or if you’re a public service broadcaster, it is about reach, reaching the audience wherever they are. But ultimately, what they’re interested in is driving people to their own properties and using it all to an extent. But it’s like a loss leader in that sense of saying we are willing to talk, but if you want to find out more in that, you will come to our website, you come to our social pages, onto our broadcast properties to actually then find more information on that.

And I think that’s why there’s such an interest, along with because the nature of the audience means that traditional broadcasters are not reaching the audience in the normal way that we would have done in the past, and that’s why they’re so interested in them.

On that loss leader front, I mean, we’re over a decade into every social platform, one after another as a loss leader and every media company has to devote a certain amount of resources, labor hours to it. Do you find that any exhaustion fatigue is setting in among media companies around this dynamic, that social is always just a drain on their resources? It’s an audience builder, but only that, and it’s got next to no hope of real revenue ever coming in.

I don’t know if exhaustion is the right word, I think, there’s an acceptance that it’s just part of the beast. I think it’s just part of it. It’s just part of what we have to do.

I think what people are trying to do now is they’re trying to use the analysis and analytics. I mean, YouTube is a great example. You can see exactly when people drop off watching a particular program, and I can then use that to analyze and to do everything else, really.

Other examples I would give—someone told to me once about repurposing a story. They had a very exclusive story that we then went out and created something like 15 to 20 different versions of it for all of the various different platforms. And we said that you can fall out of love with a story if you’re having to do all those different versions of a story. And you can understand by the end of it that perhaps you don’t love it as much as you did when you first got the assignment or the exclusive that they were working on. So, thinking about what you’re saying, I do genuinely think I think it’s just part of the acceptance know that it’s part of the package of what we have to do.

One of the big themes that comes through within the media broadcast news business is about efficiency. It’s not that they’re getting loads more people to do all of these different things. They’re trying to find ways for their teams to work more effectively together. If you have this for content, we can then repurpose. Then let’s do that and perhaps focus on fewer stories and do them for more outlets and concentrate their resources rather than being spread and trying to avoid duplication of effort.

You know, a lot of news organizations still separate digital and broadcast or even print or radio parts of their organization, depending on the scale of the organization. I’m just trying to find ways that they can bring that more closely together. And I think that’s one of the challenges for vendors like ours, is to help them work more efficiently, more collectively together, make it easier to share content and distribute content. I don’t want to silo ways of working, but I think a lot of them have done traditionally in the past because that’s how we’ve evolved.

OK, another topic. You have been delving into the crisis of skills shortages in the media industry. Where are you seeing those shortages happening most acutely?

It’s really interesting. The pandemic has changed a lot of things. We all we all recognize that. For example, Michael, here we are, you and I doing this, you know, perhaps a few years ago with most of us would be in an office somewhere to do that. But I think the pandemic also prompted a lot of people to reevaluate what their working life was like and for a lot of people within the broadcast industry, we didn’t see more generally. I think it’s an industry that’s known for long hours. It’s an industry that’s known for potentially a lot of travel, depending on what it is that you’re that you’re working on. And if you’re working in something like sports, for example, there’s lots of weekend working that’s involved and things like that as well.

So, I think a lot of people reevaluated what we actually wanted to do. Some people took the opportunity to perhaps leave the industry and took a lot of experience away with them. Then at the other side, we then went through a period, of course, where we were all working from home. You couldn’t really get into an office to go and work. So, that opportunity for younger people to then gain the kind of skills that you get from working in an office environment, the connections that you make for people working in an office environment as well. We’ve gone through a period of growth where that has also happened as well.

What’s happening now is opportunity for people coming through education to go into adjacent markets. So, let’s say, I come through and I go in and I start over and I want to be a video editor, for example. I think it’ll work for two or three years at a college, university, come through and I have a degree. My degree is in video editing and perhaps I work in the industry and rather working and working in the broadcast industry.

Perhaps I want to go into corporate, perhaps I want to go into another form of content creation that isn’t traditional broadcast or isn’t traditional post-production, because the opportunities…. If you speak to any organization now, they will have some kind of content creation department or involvement somewhere along the way. You know, if you look at pharmaceutical companies, for example, they have massive departments. I think that for them what has happened is that progression some of those companies can also be quicker than going in … [to broadcast]. I’m going to join as a runner. I’m going to spend some time as a runner. Then perhaps I’ll be an assistant editor. And then I do that for a number of years. Maybe I can get an editing gig. And it took me 10 years to get to where I want to get to.

The other thing we also have to look at is people are investing a lot in their education and as a consequence of that, they want to get some payback and perhaps are looking for that quicker time than it’s on the speed than if you went into more traditional post-production, work your way through the system to actually get to that kind of level.

What does broadcast in particular need to do to kind of sexy itself up to people, potential candidates like that in those positions. We’re looking at all these adjacent industries and faster, quicker opportunities there. Do you have any advice for broadcasters?

There’s two separate aspects to that. One that is really interesting is there is a college or university here in the U.K., that had a course, I can’t remember the specific name of it, but still it was “Learn Broadcast Journalism,” for example. And they basically changed the name of the course to be “Become a YouTuber.” And that instantly changed the view that people had of what this course could actually deliver for them. They actually got a lot of applications for that.

Certain branding is perhaps a little bit of this. You know, for example, if you’re a post house, and you’re creating content, you’re creating content not just for broadcast channels here, but probably creating content for Netflix, for Amazon Prime and for all of the others, Apple TV as well. But younger people don’t necessarily associate post-production with that. They associate that with people who are doing stuff for broadcast, which is the TV my mum and dad watch as opposed to anything else.

This is a theme that we see more just about new people coming in, but also within the media industry. So, it’s about diversity and inclusion. It is about opening up the industry to perhaps people who have not traditionally thought that this was an industry for them, trying to make those opportunities available and encourage that throughout all ranks within the industry itself.

There is a lot more that the broadcasters can do to try to encourage people from different backgrounds, because the other thing about that is that then opens up different types of stories and you can tell different types of stories because, you know, if you have a more diverse workforce, a more diverse set of ideas to consider and to contemplate, you’re ultimately going to create different types of stories from the ones that have been there before.

I think within the industry there is a recognition that we need to do more about diversity and inclusion and encourage more people from more diverse backgrounds to come in and ultimately sort of benefit the industry overall.

Well, you just teed up my next question very nicely, Craig. So, thank you for that. Who’s making real improvement on the DEI front? You talk to a lot of different organizations. Who stands out to you as having been most effective in reaching toward those goals?

Yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of different groups in many different countries that are involved in that. So, I mean, one episode of a podcast that we did with a woman Carrie Wootten from an organization here in the U.K. called Rise, they have done an enormous amount of work in recent years of getting into primary schools, high schools as well as colleges, and bringing in lots of mentors from the industry. That’s one of the really interesting things that they have done, where they are peeling up younger people who are coming through perhaps a college or perhaps in school with people within the industry who are giving their claim and highlighting to them what the industry is about.

The other thing as well is there are so many jobs involved in the industry, a whole range of jobs. If you’re outside the industry, you probably didn’t even realize what could be involved. Organizations like Rise did a lot of great work in there. Also, and I’ll speak specifically over here in the U.K., your organizations like Channel Four, for example, they do a lot of work again with their suppliers to try to encourage this. And I saw some adverts just this week for paid internships. There’s some major organizations like CNN and others I know doing as well because, you know, the concept of an internship that’s unpaid, you’re almost instantly ruling people out by doing so.

The U.K. is particularly bad about that, I think everybody is. But in the U.K., I know that publishing, it’s always been unpaid and you kind of have to launch into that from a place of privilege. So, paid internships are absolutely key.

Absolutely.

Let me let me ask you finally about storytelling innovation. That’s an area where I’m always on the hunt to see where you find people pushing at the forms of video news storytelling. What have you seen in the course of doing this podcast that stands out to you as wow, that’s a really interesting new take on storytelling?

The way that storytelling has changed, and I think part of this is driven by social media and the expectations that people have around social media and also around developments in technology, where some work that’s done by mobile journalists or using mobile devices … what that does is it brings an intimacy to storytelling that you don’t get if you turn up with a big crew and lots of cameras and lights and set up. It’s a slightly false kind of atmosphere because of that, but I think we see people do stuff where a lot of it is shot on mobile devices.

What that I think brings us is intimacy into the kind of stories that you’re telling because it breaks that barrier with the person that you’re speaking to, who doesn’t necessarily think that I’m on television here because there’s a big camera and everything else. And they then become more relaxed. That’s one thing, you get people to open up a bit more.

But I also think you’re able to film in different ways. You know, a number of years ago I think there was a lot of speculation about 360 videos, what that was going to do was not really developed very much because that was seen as a way of immersive storytelling that can be done. But I do think that those kind of developments, the way that you can try to get underneath the skin of a story, you know….

The way that someone described to me recently was there’s a lean-back way of storytelling, and it’s not really what people want now. They want something that’s a bit more engaging. You know, I’ve written a piece today, Michael, because it’s 35 years this month that I started working in newspapers back then, and I’ve been involved in the industry, you know, through all this time. And I’ve seen huge changes through that period. And I think news in particular has become more personality driven. But I think to answer your question, people are looking for guides. They’re looking for trusted people that they think will tell them innovative things that are interesting for them to know.

BBC here has done some work with a reporter, David Ross Atkins, who does these quite intense 6-, 7- , 8-minute pieces. He encapsulates a really complex story and really boils it down. And I think people are looking for those kind of things. It comes back to perhaps something we talked about at the start. It’s about trust and trust in news organizations. I think that’s really important. So that’s a lean forward. Let me be the guide in the process and to take you through the story. I think that’s where the real kind of innovation is going on. Just like I said, we find that really interesting to watch items like that.

Well, thanks for that, pointing us in that direction. So, what’s next for the podcast, Craig? Another season?

We’re about to take a season break, so I can get a bit of a rest over the summer, a couple of more episodes to do, but the plan is come autumn time, or fall as you guys say it, the Americans, we’ll come back with another season. And one of the things that you know has been amazing is that, you know, people have been very giving of their time. I’m sure like yourself when you first started, they can be a little bit challenging because people are like, what? What’s it going to be about and what are you going to talk about?

But, you know, now it’s a bit more straightforward because we have all of the episodes, we can approach people who perhaps have never heard us before. We can send them links to the episodes, and they can hear what it is like. So yeah, I’m fingers crossed, another season starting in the fall running into next year and hopefully telling more interesting stories about the news and media business.

Yeah, it does occur to me that we should we probably should have been numbering my episodes as we’ve been going along here. We sort of ad hoc’ed our way into something that became a tradition, and it is going to be a body of work. You get better and better. You get really great guests as you go along. So, congratulations, Craig, 50 episodes from Making the Media, holding it down from Aberdeen, Scotland. Thanks for being here today.

Thanks a lot, Michael. Good to talk to you again and hopefully see you in person sometime soon.

I hope so. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We’re also available in audio only form on all the major podcast platforms. We are back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching and listening to this one and see you next time.

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Dreyer is trying to make that very kind of show with Earth Odyssey, now in its fourth season via Hearst Media Production Group and NBC’s “The More You Know” Saturday morning block. It’s a gig she squeezes in along with her day job as meteorologist of Today on NBC and as an anchor of its third hour.

In this Talking TV conversation, Dreyer discusses her role at Today and where climate change discussion has begun to permeate weather reporting. She shares what’s different about hosting the third hour since returning from the pandemic. And she reveals why the most recent episodes of Earth Odyssey have been the most significant to her.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Dylan Dreyer is a meteorologist, children’s book author and anchor of the third hour of NBC’s Today. She is also the host of Earth Odyssey with Dylan Dreyer on Hearst Media Production Group’s “The More You Know” block on NBC.

Earth Odyssey is a globetrotting show covering the environment, conservation and animal welfare in its fourth season. And Dreyer recently shot a spate of episodes at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, which she found, by all accounts to be a transformative experience.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Up next, a conversation with Dylan Dreyer about TV meteorology, the Today show and what she hopes for viewers to take away from Earth Odyssey. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Dylan Dreyer.

Dylan Dreyer: Thank you so much. It’s so nice to join you.

Glad you could be here. Dylan, the Today show is a pretty big platform to report the weather on, not to mention your anchoring duties in the third hour. We’ve had some meteorologists on this podcast in the past, and invariably we get into where their work is intersecting climate change. So, let’s get into that ourselves. Where does climate change fit into the narrative of where and how you report the weather?

Well, you know, I think it’s really special because at the Today show and NBC in general, we saw the need for a climate unit. I remember when I first started here, we had one producer. His name was Don. He’s worked here forever. And he helps make the forecast and he helps make graphics that we see every day on the show.

And since that time, which was about 11 years ago, our whole weather unit has evolved into having multiple producers. We have people in the morning, we have people in the afternoon, we have folks who focus on getting us all the stats that we need. Catherine, one of our producers, is amazing at tabulating all the facts that we need to tell, the stories that we need to tell. And then we’ve expanded into the climate unit so that there is a set of producers who can focus on telling the story of the climate.

And it’s still important as a news program to not be preachy, to not showcase necessarily our views, but to tell the story and let people take away what they want from the story. But we need the staff and the team to be able to tell those stories, and folks watching can do what they will with it. So, I think it’s just really a good sign that we saw that need to tell a deeper story when it comes to the Earth’s climate.

Personally speaking, what do you feel are your own responsibilities in terms of discussing climate change? I mean, I know on the Today show you’ve got to keep it light, but where are your opportunities there?

I think there’s so much happening across the world that we don’t necessarily know is happening. You know, I actually just had a chance to go out to Hawaii and talk about the Laysan albatross. It’s a bird that lives on a remote Hawaiian island. You know, it’s a five-day boat ride from the northernmost point of Oahu. And from this incredible story, we were able to show that this is one of the most remote islands. Humans cannot go to this island yet. It is covered in plastic. The birds cannot even walk around. They’re making nests in plastic Frisbees because it’s the part of the ocean where the garbage from three different continents come together because of the currents in the ocean.

So, it’s truly fascinating. You know, so often we do these nature shows, and we see these nature stories that showcase these animals and don’t really talk about the human interaction with these animals. But we’re as much animals on this planet as any of the other animals we’re familiar with, you know. And here we are creating this environment for these poor birds that have been around since the dinosaurs. And they’ve survived massive extinctions of all other animals. This bird has survived. And yet here it is, the plastic that is the biggest predator to these birds.

So, that’s the kind of story you want to say. And then hopefully it resonates with people to the point where it’s like they think about the next time they purchase a bottle or plastic bottle of water. Maybe we can use a refill instead. You know, maybe we will recycle, maybe we won’t use that straw. It’s just these little things that if everybody can make these small changes, perhaps they can make a big difference. And because we have such a huge audience, hopefully we’re reaching enough people that you can actually see a difference being made.

A meteorologist in Iowa recently resigned over what he described as PTSD from receiving numerous threatening emails over discussing climate at all during his forecasts. Have you ever gotten any kind of menacing response for discussing the subject on air?

Fortunately, not directly. There are going to be comments on Twitter. We’re in this world where people can say whatever they want from the comfort and anonymity of their own home. I will never meet that person, that person would most likely never say it to my face if I did. So, I think there are people who certainly want to get mad at us for certain things we talk about.

I don’t understand why we’re not talking about people drastically changing their lives. I mean, these are just small things that maybe we can live in a better place. I don’t see how this can upset people. Fortunately, I haven’t gotten direct comments and the ones I get on Twitter, I just kind of shrug off.

Do you think the TV meteorologists generally need to sort of get behind when an incident like this happens or there is some sort of general attack that that the whole community? That meteorologists need to in some way band together?

I think we’re trying to simply by telling these stories, you certainly see them a lot more across all networks, across local news. That’s our way of standing up to people. At first, perhaps it’s new. Perhaps nobody wants to be preached to, which what I said in the beginning. We try not to be preaching. We try to just tell the story.

I think as time goes on and enough of us tell this story, it becomes part of what you get used to seeing. Everything’s jarring at first. People don’t want to hear us tell you what to do. Instead, we’re going to step back. We’re going to tell you a heartfelt story about the state of our planet now from all these different aspects and all these different stories we can tell.

And hopefully people will get used to hearing them and they’ll do what they will with them, if that makes sense. It’s hard. It’s hard to come up and take a stand. And we’re doing so by example. Just by telling these stories, I think, is our way of taking a stand.

1. The Today show. What’s it like hosting that third hour now that we’re on the other side of the pandemic? Did you change the way you approach your job in any way, or was it more just a matter of getting back into the old rhythms?

It’s certainly a matter of getting back to the old rhythm. It became a new normal when we were all at home on our remote cameras. We had to work with the delay. You try to make a joke. We always joke with each other, we always tease each other, and the delay doesn’t allow those jokes to happen. There’s no instant reaction when you have to wait for a one-, two-second delay.

Latency is a humor killer.

It is. It just changes everything. So, when we got to get back in the studio with each other, even when we were separated at first, you know, we had all the space between our chairs. It’s just such a wonderful thing to all be in the same studio together. And now we’re all squeezed into that desk together and we can rag on each other and tease each other just like we always did. And I mean, I’m sure a lot of people feel this way. You look back and think, How did we do that before? Because it seems like a distant memory. But we made it through. We made it work and now we can get back to normal.

Today‘s been around a long time, since 1952. Is there always going to be a case for a breakfast show like Today? I mean, in a digital multimedia age, where does the Today show continue to fit in?

So many of the stories in the news are stories you can find online. They come up in your feed. They come up on Twitter. You literally get any of the news information you need from various websites. That we know. There’s just really something special about getting your news from someone you feel like you could have a cup of coffee with, someone you feel like you could grab a drink with. That’s what we still try to do.

Not only do we start off the show chit chatting, maybe on a Monday about our weekends, we open our homes up to people. So many people know my kids. I was in Italy last year on vacation with my family, and people were waving at Calvin because they know him from “Cooking with Cal,” you know, my little cooking segment I do with my son. So, there’s that element, that emotional, personal element that we open ourselves up to every morning. You can’t get that just by reading a news article online.

I do feel like when people wake up in the morning, they want to have that relationship with folks on TV because we’re in their homes every single morning. Another thing that’s special about the Today show is, yes, we will cover the big headlines, but that’s not the only story we tell. Just like the story there with the Layson albatross. Maybe you never heard of them before. That’s a bird that you probably will never come in contact with. So maybe you’ve never heard that story before.

Or Jacob Soboroff was on the show today talking about a Jewish standup comedian who is about to open up on Broadway tonight or tomorrow night. And maybe that’s a story you hadn’t heard of before. So, not only do we try to make it personal and let you guys in on our whole family life, we’re also going to tell you stories that I think you can’t find elsewhere. And that’s what makes the third hour special.

All right, let’s talk about Earth Odyssey. You’re in your fourth season there in NBC’s “The More You Know” block. How do you describe the show to people?

I adore this show. I’ve always loved watching nature shows when I was younger. I have three little boys now, they’re 6, 3 and 1. So often you can’t just turn one show on that pleases everybody. My 6-year-old doesn’t really want to watch Sesame Street anymore. And then you turn on another Paw Patrol and my 1-year-old has no idea what’s going on.

But when it comes to nature, we’re surrounded by it. These are the animals we share the planet with. These are the places that are in our world, that you can’t always access. And we have the footage taking you into the rainforest or taking you to these remote islands or taking you to places that you’d never be able to see otherwise. It’s a nice little half-hour show.

And for the first time this season, we’re actually getting to meet some of these animals up close and personal. So, we’ve worked with Brookfield Zoo and anybody who lives anywhere near Chicago or passes through Chicago has a special place in their heart for Brookfield Zoo. It’s been around for so long. They are known for taking such special care of their animals. And we got to meet several of them. I got to meet a giraffe. I got to pet a baby sloth. I got to meet a binturong, which I had never even heard of before, and got to meet it and feed it.

What is that?

It’s like an anteater. It’s got a really long tongue. And I had these little test tubes of baby food that it would just stick its tongue in. And then he was getting a little restless because we’re also filming a show and we have to do several takes. And they said, can I just give you some mealworms? And I’m like sure, thinking it would come in a cup or something. They took a handful of mealworms and just put them in my hand and they’re just like crawling up my wrists and crawling in and around my hand. And there you have my natural reaction to this absolutely disgusting, disgusting thing that just happened. But it kept the animal happy.

How many episodes did you end up shooting there at the zoo?

My goodness. I think we shot all the episodes for the end of the season, so I think maybe we shot about 12 episodes with all the various animals.

OK, wow.

Yeah, all those little snippets, all those little interviews we did with each animal. I got kissed by a seal. I mean, like it just a big furry face right on my cheek. And it smelled like fish. And it was just so wonderfully awesome and not something I have done yet in these Earth Odyssey episodes.

What do you hope the viewers take away from the show in a general sense?

We all share this planet. You know, it’s not just us. We have beautiful animals and they have survived through so many different things. They just bring so much joy. You know, they don’t judge. They don’t talk back. They’re just living their life. And in a place like a zoo, we get to see them. But on a show like Earth Odyssey, we get to bring you into their homes, and we get to show you how they care for their young. We get to show you what their day-to-day life is like. And there’s something I find so peaceful about watching another animal who doesn’t have to deal with the stresses of life that we have to deal with. But they have their own things going on.

I might say theirs is a little worse sometimes.

Yeah, exactly. And it’s fascinating to open up that world to people because these are animals we might not meet otherwise. So, this is our show that kind of shows, you know, who we’re sharing the planet with.

A seal’s life, for instance, I learned recently on a boat trip in northern England, is extremely rough. They’re either fighting or having babies all the time.

All the time.

No peace. No peace for the seal. Let’s just bring this back a little full circle to where we started on climate change. And each show, zeroing in on the environment and animal welfare might once have been sort of generally agreed-upon safe territory for TV. But we are in a much more fraught cultural, political climate now. It’s more it’s more conceivable to think that a show like this and its values are coming into some crosshairs. Are you worried about that moment coming? And have you prepared how rather are you prepared to respond to it from the platform that you have if it does?

I think there’s something nostalgic about watching a nature show. We all grew up with a nature show of some sort, whether it was Jack Hanna or whatever we watched. And all we’re trying to do is educate families about who we share our planet with by telling some of the stories.

I think it will certainly come across how human interaction has perhaps negatively affected some of these animals or some of these locations. You have monkeys that are trying to survive in more of a city lifestyle that they have had to adapt to, but they have adapted. And it’s fascinating to see how some of these animals have adapted in some interesting ways.

That is because of us. You know, so again, the show doesn’t try to be preachy. In this case, we’re literally just showcasing animals in their habitats. So, I don’t think we’re going to run into an issue with Earth Odyssey, especially as far as people getting upset by watching it. And we hope just the opposite. It’s a family show. Hopefully it sparks some conversations. Maybe it’s one of those things where kids do a little more research on a particular animal.

And kids are our future. Maybe they realize they have a connection to an animal that they see could be suffering because of climate change. And maybe they’re the ones to make a difference, to make life easier on our planet. So, it’s all about education, it’s all about information. And I see it in my own kids that if they’re interested, they take the lead on, you know, trying to perhaps help in the future.

OK, well, Dylan Dreyer sounds like you had a lot of fun feeding the animals at the Brookfield Zoo.

I certainly did.

Good for you on that. Those special episodes are coming to your screens soon. Thanks for being here, Dylan.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can find new episodes of Talking TV or all of our episodes at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. New episodes are out most Fridays, and we will see you next time. Thanks.

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Brian Morris, chief information security officer (CISO) for Gray Television, says top leadership needs to be completely invested in propagating a culture of cybersecurity across the company. But he hastens to add that awareness and understanding need to be bidirectional between the CEO’s and CISO’s offices for that investment to truly take root.

In this week’s Talking TV conversation, Morris shares tips for building a culture of cybersecurity amid more frequent and clever attacks. He says the nearing of an election year should make vigilance all the more urgent. And he says reenforcing the positive in cybersecurity, rather than making it a punitive cudgel, makes all the difference.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The threat of cyberattack remains one of the most serious facing broadcasters today. The problem is that arming themselves against such attacks is a fast-moving issue requiring constant adjustments in strategy. So, what do broadcasters need to be doing today and every day to be ready?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Brian Morris, chief information security officer, or CISO, for Gray television. We’ll be talking about how to build a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcast company and critically, how the CEO needs to be a critical instrument in establishing and maintaining that culture. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Brian Morris, to Talking TV.

Brian Morris: Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.

Good to see you, Brian. How grave is the threat of cyberattack that broadcasters face each day?

Well, it’s grave, and I’m sure that’s not a surprise to anyone. I think one of the things that we have to get used to is that it’s not a single threat. You don’t fix it and walk away. It’s constantly changing, constantly evolving, constantly something that we have to adjust ourselves to be able to relate to and to be able to protect ourselves against.

Now, I mentioned at the top cybersecurity is a moving target, which you’re speaking to right now. Can you explain why that is and how a broadcaster needs to be continuously adapting to threats?

Well, I think it relates to as threat actors get better at their job, we get better at our job. Not only us, but cybersecurity vendors do. It was just a few years ago, pretty much everything was malware based. If you had good endpoint protection, if you had EDR, you could knock out 90% of the threat.

Well, now today that’s changed. It’s fileless, it’s non-malware based. Today the credential is the golden tool for getting in. A compromised credential is how a threat actor gets in the phishing campaign.

A few years, those were mass volume coming out. Nowadays, it’s a spear phishing campaign. Spear phishing, smishing phishing, all designed to reach instead of a mass group, the individual target. The threats are more personal to the end user, therefore they’re more effective.

Let me roll back here. Is a spear phishing is targeting an individual person, not just sort of phishing across the whole company?

Exactly.

1. What is motivating these threat actors primarily? Is it money or are they just trying to ransom or is it something else?

It depends on whether you’re talking about cybercriminals. In many cases, those are monetary driven. That’s the ransomware. But then when you get into state actors, it changes a little bit. You know, North Korea is focused on ransomware. China is focused on information. Russia, they’re just disruptive right now. So, it depends on where it’s coming from as to where the target is within a company.

Are the state actors targeting media more than other categories of business or corporation?

I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re immune to that. I’m actually surprised that we don’t see more of it from a media standpoint. Of course, with election year coming, that’s going to increase, I believe, the ones that you see a lot. Health care, government and such are the big ones that are getting hit. But I think we are seeing a rise in it, and we will continue to.

Is AI making the threat of attack any worse right now?

Somewhat. I don’t think it’s quite the boogeyman everybody points it out to be, yet. It’s done some things to make threat actors a little bit easier. Some of it’s been documented. Well, helping to generate better code is one. Another one is just the general phishing campaign. There is a language barrier for overseas phishing. And a lot of times you can spot phishing emails just because the grammar and spelling is poor. With generative AI, you can put it in English and get it in something that looks a little bit better. And so, that is a threat. But then again, on the other side to that, it’s not just the threat actors that have AI, we also have it on our side and security companies stuff are using that to help identify these threats and help remediate.

And so, when you talk about on the two sides here, is it sort of just always leveling up like increment by increment? The threat actors are on a par with the level of the defenses that you bring to bear. Does anybody ever get the edge there?

Well, I think the threat actors always have the advantage because they always think of the next thing and then we have to follow up and figure out how to block it. We’re never sitting here thinking, OK, what can they do next? Let’s come up with something. So, we’re always a bit on the defensive. But, you know, that’s the nature of the beast.

Those damned threat actors. So, protection is largely about employee training, isn’t it? A big part of it?

It’s becoming more and more about that. It’s less the fact that you can put a tool in place and color it covered. Not to say that has any less importance that’s still there. It needs it. But the employee you know, employees, are your biggest threat. They’re your biggest area. That’s not really a valid statement. Employees in concert with a good security program are some of our best protection. Employees can notice things long before the security department notices.

I know in our phishing emails, a lot of times the ones that get through our email security are caught by, I can almost put in a handful of employees that’s going to tell me right away, Hey, Brian, this doesn’t smell right. Take a look at this. And so, they’re very helpful in covering that.

How does the training come in to building an overall culture of cybersecurity? Does it need to be a constant, recurring thing? Is it something that you do in in regular intervals?

It is. And there’s been security awareness campaigns, you know, monthly trainings or something like that, and then simulated phishing campaigns and such going out. But that’s evolving, too, nowadays. We have to develop a security culture within our business. It has to be more than sending out a training video and assuming that people are going to have that and they’re going to they’re going to follow it. People are in a hurry. They do their job. And unless the response to, say, a phishing email is automatic, there’s a good chance they’re going to click on it. So, we have to build a culture that that means security is just part of the way of life for us.

Are you still testing people, though, that, you know, you could put out false phishing or spear phishing attempts to test individuals, and if they fail the test, you kind of pull them in for more direct training?

Well, we are doing simulated phishing, but my view on that is a little bit different. I think simulated phishing for the most part is not to tell us if the employees are doing their job, but to tell us if we’re doing our job. Are we building the culture where people are looking for this? Are we building a culture where they’re on our side, where they see themselves as a part of the overall security landscape and they want to do it rather than trying to catch somebody doing something wrong and then clobber them for it?

What are some of the other best practice facets of building up a culture of cybersecurity at a broadcaster?

Well, I think one of the first things we need to do is to make security a positive thing, not a negative thing. I always joke that I’m the “Office of No,” and to a certain extent that that tends to be true. But we need to make it something that people embrace. We need to develop champions within each department. As I said, I have I have certain people out amongst our stations. If they see something wrong, they’re going to hit me up right away and let me know.

We need more people like that, and we need to encourage that rating to reward that. We need to make sure that we brag on those people and let them know training needs to be fun, less tedious than what it is. And there are vendors out there that are working hard at making training something that people look forward to rather than something that people dread.

The other thing we need to do is we need to be better at communicating. We need to get out and let people know, hey, this is what we’re seeing. This is what you need to look out for. Not scary, but just informative to get people involved in it.

Now, getting C-suite buy in is absolutely critical to all of this. Why?

It is because cybersecurity is no longer an isolated department that covers one little area. You’re not just covering email and endpoint; it becomes a broader spectrum. You’re talking about an enterprise risk, you’re talking about governance, you’re talking about compliance.

And now with some of the regulations that are forthcoming for publicly held companies, recommendations to CSA from the White House and such and the FCC. Now we’re having to become more formalized in what we do, our documentation, our vendor reviews.

And that means we need to be able to justify what we’re doing to the C-suite and then up to the board. And so, getting C-suite involvement, the CEO involved in that and supporting it is critical to being able to go out and reach all areas of the enterprise and not just select employees or select departments.

What does responsible CEO behavior look like in this context? What’s the onus on the CEO in both a more macrocosmic and a daily sense?

I think the first thing we need to expect from a CEO is to support the security program, support the CISO, and let it be known that the CISO is an important part of the business and that the influence needs to go across the entire company.

But it’s also on the CISO to understand the business from the CEO side. You know, we sit here, and we say, Well, here’s a tool to do this. Here’s a tool to do this, here’s a tool to do that. We need to be able to look at it from the CEO side and say: Why is that important to the CEO as it is to us? So, we need to become more savvy that direction.

Well, fascinating stuff, Brian. I know that we will be getting into a lot of these issues at TVNewsCheck’s Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat at the NAB New York show this October, which you’ve been involved in. This is a convocation of CISOs and other security executives, all done off the record with no media coverage. And the conference sessions are interspersed with private information exchanges in which people like me aren’t even allowed in the room. So, if you’re interested in this event for you or your company, there are links in the story attached to this podcast with information where you can get more information on tickets and details of the event. Brian, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can always watch our extensive back catalog of episodes on TVNewsCheck.com or on our YouTube channel, as well as on most places where you get your audio podcast. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Building A Cybersecurity Culture For Broadcasters appeared first on TV News Check.

The Associated Press has just released a new AI-powered search tool for its AP newsroom platform that may mitigate the problem. This tool uses descriptive language to connect searchers with their targets, bypassing metatags altogether. It may end up being a game-changer in the fast-developing world of making media asset management systems and archives more searchable in the process.

In this week’s Talking TV conversation, Paul Caluori, AP’s VP of global products, and Derl McCrudden, AP’s VP and head of global news production, share what’s underpinning the new AI tool and its wider implications for the industry. They also look at developments in generative AI applications like ChatGPT and how they may problematize content authenticity on the one hand, but could mature into a valuable tool on the other.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The Associated Press recently announced the launch of an AI-powered search tool on its AP newsroom platform for multimedia content. Rather than just using a conventional metadata search, the new tool understands descriptive language and offers up search results based on the description a user provides. Just think of the implications for all those broadcasters who spent untold hours with knotted brows searching through inadequately tagged archives.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Paul Caluori, AP’s VP of global products, and Derl McCrudden, AP’s VP and head of global news production. We’ll talk about how AI is enabling a more accommodating kind of search ability across a massive archive and the wider implications for AI’s usage in broadcast media asset management systems. We’ll also talk about the widening use of AI at the AP, which was a vanguard adopter of the technology, and the ethical and operative guidelines it’s adopting around AI’s usage. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome Paul Caluori and Derl McCrudden, to Talking TV.

Paul, this new tool allows users to search through apps, vast photo and video library without needing very specific meta tags to do it. How were you able to build that?

Paul Caluori: We actually are working with another company called Merlin One, which is based in Boston, and they specialize in AI applications for visual assets. So, what we’ve done is we’ve adopted their engine after working with them over the last year to prepare for this.

And what it does is look at the description that a user puts in and is able to sort of understand concepts in a way that keywords and regular tags, you know, are just sort of very, very blunt. And it is also able to translate those into elements within a visual context so it can look for a moment within a video or it can look for a component within a photo, and it makes it a much more specific kind of search than we typically get.

What’s really great about it is that it can find things that we don’t have tags for. And if you think about our whole archives or, you know, our photos, go back to the 1840s. The AP was founded in 1846. We have photos that go all the way back to the beginnings of photography. Nobody was thinking about metadata back then. And so, a lot of these things are not very well tagged and are difficult to find. This is a way to sort of unlock all of that, and we’re very excited about it.

Well, this is fascinating how this searchability works. So, how accommodating can it be exactly for the user who has only a kind of very abstract or imprecise idea of what exactly they’re looking for?

Paul Caluori: That’s such a great question because it gets right to the heart of one of the things that this is going to change, which is the way people approach search. Right, so typically people approach search with that sort of broad scope of what they’re looking for, because that’s how search works. I’m going to put in one or two keywords, then I’m going to start sifting through a bunch of results to see if anything sort of grabs my fancy.

If you want to search that way with this, you can say, I’m looking for, you know, soccer games with a blue sky or I’m looking for soccer games with… or excuse me, Derl might call it a football game, so, no, I’m looking for a soccer game with people who are wearing yellow uniforms, Right? Because I’m an art director and I’m looking for a particular look. So, you can look for abstract ideas like that. If you were looking for something, you weren’t quite sure what you wanted, it will return a whole lot of results. And then you start sifting through them the same way.

And that seems to be the problem. I suppose the danger here is that the user is then flooded with search results. So, how can you avoid that or winnow that down in a more user-friendly way?

Paul Caluori: I think that while we’re always flooded with search results, anything you search for, you get millions and millions of results, and you get past the first 10 and it gets pretty far away from what you were looking for. So, I think the way around it is for users to start thinking a little bit more specifically about what they want.

You know, it’s hard to find something if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for. So, you know, if you do want something very specific, you can enter that into this search engine, and it gives rather strikingly precise results. I spent some time playing around with it, so I started looking around, show me pictures of Winston Churchill or video of Winston Churchill in a garden. And then somebody said, Well, let’s see if we can find him feeding birds. So, all right. I literally typed in Winston Churchill in a garden feeding birds. That’s pretty specific. And it came up with like five videos, and it went right to the moment where that exact thing was happening. I didn’t know that that was part of our archive. And I guarantee you we don’t have anything tagged like that. But I mean, knowing exactly what you’re looking for, you can find out pretty quickly whether we’ve got it.

So, the more language you throw into this search field, the more it is going to winnow it down.

Paul Caluori: That’s right. That’s right. So, instead of doing it after your search, you do it ahead of your search and find the things you’re looking for. We have research teams here both in the U.K. and in the U.S. working with our different markets. And, you know, our great hope is that this makes them more able to serve their customers effectively.

Broadcasters are going to be quite interested in the underlying technology here because so many of them are wrestling with the archives that are woefully undertagged, as you know. For those who started to try to impose some order on all of that chaos, they’ve been going about it by having AI wending through and adding tags. And it seems like this isn’t the same model now with this new tool, which would just appear to kind of circumvent the tagging process altogether. Do I have that right?

Paul Caluori: I think that’s right, yeah. In fact, I was just talking with one of the people who worked on the engine before this conversation, and I asked that question whether, you know, do you anticipate that your service would add in tags and said, no, actually, this is you know, that I think I really think that the AP would be better served by using our own tags, along with a third-party search engine or any sort of AI engine to find content because we have a specific set of tags that we use to identify things.

And, you know, my colleagues who work with Derl in our news department have specific ways of tagging things. And I’ll bet you that most organizations have their own ways of tagging things. And to the extent that any one organization can be consistent about how they tag things, that’s miraculous in and of itself.

If different organizations can be consistent in the way they tag across multiple organizations, I don’t think that’s a much higher peak to climb. I think philosophically it makes sense not to try and impose that. That said, I think that some level of metadata tagging, and AI search combined will give us the best results.

Because for breaking news, for example, an AI agent that knows how to find particular things within, you know, concepts within a visual is very good, but it won’t know that at 3:02 p.m. yesterday a dam broke and that these and it was in this particular product. You know, it’s not going to know that kind of specific information and that’s where metadata is really, really valuable.

Yeah, I’m just saying about the idea that every company might tag in exactly the same way, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Is this tool public-facing or is it only available to AP members?

Paul Caluori: It’s public facing. It’s both. We have an e-commerce function at AP newsroom that walk-up users can use to find visuals. It’s not our entire archive that’s available through that. The experience that our subscribers have will yield a look at a much larger content site. And also, you know, our subscribers have the benefit of working with our staff — those researchers I talked about and other experts who worked on this. So, it’s there for the walk up public. It’s better for our subscribers.

Got it. Derl, let me bring you into this conversation. As I mentioned at the top, AP has been at the vanguard of AI usage, and I’m thinking about years back when it started using AI to generate earnings reports for many smaller publicly traded companies and minor league sports baseball scores. What’s been the widening use of AI at AP since then?

Derl McCrudden: So fundamentally, the use cases we’re looking at are really about the same thing. It’s about making more impactful journalism. So, the earnings reports that you’re talking about dating back to 2014 was about instead of taking a small group of financial journalists and getting them to do as many earnings reports that they can, which had a finite number, we were able to automate a lot of that using and templated it, and then we could make a lot more of those reports and free up the time of those journalists to do higher volume work.

That’s the common thread of everything that we’re looking at. So, the examples I’d give are a few years ago we started working with a transcription company that takes audio, usually on video strips. It often converts it to text. And for any news producer who has ever had to spend, you know, time looking at a 30-minute interview and rushes from three camera outputs and trying to find the sound bite that they know they had in the moment of the interview. But their transcription themselves and their notebook is not as good as you know, as it should be.

This has been a lifesaver for us. And so, the company we use happens to be Trint. There are others out there, but we create about 27,000 hours of live video — we’re the biggest wholesaler of live video in the world, and we default to transcribing all of that content. And what that’s doing is instead of putting the pressure on a producer or an editor, it’s allowing to focus on the journalism and then let the tool do the heavy lifting so that we can find the business we need or discover the bits we need and to do it at speed.

I’ll just add one more thing. It also allows us to do something slightly different, which is to work in a different way, and that involves a mind shift. So, for instance, in our media asset management system, we’re now in a system where the cloud integrates with that. And instead of having to shuttle up and down or to down the timeline, we’re able to go to print transcription, but we want to highlight it and then it drops down into the edit. And it’s a different routine, if you like, from what we we’d gotten used to.

Beyond the sports and the earnings reports I mentioned before, have you found a wider application of sort of templatizable stories using AI to generate those?

Derl McCrudden: Well, we’re not doing that. But anything that revolves around a verifiable data set is fair game. The one application we are looking at is around localizing our content. So, for instance, when we do stories that are about, I don’t know, the price of gas in different states that we can then localize, we can then give our customers and our members the tools to localize that content so they can drill down into specific datasets around a bigger story.

And that allows a degree of reformatting content and reformatting stories and applying them in a different way than would have been possible otherwise.

AP is a very venerable and storied news organization, going back, as you said earlier, to the 1840s. And so, I’m sure that its forays into AI usage are coupled with some pretty serious ethical and operative principles. Can you describe how that process is playing out at AP, Derl?

Derl McCrudden: That is a real-time conversation. I suspect every newsroom in the world is having this right now. Our standards and principles are what we live by, how we operate. And, you know, not just our journalists, but all of our staff members subscribe to those principles.

But they have to not be set in concrete or in stone. They have to be relevant to the environment in which we operate. And what generative A.I. has created is an ever-changing landscape which for some people has come out of nowhere. But for others, as you know, we’ve seen it developing over a long period of time.

And so, where we’re at now is going back to basics. We expect our journalists not to use those nascent, generative AI tools to create journalism unless it’s something that is like a device within a story — like “we asked ChatGPT to give us a comment on this thing about generative AI.” And, you know, we’ve done stories around that kind of device, but otherwise we’ve actually sent an all-staff memo not that long ago saying, just a reminder, if you’re unclear that, you know, we’re not using this kind of technology today.

What it really leads us to is thinking very carefully about how we do take these tools and how they apply to us. We’ve all seen examples of tools out there that will create scenes based on an archive or a database that it draws on. We’re about eyewitness journalism and about putting journalists into the heart of a story and faithfully telling that story. So, the tools will help us in that work, but not create something out of nothing.

For both of you, where are your own key areas of concern around AI’s usage in news right now?

Derl McCrudden: For me, I would say it’s about understanding how we can spot things that are not real or what they’re not purporting to be. And that really means getting under the hood of generative tools to understand them, working with some of the big players in the market in order to understand how they are doing, tagging metadata, how what’s created out of a camera or a microphone is [real], then how we use that and make that available within the newsroom. That’s the direction in which it’s headed.

Watermarking content when it airs?

Derl McCrudden: Watermarking it and not just adding … I’m a journalist not a not a technologist, so I’ll get out of my lane pretty quickly if I go into detail. We need journalists to do journalism. And that means using a gut check. Is something too good to be true? It probably is. You know, if it seems that way, it probably is.

So, we still do journalism one on one. For us, it’s about trying to spot the fake. So, to answer your question about what keeps me awake at night, it’s the fakes that the generative AI tools can lead to, although it has a lot more positive uses as well.

Paul, what about you?

Paul Caluori: I’m right there with the question of whether this is real or not. So, you know, I’m responsible for products and our customers were already asking us, how are you going to guarantee that what you’re sending to us is authentic?

And that’s that is just central to the way our relationship with AI has to play out. We have to be able to be authentic all the way through, particularly when we are looking at UGC. You know, it’s one thing to work within our own journalism and our own people. It’s another to identify other sources.

And we need to do that. We need to do that on a regular basis, and we need to be able to stand behind it so that our subscribers can feel confident. I mean, that’s always been our goal, what we strive for is for our subscribers to feel confident. This is from the AP. This this is something I can stand behind, right?

So being able to sort that out, and as Derl points out, there may be some great ways that we can deploy tools, and that’s an ongoing conversation. But the thing that I’m most concerned about is authenticity. You know, I just I can imagine multiple scenarios, whether it’s visuals or data or, you know, fill in the blank. We need to be certain that something hasn’t been created by an untrustworthy source.

Right. Well, I mean, this technology seems to be exponentially or almost exponentially more sophisticated and potentially also encroaching more and more on the journalist’s role. Do either of you have a concern about that? And does the whole industry need to come together around this issue to come up with some broader guidelines and principles by which everybody should be operating now?

Derl McCrudden: I think in an ideal world, yes. But you alluded before to metadata and tagging, because if there is one system, wouldn’t that be great? I think getting an industry-wide consensus is difficult when something is developing at pace and so is it going to wreak so much change ahead of it. So, I think, yes, there needs to be a wide-scale industry discussion about this, and I think that’ll be ongoing.

There’s a lot of shortcutting there you that potentially some less ethically oriented organizations might take advantage of in AI, it seems.

Derl McCrudden: Yeah, but could I just add one thing? I do want to just make clear, we are not looking at this as a way of cost cutting. We’re looking at this technology as a way of supercharging our journalism and putting our journalists at the heart of stories, whether they are desk editors, editing text copy or photo editors editing photographs, or people in the field creating amazing video and the amazing storytelling we do every day. And we don’t see this technology replacing it.

We see this technology is taking the heavy lift out of mundane tasks to do that higher value work I talked about before.

Paul, you want the last word on this?

Paul Caluori: There are things that are really exciting about this in the future. I can imagine to the point where I was just making that having a large language model that’s been trained on the right things could be a fantastic resource for a journalist to ask questions. It could be like the sort of colleague who knows everything. If you’re confident in what the thing’s been trained on and it becomes a resource for you, it’s valuable.

That’s not the sort of thing that is, you know, to Derl’s point, that’s aiming to just undercut jobs. It’s aiming to make it easier for journalists to do better work. So, I think there’s a lot of discussion about how these tools can harm journalism. I think it’s helpful for us to think about ways in which we can help as well.

That said, to our earlier point, we need to keep our guard up. Authenticity is the name of the game and being trustworthy is what we’re all about. So, it’s a balance, particularly with generative AI. As far as the other types of AI, like the search and recognition tool that we’ve just launched, I’m just nothing but excited about our ability to find things that we couldn’t find before. It’s important to remember that AI is not simply a matter of generative things that we have to scratch our heads over.

Sure. Well, it’s fascinating tool that you’ve built there, and I’m sure broadcasters are going to look at it with great interest. Paul Caluori and Derl McCrudden, it’s undoubtedly a Pandora’s box that we’ve opened here. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about it.

You can watch and listen to past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel, as well as all the major platforms on which you get your podcasts. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks very much for tuning in to this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: AP Resets The Game On AI-Based Archive Search appeared first on TV News Check.

Shore is chair and CEO of Prime Women Media, a digital media brand that is looking to expand into a cable network next year. She says this underserved demographic is a linear TV advertisers’ dream — resistant to cord cutting, financially well off and leaning into issues around health, dating and finances.

In this Talking TV conversation, Shore explains the impetus for the network, how she plans to program it and why streaming isn’t her platform of choice for its initial launch.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Prime Women Media is a digital media company geared to 50-plus-year-old women, and the company is looking to launch a new TV network next year aimed at the same demographic, which it sees as underserved.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Dorthy Miller Shore, board chair and CEO of Prime Women Media, about where she hopes to launch the network, how she’s going to program it and why she sees television as the next step for her brand. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Dorthy Miller Shore, to Talking TV.

Dorthy Miller Shore: Thank you, Michael. I’m delighted to be here. I want to tell our story.

Great. Well, first, why a TV network for 50-plus women?

Well, we are traditional TV watchers. We actually watch cable instead of satellite. We like our news, local and national. We like the movies and all that. We also like to channel surf. We’re not cord cutters. The distributors need to retain us. And so, we think we’re really viable market for them.

How do you see this demographic as underserved? In what ways is linear TV failing to represent this group?

Well, there’s 63 million of us. It’s not exactly a niche market. We’re 20% of the population and only 8% of the women on any show is over 50. Grossly underrepresented. And that hasn’t changed in film across the board. You turn 50, you’re kind of put out to pasture. And that’s true everywhere.

It does seem in my anecdotal experience that there are richer and more roles for women over 50 in scripted television programs than I’ve seen in quite a long time, particularly on streaming and premium cable offerings, though.

Well, you know, there are more than there were. There’s no doubt. But there’s not a tremendous amount. In fact, there there’s a lot of women out there, over 50 actresses, that have really been lobbying about this because there aren’t any good roles. And very often the roles they do come up with aren’t, you know, anything that’s typical of the over-50 woman. Younger men and women see women over 50 in a light in which they no longer live. We’re not our mother’s daughters. We are a lot more active. We’re involved in so many things. We’re a woman who is interested in many, many things. We’re still spending money, contrary to what many advertisers think. We have more money than most of them. So, we are a viable market.

But the main reason for the network, though, for us is after having an online publication PrimeWomen.com, which, by the way, is free. You can get on and subscribe to that. But we found out that women really want and need more information and television takes it to a whole new level. I mean, you can read about it, but that really doesn’t change perceptions and it doesn’t help women to see how they can live differently.

There’s a lot of issues that we face after 50. It’s sort of that menopause thing, and it changes your life in so many ways. One of the biggest areas is health, and that’ll be a real feature of our program — health and what you can do about that.

And so, it’s one thing to Google it and I can read about it, but it’s quite another to be able to see it on television and hear other women talking about it and learning how they’re dealing with it and hearing from qualified doctors.

It’s amazing that we have so many doctors out there who have not been on top of women’s issues and health. For example, there was a story in The New York Times back in February on menopause and how women had been misled for years over a very flawed study that was done of women who had taken hormones. And so, women had gotten completely away from hormone replacement, and there’s suffered just needlessly for years with things that happened there. So, it’s not like anyone is really staying on top of this.

We want to be that network, that channel they can go to where they can hear from really qualified doctors. One of the shows — and it’s going to be entertaining and informative — we’re going to have three doctors that are specialized in either as OB-GYN or brain health and that sort of thing. We’ll have a very lively host for the show, and then we’ll have women come on that are also big personalities talking about these health issues so that women out there, they can hear it, see it, and it can make a big difference. That’s just one area.

Let’s come back to content. I want to talk more about that in just a moment. But first, I want to just ask you a couple of things about distribution, because you mentioned, you know, that this cohort is not cord cutters. They are still cable subscribers and linear TV watchers. But you don’t see a correlate streaming platform or a FAST — free supported ad-supported television channel — as a right destination for the brand?

Well, I do think it’s a good destination for us to start. It’s not that we may not eventually get into streaming, probably, but it’s a good place for us to start. There’s still a big market out there. It’s a very big market.

It does track that this is a linear TV-oriented demographic, but the fact is that cable television is coping with a very serious level of cord cutting, and there’s a substantial amount of constriction happening in that space. Do you see those dynamics as significant headwinds that you’re going to have to face in launching the channel?

Well, the way I see it, yes, they need to get rid of a lot of those channels that aren’t bringing them any customers and advertisers. They will be making space for a channel such as ours, which will bring them more customers and ad dollars.

The ad dollars are huge, and I can speak to that from my background as an advertising executive, and with our PrimeWomen.com, we’ve seen the interest grow over the years. We’ve been out there over seven years. It’s grown exponentially in interest. And in fact, our sales manager sent out a press release to a long, long list of advertisers that she collected over the years. Some of them were advertisers with some big companies, etc., and sent that out to them. I mean, the inquiries have been astounding, them wanting to know when they going to advertise on the channel, what are the rates going to be.

So, we know they’re out there. It’s a pretty winning combination. And I think that that the distributors are going to say, hey, maybe we need to get some of this rid of some dead weight and make room for this channel.

What kind of timeline are you targeting for the launch?

Next year. We’ve got new programing in the works and so we’ve got to create all of that and get it ready.

Which quarter are you aiming for?

Second.

Where are you in terms of overall development? Is the financing in place? And are you talking with the major cable companies about carriage yet?

Yes, we have talked to all the major cable and satellite distributors and had great conversations. They’re all very interested. So, we’re pretty excited about that. As far as financing, that will be coming very soon. There again, we have a big network of women around the country that we know, like my other two founders and I have been involved in women’s groups forever.

We’ve always been a big supporter of women. So, we are involved in an International Women’s Forum and National Association of Business Owners. We’ve got this huge network and again, sending out the press release, I’ve had so many women contacting me and saying, Hey, how do I invest? I want to invest in this network. So, the fundraising part sort of underway, and we don’t expect any issue around that or the distributor.

Well, let’s come back to programing then. You started to talk a little bit about show with doctors, with dealing with menopause and health-related issues. First of all, are you going to be handling all the production yourself or are you going to be working with outside producers? What’s that picture look like?

This has been going on since last July. We’ve been working with top experts, consultants in the business that are helping us, that have built networks before. They know how to produce these reality shows that we want to do or scripted or anything we want. They’ve got the talent and they’re bringing on more and more people. So, we brought in a CFO who has a great background with other networks. It’s something that we’ve been in the works with right now.

And we’ve got some shows already sort of sketched out, if you will, that will start production as early as June. We’re pretty well into it. We’re not just going to try to, you know, wing this. We went out and got the experts.

Hope not, yeah.

Professional women business owners, we know we have to have the right help.

And you’re based in Dallas. Are you going to be shooting these shows in Dallas?

Yes, it will be based in Dallas.

Are you looking at entirely unscripted programing panel shows, reality-oriented? Is the health-related material also the crux of this? Or do you have scripted programing that’s appeared elsewhere?

We’ll launch with some brand-new, original content. And I’ll go back and tell a little bit more about that. And then we will acquire programing, movies, series, documentaries, but they’ll all feature women over 50. That will be key.

The programing that we’re developing in addition to health, another big, big one is career. This age group, you know, they have a lot of headwinds. You know, they’ve got sexism, which is still out there, by the way, and ageism. So, there’s a lot around that. We feel like that’s a big area of interest. And it’s also an area that myself and the founders have a tremendous amount of expertise as business owners our entire lives. We want to address that and help women get past that. One of the shows is called Turnaround. We’ve got an expert who helped businesses turn it around.

These women are going to be not just, you know, urban and suburban. They’re going to be rural. We want to make sure that we’re covering the gamut. Then relationships. Big interest there because, again, your life changes. Divorce happens. You lose your husband or maybe you’ve been single your whole life and then you’re starting to go I’m a little lonely here. So, we want to talk about dating. It’s a whole new minefield out there for women this age.

We think that’s going to be terribly entertaining, too, in having these shows. I won’t go into a lot of detail because we’ve got kind of a secret format that we’re going to be using, and we think that’s going to attract not just women over 50. I think it’s going to attract a broad audience of women and men just because it’s going to be that entertaining. So, that’s just giving you an idea of some of the shows. They’re all going to be entertaining, informative and inspirational.

As you’re describing some of the topics, I’m just worried, is there going to be any fun?

Yes, it’s going to be lots of fun.

Are you still soliciting pitches from outside producers or, for people who might be watching this who are in the production sphere, do you want to hear about more shows?

Of course, yes. I mean, we have someone that will be taking that over in charge of all the production. We’ve already gotten, as you can imagine, lots of inquiries from producers, talent, you name it. So, we kind of set them all over in a file and let them know, hey, we’ll be back in touch in June, perhaps on the 1st of July. But yes, we we’re wide open. We have our ideas and want to hear others.

Got it. And how many hours are you looking to launch with per day of original programing or programing generally?

I wish I could say exactly the number of hours, but about 20% of the total will be original. Then 80% will be acquired. It’s a lot.

Dorthy Miller Shore, thank you for explaining the idea here. And best of luck as you get it off the ground.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. And we are back most Fridays with a new episode. See you then.

The post Talking TV: A New Network Targets Women Over 50 appeared first on TV News Check.

At launch, Local News Live was a bit rough and ready, produced with a minimum of studio dressing and on the fly. In March, however, the service moved from its original digs in Omaha, Neb., to a sharper studio space in Washington, D.C., and it hired a small team of anchors to add some polish to its presentation.

In this Talking TV conversation, Kyle Rogers, news director for Local News Live, explains what’s different about this new iteration of the service. He discusses the storytelling and in-depth advantages inherent to streaming, where time constraints are less onerous than on a live, linear newscast. And he anticipates what’s next as Local News Live gets its footing.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Gray Television’s Local News Live launched in 2021 as a sort of news content backstop for the company’s OTT desks and each of its stations. Produced out of Omaha, Nebraska, it was a simple, low-budgeted news DJing operation, filling in the spaces between streaming local newscasts.

Fast forward to the present and Local News Live’s operations have been shifted to Washington, D.C. Budgets and staff are bigger, sets are slicker and news deejays are now proper anchors. What viewers now see is much more in line with a conventional newscast.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Kyle Rogers, news director of Local News Live. We’ll talk about how the service has evolved, how it’s put together every day and where it sits in Gray’s overall streaming news strategy. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Kyle Rogers to Talking TV.

Kyle Rogers: Michael, thanks for having me. Good to see you.

Kyle, how different is what viewers see today on Local News Live as opposed to what would have been in its original 1.0 version back in Omaha?

Sure. I think viewers can see a more structured newscast now with the new LNL and our revamp and relaunch. We are really promoting a newscast. We are really trying to put together a well-rounded show that streams throughout the day. Previously, it was a lot more live events. Of course, as you mentioned, the anchors were more so VJs. But now we have a team of anchors and producers who are working constantly to bring those live events, have more structured coverage, anchored coverage in addition to putting on a one-hour live newscast.

How many hours of content are you now producing daily?

Our Local News Live hours are from 7 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday. So, we do guarantee three hours of live news coverage, 7 a.m., 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern. Those newscasts really rotate throughout the day. But we’re constantly bringing viewers live events such as scenes of breaking news. Right now, we have a hearing from Washington. And then we’re also updating those news blogs, too, throughout the day to really freshen it up.

These then run on a loop?

It’s a wheel style format.

Basically, it’s coming in to complement the local newscasts that are run on Gray OTT apps, correct?

Correct. You’ll find Local News Live on all of Gray Television’s websites or their streaming page, as well as their news apps. And we’re really there to supplement that stream. So, when the local station is on the air, you’ll be watching their coverage. But the second they dip out, you still have more news. And that’s coming from us. We’re filling.

Their own newscasts are time shifted by when they finish on air, and then they roll over onto the OTT apps?

Correct.

Just to be clear, also, Local News Live doesn’t iterate on its own app, right? It’s folded solely into the pancake of local market news content in those respective spaces?

Correct. We don’t have a standalone app now. We’ll see what the future holds and hopefully so. But we are really just fitting in with those the Gray websites and the apps.

Tell me about the process of how you program this. Do you have or how do you have transparency into what’s being produced at the various Gray stations? And then how do you pull that into your own stream?

Sure. So, every morning we do an editorial meeting, and our team is really divided into regions. That’s their beats. They are constantly checking the station’s websites just to find those stories of interest that could have national interest. Of course, we’re looking for the breaking news and what’s developing there, because that’s, you know, breaking news always starts at the local level. We have that power to really home in on it first and see what’s building up on the ground to bring it to a national level.

In addition, as you know, we’re constantly getting push alerts on our phones, and we have 113 stations throughout the company. I do not have all 113 news apps on my phone or else I’d be getting a ton of messages. But we do have this internal way where we can see every push alert that’s being sent out in real time. We are monitoring that daily. Pretty much it’s on my screen all the time and that’s how we gauge, you know, what’s breaking, what’s happening now, what’s trending, what are people talking about. And it’s really a good way for us to kind of see what the stations are promoting to their audiences, what’s grabbing their attention. And, you know, that’s how we find out a lot of breaking news before the others.

That’s interesting you’re almost a consumer. But a lot of the things that they might do a push alert for as breaking, you know, a fire is happening in such and such a place probably wouldn’t be interesting to this service, would it?

Correct, yeah. I mean, there is always going to be those push alerts about I-81 closed, you know, not really catering to a national audience. But, you know, the most recent example for us, unfortunately, was the tragedy out of Nashville with the school shooting. I mean, we were able to identify almost instantly that there was something happening there that we needed to cover. It started, I believe, with a shelter in place in that area. And we looked on the station’s website. They went live almost instantly with wall-to-wall coverage.

And the beautiful thing about Local News Live is we’re telling these stories through the local journalists’ eyes. And we just patched in the Nashville station’s coverage. We went with their coverage pretty much all day, and I think we were able to get a unique perspective from all the reporters on the ground there with their anchors leading the coverage.

OK, so you flip the switch there, then do your anchors sort of jump in periodically to give some context and back it up a little bit?

Yes, we do. We’ll have anchors just kind of do that. If you’re just joining us, kind of recap and explain, you know, what station we’re watching, why we’re tuning into them. You know, because we really feel like the best journalists to tell a story on the local level are the local journalists. So, this is an opportunity for them to just shine and, you know, really share to a national audience what’s happening there.

Now you don’t have the same time constraints as a linear TV newscast. How do you use that to your advantage? How do you expand on stories in a local market that would likely have much shorter iterations?

I think that’s one of the beautiful things about Local News Live and streaming in general — we don’t have those time constraints, so we feel like there’s a story or a conversation that can have more time. For example, one of our stations, I believe it was up in Vermont, did this really powerful investigation about magic mushrooms, of all things. They took a very well-done story, but we had a lot of questions and we wanted to have a more in-depth conversation. So, we aired that story, invited the reporter who did this investigation and joined LNL for an in-depth conversation.

I thought it was quite compelling. And it also allowed the reporter to really share more that he wasn’t able to on the air and, you know, spark that conversation. That’s what I’m looking for. And I truly believe that these days, you know, if you are taking the time to stream live news, you are a true news consumer. You are hungry for that news. We have that power to really have those conversations without getting too carried away, if you will, if that makes sense. You know, this is what I expect our viewers want.

A few months ago, I was talking with Jonathan Saupe, I think it was at Hawaii News Now, a Gray station. And we were talking about how with his show that he produces daily, a digitally based show, he takes a lot of the scraps, a lot of things that get left on the floor from stories when you’re cutting it down to a minute-30. And often he uses that to create new versions of the stories. And he expands on it not just with interviewing a reporter, but with a lot of stuff that you just don’t use that doesn’t make it into the final package. Are you now doing that yourselves or is that in the game plan to eventually take some of that stuff and create whole new packages?

You know, I would say what’s unique about us in my department is we don’t have reporters here. So, we’re not really in the business of newsgathering as much as we are gathering news, if that makes sense. Ideally, I think that would be great to, you know, get on the cutting room floor of these local stations and bring something to life. But right now, you know, our original reporting, if you will, are our anchors doing these interviews.

I mean, just last week we had Ava Hutchinson, who is running for president for the Republican nomination. He was in studio. Today, we have Marianne Williamson coming to talk to us. That’s kind of where we find those long-form conversations and being able to have a more expanded product, if you will, instead of being tied down to the minute-30. But we do encourage all of our stations back to the cutting room floor. If there’s something more that they want to add or something unique that maybe can’t fit into their newscast to come to us, we have the space and the platform to air it, and we’re all about it.

It does seem then for the anchors’ role that primarily they have to take these stories that are originating in local markets and frame them in a way that makes it relevant for a national viewer to care, right? That’s the challenge there.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we come into our morning meeting and identify the stories that are getting national play in the morning. And our first thing is to identify our markets within Gray to see if they have content that can really supplement it and how we can make that work. Of course, we’re tailoring the anchor intros because they are written for a more local audience, and we broaden them out. Other, you know, it’s for our national audience as well.

It seems like in that tailoring you sort of have to get across “And here’s why you need to care. Here’s why this matters.”

Absolutely. And that’s what we’re up against every day. Our team is really doing a good job with that. And as far as you know, why should someone in Kansas care about this story that’s happening out of North Carolina? And that’s I think that was one of our bigger challenges when we first did this revamp is really writing and, you know, getting that message across to those viewers. But we’re really picking up on it and it’s identifying some good language and how we can make it expense and reach out, reach a broader audience. That’s what we’re about.

Now, the programing format at this time is more or less a conventional newscast. Are there plans to play with that or try different concepts or shows out inside of this service?

Yeah, we’d like to. I always tell people we’re building the house now, so, you know, we’re going room by room. But once we, I think, have everything built up. We’re a relatively new staff, so learning the basics and getting that structure down. I really want to see our team take this step forward.

How can we create programs aside from the newscasts that would have interest across the country if it’s a half-hour show? With some good news, I know viewers are thirsty for good news. I am, too. But really, you know, what can we do to make something different outside of that newscast? And I think really, once we get our producers, everybody more comfortable, I mean, we relaunched less than two months ago now. So, we’re still finding our groove.

But down the road, I really want to see us do some special programing. We’ll have those conversations. Looking ahead, we have the coronation of King Charles happening on Saturday. So, we’ll be doing actually live coverage from here at D.C. We’ll be waking up very early and covering that for all of our radio stations. And we have some unique content ready to go and some unique perspectives joining us. So, you know, I feel like those types of events to where we can add, you know, unique voices to these live events and content to supplement that really will help us stand out, too.

And you are in D.C. You’ve got Gray’s D.C. bureau there, presumably in the same building, right?

Right down the hall. That’s right.

Do you lean on them particularly? Are they even more frequent contributors?

Absolutely. We love having our Washington correspondents on. And again, that’s another example of they come in, they do their story, which is naturally tailored to a broader audience, but we can have a Q&A with them just to dive deeper into the topic they’re covering.

As you know, a lot of the news in Washington can be complex, there’s a lot to take in. So, we can really kind of break it down with them. And we’ve had great support from our Washington correspondents, our White House correspondent, John Decker, is very much, you know, all things Washington.

And we also have InvestigateTV, which I know you’re aware of. So, you know, we have this powerhouse team of national investigative reporters. We have a couple based here in Washington. They’re doing these compelling stories, but we love bringing them on afterwards to really put a bow on the package they’re doing because, you know, you’re left wondering, there’s so much on the table. It’s a talk about whatever they’re covering and to really home in on that and have just more time to explain it, I think it does everyone justice.

The viewer, the reporter being able to expand more on a particular nugget and the story. So, those are some really good conversations that we’re using the resources of Gray with our Washington team, with our InvestigateTV team and our local journalists.

Now you got a bigger budget, better facilities. This is obviously the 2.0 version of this endeavor. What is the 2.5 or the 3.0 version going to look like? How is Local News Live going to continue to strategically evolve?

You know, we’re still in the infancy stage here, 2.0. But I think our next steps would be seeing how we can expand our footprint, if you will, beyond just where we’re streaming now on the apps and our station website. So that’s going to be most likely what’s next for us. You know, we’re already on Roku in some markets, and I think growing that and getting more exposure elsewhere will be what’s next. Stay tuned!

Stay tuned indeed. Kyle Rogers, news director of Local News Live. Thank you for speaking with me about it.

Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com, and on our YouTube channel. New episodes come along most Fridays. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Gray TV’s Local News Live Upgrades To Version 2.0 appeared first on TV News Check.

But another part was that this year’s exceedingly challenged spot ad business has reached a tipping point, and jobs and entire newsrooms are now in the crosshairs as station groups confront hard choices ahead.

In this Talking TV conversation, Emily Barr, TVNewsCheck columnist and former president-CEO of Graham Media, shares her take on whether Sinclair’s actions may be the point of the spear for the entire industry. She weighs in on which markets might be particularly vulnerable as the prospect of recession casts a shadow over the U.S. economy. And she considers local broadcast’s dangerous addiction to political spending and how that creates its own challenges for station groups.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity. 

Michael Depp: Sinclair’s closure of news operations in five markets prompts a number of questions. Among them: Is this a harbinger of things to come in smaller to mid-sized DMAs with too many competitors and too few advertisers? Is this uniquely a Sinclair problem, a knock-on effect of the Diamond sports bankruptcy? And what are the implications for widening news deserts?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. To help answer these questions this week, I’m with TVNewsCheck columnist and former Graham Media CEO Emily Barr. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome back, Emily Barr, to Talking TV.

Emily Barr: Glad to be here, Michael. Thank you.

Thank you. Let’s look at the shutting down of the five Sinclair newsrooms first through the lens of Sinclair’s own latest woes. The company is weathering the bankruptcy of its regional sports networks, which it has quarantined somewhat from the rest of the business. But is it safe to say that this is a direct effect of the Diamond bankruptcy?

Well, I obviously don’t have any direct insight into that, but it would seem like the confluence of these two things coming relatively close together would indicate that there might be a cause and effect here.

Are Sinclair stations especially vulnerable to more news closures relative to other groups because of that bankruptcy?

I mean, they might be. I also think just their sheer size. You know, they have a lot of television stations. I’ve lost track of the exact number, but I know it’s in the hundreds. And there are a number that are in smaller markets. And smaller markets, as you know, don’t tend to generate quite the level of revenue and bottom-line profit that the larger ones do. So, I think when you put all that together, you could say they might be a little more vulnerable.

And this is not a good year for spot TV. A potential recession is still darkening our doors and political isn’t coming to the rescue until next year. Where do you see the most vulnerable newsrooms or newsroom positions broadly across the industry right now? And how deep could potential layoffs or closures go at certain groups?

Well, obviously, I hope that that the larger groups do not take a lesson from this, because if they start to close or shutter the smaller market newsrooms, because those are the ones that don’t generate as much revenue, you know, we’re going to create a ripple effect across the whole country that could be very damaging to our industry and to, frankly, our democracy. So obviously, I hope that doesn’t happen.

But I do think that smaller markets in general are vulnerable because, you know, one of the reasons why many of the larger groups said they needed scale, right, was because they said they could operate more efficiently if they had a larger number of stations and they had more bargaining power with the networks and with retrans and things like that. This obviously kind of flies in the face of that, because this says even though we’re a really large group, one of the largest, we can’t make it work necessarily in these smaller markets. So, we’re just going to shut them down, run a kind of generic national newscast out of, I guess, their D.C. bureau, and call it a day.

Are solidly red states particularly vulnerable because there might not be that level of political rescue next year as well?

You know, it’s really tough to say because political is a very opaque process. When you’re a television station, the money comes pouring in or it doesn’t, you know, and it is really a function of how competitive the races are in your respective markets. And obviously, there are races that are both local and regional, and there are those that are national.

The national ones are the ones we hear about. But lots of competitive races go on locally. I think you also have to ask yourself how competitive are these particular television stations in these particular markets. If in fact—and I haven’t looked into this—but if, in fact, they are not terribly competitive, then they may not have been getting a pretty decent size of the advertising pie anyway.

And then when you layer on top of that, you know, auto advertising has been way down because of, you know, the chip shortage and things like that. And you don’t have political this year because political is an every-other-year phenomenon for most markets, it probably has created a kind of dire situation, particularly for a company that’s in the situation that Sinclair is in with their other businesses.

I was talking with someone the other day who said if it wasn’t for political, a shakeup would have happened in this industry a while back already. I wonder how deep is broadcast’s addiction to political spending and how dangerous is that addiction?

It’s pretty significant because political has done nothing but go up, up, up, as the country has become more and more polarized. And, you know, and I think what’s happened is there’s been this pouring of money, I guess, ever since Citizens United. There’s been this pouring of money into local broadcasts. It’s also going elsewhere now. And it’s created this every other year of boom-and-bust kind of situation.

So, if you were to take political out of the equation or if you were, I think some companies might already be doing this, if you look at political and say, well, you really don’t have a lot of control over political, so we’re just going to put that to the side in terms of how we measure your success. We’re going to like, you know, we’ll obviously take the revenue, but we’re not going to use it as a way of measuring the individual market success. That’s not exactly fair, because the best television stations in a market based on ratings are going to get the largest share of political.

That boom-and-bust phenomenon you just mentioned … when you were a station group leader and those sort of vacillations are getting greater and greater, it seems, between the booms and busts. How hard is that to work with and to plan around?

Well, it’s tough to manage because you really have a hard time budgeting for political. You know, you go in with your best guess. You’re almost always wrong by a lot, by a factor of a lot. And you only hope that you’re wrong in the right direction. So, you know, you tend to try to budget somewhat conservatively, or at least in your opinion, you know, realistically. And then if the if the race itself or the races themselves take off, you might wind up sometimes doubling or even more than that, the amount of revenue that comes in for political.

On the other hand, if a race that’s predicted to be really competitive never materializes, you’ll never see the money. So, I’ve seen it occur both ways. You know, and when I was a CEO of Graham, we had a couple of years where money just didn’t come in as we expected. And we had years when it came in much heavier than we thought.

Now, is there a snowball’s chance in hell that the FCC might look at this dynamic, look at the layoffs and the closures that are starting to happen and consider lifting the cap under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel? Might there be any reason to believe that signals like this could trigger any sort of regulatory relief?

You know, I can imagine that there are some people in Congress who might try to make that happen or might try to ask for that to happen. But the FCC, as it exists today and as it’s constituted, I just don’t see that happening. And I don’t know that anyone in the industry does either. They just haven’t been paying much attention, as you know, to the plight of local broadcasters.

And I think, you know, one point I’d like to make about all of this is for those television stations in the markets that are being shuttered, the local politicians or the senators and congressmen who represent those districts, they no longer have a platform to participate in to talk to the people they represent. I mean, consider that that’s a big deal. If I’m a congressperson coming out of one of those districts and I can’t even talk to anybody on a particular TV station… Now, granted, there are other stations in the market, but it does limit my exposure to my own constituents. So, they may be the ones to actually kick up a little dust about this.

Of course, the flipside of that is they may feel like they have a little less scrutiny, too.

And that’s important. Yes. Yes.

You wrote recently in TVNewsCheck about your own efforts to acquire some newspapers in Maine where you now live with the hopes of establishing a nonprofit news source as a hedge against the kind of widening news deserts that hit smaller communities especially hard. What is the damage to democracy when a newsroom in any medium shuts off its lights?

I mean, it’s very visceral and it’s very real. You stop knowing what’s going on at the school board. You don’t know if your water is clean and potable. You do not know if your government officials are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And there are countless examples of how this has impacted communities and rippled across, you know, entire populations.

So, you know, I think I think it’s the essence of who we are as a community. And if we don’t have a common set of facts and a common framework which to hold the powerful accountable, then we really are lost as a democracy. I really believe that.

Well, cautionary words on which to end the conversation for now. Thank you, Emily Barr, for helping unpack all of this for us today.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We are not turning off the lights here. And we’re back most Fridays with a new conversation. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Emily Barr On Sinclair’s Shuttered Newsrooms appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Cherie Grzech, NewsNation’s VP of news and managing editor, walks through what the recent expansions mean and how the network is managing an increasingly more complex array of collaborating entities including The Hill, also owned by Nexstar.

Grzech shares the value The Hill has brought to NewsNation, how she communicates with Nexstar’s local stations to feed the content pipeline and why she thinks its primetime lineup, while drifting into some familiar cable territory with the addition of Chris Cuomo, remains true to the network’s value proposition of down-the-middle reporting.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: NewsNation had a big month in April. Veteran anchor Elizabeth Vargas joined the network with a new show on the third. The Hill, a show tapping parent company Nexstar’s widely read political site, debuted on the 24th, as did an expansion to 24 hours of news each weekday. The network also unveiled two new studios at its WPIX headquarters in New York’s Daily News building, from which its evening block of programing now originates.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Cherie Grzech, VP of news and managing editor at NewsNation, to talk about all of this expansion and what it means for the network and its future. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Cherie Grzech, to Talking TV.

Cherie Grzech: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

Well, thanks for being here. How important was it to get to 24 hours of weekday news for the brand?

I think it was tremendously important. I mean, obviously when a breaking news story happens, the American public wants to go to someplace they can trust and some place they can get the news immediately. And so, when we weren’t able to provide that during the middle of the day, that was a dimension and a milestone we really wanted to hit so that any time anyone wants news during the week, they can find it on NewsNation. And that’s really just been a great and exciting week for us because of that 24/5 move.

Now, how are you feeding these additional hours with content? Did you hire up more reporters and producers or is much of it coming out of the Nexstar stations?

It’s always been a combination of those things. But as far as staffing, we’re hiring every day. It’s kind of an exciting moment for us because as others are kind of condensing their staff, we’re building every day, we’re adding to our staff every day. We still need to hire more people, but presently we’re using the Nexstar entities.

We have 199 local stations. So, when breaking news happens, we’re able to be on the ground within minutes in most places across this country. And in addition, we have our own NewsNation reporter teams that we’re using throughout the hour. It’s kind of a combination, but we call it one Nexstar, as one entity of all of our properties.

And as you know, we have The Hill property as well, so in D.C., we also can rely on those folks for information. We can use them on our air. And in addition, Nexstar also has a bureau here in D.C., where I am today, obviously. We have offices in Chicago and New York and other places as well. But I’m here in D.C. and we use those reporters that are up on the Hill and working with regional congressmen and senators throughout.

I did read about the hire up for NewsNation in one of the trades. I’m wondering, can you say how many reporters you brought on and how many reporters and producers you’re still looking for?

Well, I don’t know all the specifics because they’re changing rapidly. But presently we have about 17 NewsNation-exclusive reporters that are on our staff. We are hiring about 100 jobs overall that are still open presently throughout all of our shows and our newsgathering operation. So, we’re continuously looking for new people.

And one of the really exciting things I think about NewsNation is that we have people from every network represented here. We have people from every local station and various areas represented. So, we have an abundance of folks that have come here to make this place the excellent place we want it to be. And that’s been a real fun part of learning from all of the different places and different experience levels that people bring to the network daily.

As the managing editor, how does NewsNation work collaboratively with the Nexstar local stations? How do you logistically manage that orchestration?

Well, obviously, communication and organization are always important to every company. I think the really exciting thing for us is we have what’s called a datebook and we can look at every local station across this country and see what they’re covering for the day. We’re actually able to then pull that video or elements from those stations as well.

In addition, we bring in live feeds from any breaking news story, and we can reach out to the news directors and ask if we they can provide us with the reporter that is on location to do a live shot at the time that we’re on the air. In addition, we talk monthly and weekly about political events we’re going to be covering in the future, big events like the Indy 500 coming up. All of those things are orchestrated as looking at how do we best use all the resources of Nexstar and how do we also have our own resources to help Nexstar with national coverage, Because that’s what we are, the national entity Nexstar.

So, it is it is a lot of communication back and forth, but we have a lot of systems that allow us to look right into them and figure out what they’re doing without even making a phone call. Many networks obviously depend on services like the AP, which we also have, and Reuters and other entities, but we also have this big entity of Nexstar stations that is like a one-stop shopping for us in finding out and knowing what elements and what stories they’re covering.

How regularly are you talking with those news directors? I mean, that’s a lot of news directors with so many stations across the country. Is that daily? Weekly? Is it a normalized kind of process or is it just ad hoc?

Our assignment desk based in Chicago is talking with the news directors and with the stations, I would say daily and sometimes hourly, depending on what is happening across the country. We also have, as I said, like as far as my level, I’m on a call with them monthly to talk about what we’re planning and what we’re doing.

But if we have a big event or we have a big breaking news story that breaks out collaboration is instant. And so, we always check in with them first because as everyone knows, every story in a lot of ways starts at the community level, at the local level of America. And so, we want to know what their thought process is, how they’re covering it, how they would explain it, maybe who the key players are that we might be able to tap into and they might have a relationship with. It really depends on the day in the story. Sometimes I would say we’re talking to news directors all the time and other times just based off the news.

Do you look at this whole enterprise as building a nationwide network? How are you branding this and fronting this to viewers? If it’s a local Nexstar station reporter and they’re self-identifying on the air to the user, do they say NewsNation? How do they think of themselves with regards to being in a network or not?

What they’re doing is important to the station and the community they drive to every day when they’re on our network. Obviously, it’s a NewsNation platform. And we’re presenting from the news station that is in these various communities across the country. But again, you know, one of the great entities that I thought when I came here that differentiates us from any other network is that ability to have folks in the community on the ground knowing what is going on and being able to put that in perspective for the American public from where they are.

Many times, you know, network news gets a bad rap for parachuting into an event or something that we’re covering. But in this case, we are actually relying on the folks who know that community and deal with the circumstances there, day in and day out. And I think that brings a different level to our national coverage. I think folks are concerned about what’s going on in other communities across this country. Maybe they can learn from it. Maybe it’s something they’re facing, and they see a solution that someone else has come up with. So, I think that’s the kind of relationship and the ability of NewsNation that really no other network has.

Tell me about these two new studios in the WPIX building. I understand that they’re quite state of the art and I’m sure your EVP of station operations, Blake Russell, could wax lyrically about and they’ve been speced out. I’ve heard a little bit about the LED displays, etc. but for the sort of top level, how would you describe the facilities?

Well, they’re amazing. I mean, all of our studios have been built out. What you’re seeing behind me is our D.C. studio, where we are now broadcasting The Hill broadcast here daily. So, when we built all of our studios, one of the great things we have in our favor is we’re starting now, right? We’re building them now and we can utilize the technology that exists presently.

The studios in New York are absolutely exceptional. I was up there a couple of weeks ago, and to see the video wall that is in Elizabeth Vargas Reports’ studio, which Cuomo will be in soon, that is just an amazing entity because you’re able to show so many different visual elements at the same time, [whether] graphics to have someone understand the story better or a live shot to take you to the scene.

The numbers, I mean, I think we have over 300 LEDs across the New York studio, and then our control room, if not the biggest, is one of the biggest control rooms in the country in any network setting. It really allows our personnel to see all of the various feeds that are coming in, not only from NewsNation, as we talked about, but from Nexstar, from other entities, so that we can be monitoring what’s happening across the country and bring it to the viewer as quickly as possible in the control room.

And what’s the extent that they are now and are going to be used?

Presently, we have two studios in New York where we broadcast both Elizabeth Vargas Reports and Dan Abrams Live is there as well as Cuomo and Banfield. So, we are going to be utilizing those studios in different dimensions. But obviously, the studio downstairs, we recently did a program where Elizabeth Vargas and Dan Abrams and Cuomo were all together.

And when we do those type of operations, that’s going to be utilized in our downstairs studio, which has all those LED walls and really captures what we’re able to do at NewsNation, along with the news ticker that is at the top of the screen as well. t’s exciting. And everything here is about adapting and moving and growing and building. We want to be able to do that, obviously, in places that give us a bright and just an exciting atmosphere.

The Hill, which we’ve mentioned earlier, is a new show on the network, and it also has a standalone FAST channel on streaming. What has that brand brought to NewsNation that it didn’t have before?

It’s brought an exceptional amount of personnel that are looking at issues across the board up on Capitol Hill. There’s two components to what we do on television, obviously, and that is what video elements we can bring from all of our stations, but it’s also the information, right, the distribution of information. And so, we’re working on building systems with The Hill where we can really get that information from The Hill minute by minute of what is happening up on Capitol Hill.

Yesterday, we had the vote on the debt ceiling. And through that bit of information, we had Bob Dusek right on our set, on our panel, talking with us as that vote was going down, not only were Blake Burman and others on the set from NewsNation receiving that information, Bob Cusack was also receiving the information from his personnel on The Hill that was able to get that out to the American public very quickly.

It really is about being there and knowing the players and knowing the intricate detail of what is happening in Washington. And obviously Washington could be very wonky, right? It can be in the weeds, it can be swampy. But we really want to break down each of these issues to what does it mean to each community. And the more information you have and the more representatives and senators you can get to, the better off that is.

So, The Hill really allows us to get that intricate detail of what every senator and representative is talking about and maybe strategizing about moving forward and whatever subject matter they’re handling at the time.

I asked you before about how you had transparency into what the Nexstar stations are doing so you can work with that. But what about The Hill? Do you have a similar kind of transparency with what’s in their pipeline? How do you know what to use?

We’re building a lot of these communications systems to allow us to distribute information from one organization to the other. But all of it comes through the pipeline of what is being put out there. We have alert systems. We have urgent systems, as I call them, that alert us to big entities that are happening. Also, we monitor daily The Hill website as well what they are putting at the top of their feeds.

But it really is a coordination challenge, and we believe that the biggest strength that we are going to have is by figuring out ways to use that information to move our product forward, and we have something that no one else has. And The Hill has such a great reputation in this town and D.C., and it is certainly something that people look to for that specific bit of information. So, at the NewsNation level, what we have to do is decide, you know, what part of that is really important to us at this time and what part is not important.

And they do have an excellent reputation. Is The Hill still operating as a sort of autonomous collaborator here, or does Nexstar, or does NewsNation, have more input into its content selection choices?

They’re their own entity, like a lot of these places are. But at the same point, we are in conversation daily. I speak with Joe Ruffalo, who runs The Hill now. As I just said, Bob Cusack was on our set. Our reporter teams are talking to each other daily about what they think and where they are. So, it really is a mechanism of making sure we’re all alert of what’s happening. The Hill is alert of what we’re going to, you know, specialize on that day where we have our reporters, what our assignments are, and then we look to them on the same entity. We’re all independent, but at the same point we all collaborate, and we all use all of our minds to make the best decisions.

I want to come back to content in just a second, but before that distribution. Are there any plans in the works for NewsNation to offer a streaming or a FAST channel that’s decoupled from a cable subscription?

You know, we’re working and looking at how we build all of our entities and all of our reach. I’m so caught up in what I’m doing on a daily basis, I’m not so sure exactly where we are on that facet of the business. But I will say that, you know, what our determination here is, is to offer the American public something they don’t have anywhere else.

We want to be the place that people come for unbiased, factual news that they can get. And that brand is what’s going to stand up on any Nexstar property we have. And so, as we build out that brand, we build out all of the entities of what that means and how we distribute it. And my focus is much more on what is that foundation, what is that platform? And then we can figure out how that information then goes out to all the various places that people now want to get their news from.

You’ve set me up very well for my next question. Back into content then. From 6:00 on now weeknights, you’ve got some very known well-known news host commodities who are shepherding your programing. We’ve had both Ashleigh Banfield and Dan Abrams on this podcast before, and now you’ve added Elizabeth Vargas and almost a year ago, Andrew Cuomo. There’s a bit of a case of one of these hosts is not like the other here with Cuomo, so I want to ask about that. He came over to NewsNation under a cloud. I mean, he was fired from CNN for ethical breaches in terms of his working relationship with his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Why did this not present a problem for your network?

Well, look, I think our network is built on differing opinions, differing points of view. I think that as an entity, we are here to get everyone’s opinion and allow people to debate. You see it on Cuomo on Wednesday night. He’s on with Bill O’Reilly talking back and forth about every issue. And I think that is what the American public is looking for. They’re looking for the great debate. They’re looking for that.

Every side of an issue should be presented in a fair and in a respectful way. And I think that most Americans, as we’ve seen, don’t necessarily say that they’re a Republican or a Democrat or they’re much more in that independent space. And I think that’s what we’re going for.

And I think that’s what we brought to NewsNation. Any television network would be very jealous of the lineup that we have on our air in the evening. I mean, from Leland Vitter to Chris Cuomo to Dan Abrams to Ashleigh Banfield, I mean, we are presenting something that no other network is able to do. And we’re also presenting it from all different points of view.

I’m glad you brought up O’Reilly and Cuomo show. I watched a number of clips from recent episodes, but this one in particular where Cuomo had Bill O’Reilly, who’s a host himself fired from Fox News, and their subject was the firing at Fox of another host, Tucker Carlson. I mean, given that the network’s value proposition of offering down-the-middle, depoliticized news in what’s otherwise in primetime, an echo chamber of ideological commentary on cable, I’m wondering what should I as a viewer, do with a conversation like that between two fired anchors talking about a third fired anchor? I mean, is this a sort of an anomaly? Because it seems like that’s swimming back to some very familiar primetime news shore there.

Well, I think people are, you know, as much as they are interested in the media landscape, they’re interested in what happens behind the scenes as you’re talking to me today about how we build a network, I think the opinion of what Bill O’Reilly thinks about what has happened at Fox News is of interest to the to the national news landscape, to the American public. And I think he gives his opinion as to what he thinks it is.

But as an entity, our job is to find the best people to talk about the subject matter that they know about, and Bill O’Reilly knows about Fox News. And so that’s the that’s the reasoning behind why you would have him talk about that subject matter. In what I would call a very chaotic cable landscape, we are providing something that that is stable, that is that is presenting all kinds of items to folks so that they can make their own decisions about what is happening in America.

And what I spend my time focused on is really the news, right? Is the news element of every story that we cover throughout the day and looking at where we’re going to go next to uncover or ask the tough questions for the American people. So that’s what I spend my focus and my time.

I guess I’m just wondering why not more of that in primetime, too? Why not go to more reporting? I mean, one of the advantages you have, as you’ve said before, is you have so many people on the ground fanned out across the country, you know, between your own reporters and the Nexstar reporters at stations everywhere and in a lot of markets where there may not be many other reporters. So, you know everyone was talking about Tucker Carlson on that particular night, so why not tack a little in a different direction and utilize some of that? I mean, talk about it, but maybe not stay on that for quite so long?

Well, we certainly, if you look at our primetime lineup for that evening, we talked about many, many subjects. That was just one of the many that we cornered in there in the evening programs. And I think that that’s the great benefit of our primetime lineup — it’s versatile and it does look at a lot of issues every night, I can tell you, because I’m in charge of the reporter teams. I mean, every night our reporter teams are on our primetime shows unlike any other network out there. We are utilizing our reporter teams on our primetime shows to talk about what the facts and what the information in the news is. And then those shows can do what they want after that. But that’s really what we’re here for, is to provide that factual background.

Just lastly on the content side, I want to ask you about panels as well. You have panels, you use them. These are in the day or more in the primetime hours?

Well, I mean, obviously, The Hill show is built on a panel of journalists in D.C. who cover Washington every day and have a lot to offer on their viewpoint. I think to the point of panels, I think panels are good because they provide different viewpoints, right? They provide a different way to look at the information you might be seeing in general. We use them when they’re effective and when they are making sure that they’re presenting many sides of the issue. In other places, we don’t need that. It’s a reporter who’s just giving us the content as a report. It depends on the issue. But I certainly think, you know, the strength of The Hill comes through the panel of so many folks that have firsthand knowledge of what’s happening in Washington, D.C.

So, Cherie, finally, I just want to ask you, you came to NewsNation from Fox News, where you were a VP of news. Given all that’s come out in the Dominion lawsuit and Tucker Carlson’s firing, does this track with any of your own personal work experiences there?

You know, I obviously made a decision two years ago to take this opportunity because I thought it was a great one for me and one that which brought me to Chicago, which is closer to my folks that live in Detroit. And at the same time, to use my experience, I obviously I know Fox, I worked there for many, many years, but I’m now focused on making this a bright place for people to come to for factual and unbiased news. And that’s what I’m dedicated to do. I really don’t know what’s going on there now, but I do know that there’s a lot of chaos within the actual landscape of cable news, and I think that NewsNation provides a stability and a foundation of pure news. And that’s what I’m here for.

Well, thank you, Cherie Grzech, for sharing these updates about NewsNation, the now 24-hour, five day a week cable news network. We look forward to seeing what’s next. And good luck to you with those new studios.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having us.

Thanks to all of you for watching. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV on TV News.com and on our YouTube channel. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: As NewsNation Expands To 24/5, Its Help Wanted Sign Is Still Out appeared first on TV News Check.

FAST Channels and the Evolution of Broadcasting looked at the options FAST channels have opened up for viewers and the opportunities they give advertisers. Scott Ehrlich, chief innovation officer and head of corporate strategy, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Shawn Makhijani, SVP, business development and strategy, NBCUniversal Stations & NBC Spot On; Sarah Katt, SVP programming, The Hill; Marian Pittman, EVP content, product & innovation, Cox Media Group; Takashi Nakano, senior director of business development and content acquisitions, Samsung; and Blair Harrison, CEO, Frequency joined moderator Adam Wiener, founder, Continuous Media, for the discussion.

The Future of Sports on Broadcast TV looked at how with relentless cord-cutting undermining cable, local broadcasters hope to reclaim TV rights and once again become the homes of the home teams. Brian Lawlor, president, Scripps Sports, The E.W. Scripps Co.; Kerry Bubolz, president-CEO, Las Vegas Golden Knights; Ed Desser, founder-president, Desser Sports Media and Desser Media; Lee H. Berke, president-CEO, LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media; and Dan Marshall, EVP, global SaaS sales, Amagi, joined moderator Adam Wiener for the conversation.

Syndication’s Changing Business Model considered how exclusivity, streaming rights and the quest for profitable programming are high on the list of challenges facing the relationship between syndicated program producer/distributors and TV station groups. Frank Cicha, EVP programming, Fox Television Stations; Mort Marcus, co-president, Debmar-Mercury; Dave Howitt, SVP of programming, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Tom Zappala, SVP, content and programming, The E.W. Scripps Co.; and Zack Hernandez, SVP & general sales manager, U.S. syndication sales, Sony Pictures Television, joined Paige Albiniak, contributing editor, TVNewsCheck, for the panel.

In Conversation: Anthony Zuiker On Creating New Shows That Break The Mold, featured a one-on-one discussion with the acclaimed television writer, producer and author Anthony Zuiker on how broadcasters can address their desperate need for fresh programming. TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp moderated.

Fresh Approaches to the News Franchise considered how TV station groups are experimenting like never before with their most important genre: the local newscast, with each sharing examples of their work. Chad Cross, VP content development, CBS News and Stations; Kate O’Brian, president, Scripps News; Jamie Grey, managing editor of investigations, InvestigateTV, Gray Television; Ozzie Martinez, EVP of news, original programming and standards, Telemundo Station Group, NBCUniversal Local; and Rick Weiss, director, SciLine, joined moderator Michael Depp for the conversation.

Rethinking Genres: Games, Travel, Talk and More also took a show-and-tell approach to how TV station groups are developing new approaches to game shows, talk, magazines lifestyle and destination programming. Erin Johnson, executive producer, Entertainment Tonight; Andrew Fitzgerald, SVP, streaming video services, Hearst Television; Stephen Brown, EVP of programming and development, Fox First Run and Fox Television Stations; Meredith McGinn, EVP of diginets & original production, NBCUniversal Local; and Michaela Pereira, host, Michaela, joined moderator Michael Depp for the talk.

Mining the Archives for New Shows looked at how TV station groups and other program producers are mining their archives to create compelling new shows and setting up lucrative licensing businesses in the process. Nora Zimmett, president, news & original series, The Weather Channel; Ben Ramos, VP, Fox Archives, field and emerging technology, Fox News; Jon Accarrino, VP of transformation and strategic initiatives, Capitol Broadcasting Co.; and Sam Peterson, COO, Bitcentral, joined moderator Michael Depp for the discussion.

Strategies for Building A Content Everywhere Business examined how station groups can build an everywhere programming lineup, then brand it and promote it to consumers locally and around the world. Steve Pruett, executive chair, Cox Media Group; Sean Compton, president, networks, Nexstar Media; Adrianne Anderson, SVP of content development and creative services, ABC Owned Stations; Pat LaPlatney, co-CEO and president, Gray Television; and Brad Wall, CTO, LTN, joined moderator Paige Albiniak for the session.

The post Programming Everywhere: The Complete Videos appeared first on TV News Check.

It’s already happening in South Korea and China, where South Korean company Deep Brain AI is working with four different networks on digital copy anchors reading news briefs.

In this Talking TV conversation, Joe Murphy, business development manager for Deep Brain AI, talks about the implementation there, how the underlying technology works and how its clients address potential ethical concerns around using digital copies. He also discusses whether U.S. broadcasters might get into the game.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Deep Brain AI is a company that uses artificial intelligence to create digital twins of real people or completely new digital people. They’ve been working with broadcasters in both South Korea and China to create virtual versions of anchors there for automated news updates throughout the day.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. Coming up, a conversation with Joe Murphy, business development manager of Deep Brain AI. The advent of this technology and its application for news opens up a raft of technical and ethical questions, and I’ll be asking some of them in just a moment.

Welcome, Joe Murphy, to Talking TV.

Joe Murphy: Hi, Michael. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Glad for you to be here. Joe, first, obvious question: Why would any legitimate news organization ever do this, creating a virtual copy of one of their anchors in order to go on air?

Yeah, it to me, that seems like an obvious answer because as I’ve been talking to news agencies in North America, they’re all faced with the same challenge. Every year they’re challenged for doing more with less or not getting budget increases, but we need more content. And creating a digital twin or a virtual human of their franchise face or lead anchor seems like a slam dunk because you can now create more content, lower costs and you can create custom content faster and then get it out in different channels that maybe weren’t accessible before. So, it is really all about more, faster, better.

I mentioned [this technology in] South Korea and China. Where specifically are these things being used so far?

Deep Brain itself is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, and I’m actually part of a team of business development managers that are bringing this technology to North America. We have a head start in Asia with this technology. We have four networks, two in Korea and two in China that have worked with us to create a digital twin of their lead anchor. In Korea, it is MBN and Arirang. And then in China it’s BTV and CCTV. All four of these news stations are broadcasting anchors using technology from Deep Brain AI.

And they’re each using a single anchor at each network?

Yeah, at this time, they’ve each chosen to kind of take — their franchise face or their lead anchor and created a digital twin of that person. And we do see interest as from other anchors within their organizations of right now. It’s sticking pretty much with the franchise face.

Are these pilot projects, or how long have they been in play?

For the greater part of last year, so 2021, there have been anchors on Korea TV and then in late 2021, they started in China.

Now, as I understand it, you’re not trying to dupe viewers here. These virtual anchors are being labeled as such?

Yes. We’re not trying to dupe people and we’re not trying to replace people. Those are the two questions I get the most. I’ll say when the AI anchors are used, the news station puts up a symbol that says AI anchor, so the people know it looks like the lead anchor. It sounds like the lead anchor. But what’s being presented right now is actually the AI version of that anchor presenting the news to me.

And how is that presented? Is it a something on the bottom of the screen in the chyron?

Yes. Typically, it’s something on the bottom of the screen in the chyron. I did provide some footage for you folks, and you’ll see the actual English letters AI followed by some Korean symbols which are indicating this is the AI anchor and that’s kind of prominent on the screen during the presentation.

Having that kind of labeling, is that an ethical necessity as far as your company is concerned?

It’s a recommendation from our company, but at the end of the day, it’s a decision by the network and how they want to interact with their audience. I imagine it is a negotiation between the network and the talent, but it’s really outside of our scope. That kind of happens behind closed doors. We’re very happy to see that ethical and responsible way these are being used. But again, it’s not really our place to tell people how to do it.

Well, these are two very different markets already. South Korea is a democratic society. In China, it’s state-controlled media. It’s very much you know, it’s controlled by the party. So, were there different kinds of conversations? You say, those conversations were entirely internal for those organizations or are they back and forth with you at all?

The conversations between the network and the talent were we’re pretty much behind closed doors. We’re not privy to that information. I can say from an implementation point of view, the cloud infrastructure that was used and the on the balance of some is cloud, some is on premise. And not to get too technical here…

It’s OK, you can get technical.

1. So, I would say in the China market, they wanted a lot more done on premise. You can imagine everything is controlled at a central location, where in the Korean implementations it was more done in the cloud.

Just to come back to the ethics here of deploying … is there an ethical rulebook here in place or and if so, whose writing it? Are you as a company? Are you in discussion with other [media] branches? You’re think about moving this into the States. Who’s laying out the ethical guidelines?

I would say it’s a fast-growing industry with virtual humans and media on a collision course and we’re kind of learning as we’re going. There are ethical considerations, there are security considerations. But really at the end of the day is we view this as another tool for creating content. It’s a new tool and there are new questions about it, but it really is just a tool for creating new video content. Just as a video editor is a tool you might use in audio editors, it’s or you might use AI is another tool. And I think you see AI being applied in multiple spots throughout the video production process.

Absolutely it is. I mean, AI and machine are learning are huge parts of workflows now. But this is a whole different category. This lives in its own way. You talk about replicating a person and presenting or fabricating the person. It’s a whole different construct than the other applications, which are, I think, much more rote and not really controversial other than concerns people have about job elimination, potentially.

I want to get into the fact that this gets into some dangerous crossover territory with deepfake videos, which we’ve all seen, and which are widely employed in disinformation campaigns across the internet and social media. So, if this kind of technology widens in its legitimate use among news organizations, what kind of an opening do you think that creates for the further proliferation of deepfakes?

That’s a great question. I think I want to take a step back and say what we’re doing is very different than what deepfake technology is. The work we’re doing is complete video synthesis. So, we take a real person, we do a video shoot, and that video shoot is our training data to create an AI model of that person. They’ve opted in the entire way. Then when that model is created, it is tied to security within the cloud. And typically, portrait rights or face rights are extended to that model.

So, the station is legally OK’d to use that model for the intended purposes that are all contracted out. So, pure video synthesis, legal checks every step of the way. Making sure everybody is opted in and on board is what we’re working on at Deep Brain.

A deepfake starts with real video, so you need to shoot a live person and then you need to paste another live person’s face on top of the video you shot. So, already at first step, we’re different. In video synthesis technology, there is no shoot needed. We do one day shoot for a video training session, but after that, all the video that’s generated is completely AI generated. There’s no need to shoot.

Is that video that’s generated watermarked in some sort of way that you can authenticate it?

Yes, we can show through metadata that it came from our solution. And there are also checks and balances that we can put in even as simple as text filters that if a network wants it put in, it can limit what that AI model can say and cannot say.

Let’s get a little more into the weeds of how this comes together, technically. So, you mentioned you have the person, the talent, comes sits in a studio and you have them record. They read out any number of sentences while they’re being photographed and audio recorded?

Typically, we will prepare a script and that script will contain between 500 and 1,000 sentences or utterances. What we’re really trying to do with those sentences and utterances is learn how they move their mouths with all the different sounds and all the different words and the transitions from one word to the next, the pauses in between. So, using that script that we prepare, that’s the training data for our deep learning models.

And how do you do that? How are the cameras set up on the person’s face?

Typically, the talent is in front of a green screen. We shoot at about one or two meters away, one and a half meters away, head-on shot. And we try to get a head to foot, sort of top to bottom, full coverage. And we also have the option of shooting on angles. We have clients who want to switch angles during the presentation of the media, so we can do that as well. But in the most simplistic phase, it’s a straight head-on shot, full-body shot in front of a green screen.

So, they’re wearing one set of clothes, presumably during this shoot? Can you change their clothes like paper dolls in different iterations when they go on the air?

Yeah. So, typically when we do the shoot for the training day we will go through multiple outfits and multiple hairstyles. On our roadmap is the ability to change hairstyle and outfit without actually having to reshoot.

As you deploy this, does this twin use machine learning to kind of improve on its verisimilitude? Or is the thing that you get out of that session what you have going forward?

It’s the latter. The thing that we create, the model we create out of the session is then just an engine. It’s not continuously learning. It’s an engine that takes text in and exports video out. And that video out that it’s exporting, that’s where the deep learning was applied. How does this person speak? How do they move their mouth? How do they blink? When do they breathe? All of this is learned behavior that goes into the model. We can learn from that.

From that session of recording to when it when it can spit out a digital twin, how long is that process?

That’s a great question. It’s actually about three weeks of machine time.

The other side of this is your company also creates these digital people whole cloth, and you’ve actually made one of them for us at TVNewsCheck. Why don’t we take a quick look at that right now?

Great.

That is something else. What goes into making this wholly constructed person?

We start with pretty much a lot of the same processes of the deep learning. It’s just that the video going in, we use a different AI algorithm to construct a face for that person. So, we will start with a frame of a real person. But then take a face that’s completely synthetic and mesh those two together during the deep learning process.

You had a woman standing up in the studio? You were shooting her and you’re superimposing a different face onto her body?

It’s not really just one person. It’s an estimation of a lot of different people.

How many different kinds of avatars, if we can call them that, do you have? Is it an infinite number of different types of people, different genders, ages, races, etc.?

Yes. This is a little bit off topic, but we just did an NFT drop of 5,000 virtual humans in China, and it was a very successful launch for us. And now we have another 5,000 ready to go, and it really is nearly infinite in the amount of variations and virtual humans that we can create.

Hold on. What do you get when you buy an NFT of a virtual person? What is the product?

It was tied to what was the equivalent of Valentine’s Day in China. And you get the portrait of the person, and they were calling it their virtual boyfriend or virtual girlfriend. Now each one of those models can be linked to our software platform, which is called AI Studios. And if you choose to link it to AI Studios, you can sign up and you can create videos with that virtual person that you’ve just purchased through this NFT drop.

I don’t even … I’m processing this. It’s like Blade Runner to some extent.

Yeah, this was more of a fun experiment and the NFT market is very exciting for us, but it’s probably a little outside the scope of what we’re doing with news and media.

So back to that. Do you have any U.S. broadcasters who are kicking the tires here?

Yes. So, all the big names in the U.S. are kicking the tires right now. I think the U.S. in general is a little more cautious and they’re kind of seeing how this is playing out. But it’s really getting fast and rapid adoption throughout Asia. And in our mind, it’s coming very soon to the U.S. I can’t share too many details on that, but it will be here soon.

Well, those with whom you’re talking about this, what are they talking about for the potential implementation? The same thing as we see in Korea?

Yeah, I would say the primary use case is these short little segments shot throughout the day where the talent is busy working on a story or out in the field, but they need to get some updates out to the audience. So, every hour or so that the producers in the studio can create these clips and present these updates, here’s what we’re working on for tonight’s show or here’s the latest breaking news we’ll talk more this evening about. And so those little cut overs and segments are where we’re seeing is supplementing the content feed for the franchise face.

And so, in terms of where this is going to iterate next year, we looked at this example that you created for us and there’s sort of a bizarre nonhuman kind of reset that the woman does between her sentences. There’s, you know, there is a bit of kind of an “unnaturality” to it. How are you smoothing out the edges there?

Very observant of you. So that is a demo model that we use. The actual models we create for broadcast media are smoothed out with all those little things that you see. And the demo model is kind of a tuning process that we go through to get it ready for broadcast media. So, there is a bit of a performance difference, but when we go through the additional layer of tuning, that’s where we get to the side by side. It’s very difficult to determine which is the AI and which is the real person.

Well, only one’s mother can tell, or perhaps not even that. This is certainly something else. I’m very interested in feedback from the audience. If you have thoughts about the ethics, the technical side of implementing technology like this, what the what the implications could be for local and national U.S. media, I’d love to hear it. So, please do give us feedback.

That’s all the time we have, so we’ve got to leave it there. Thanks to Joe Murphy of Deep Brain AI for being here today. Thank you, Joe.

All right. Thank you, Michael.

And you can watch past episodes of Talking TV on our videos page at TVNewsCheck.com. And I encourage you to check in with our site throughout the day for continuously updated industry news on television. We’re also on YouTube, and I invite you to like and follow us there as well. Thanks for watching, listening and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Are AI Anchors Coming Soon? appeared first on TV News Check.

Kennedy, a former anchor at Chicago’s CBS-owned WBBM, and Glaros, a former meteorologist there, were casualties of a round of layoffs at the station just after the pandemic’s onset in 2020. The former colleagues launched the podcast as a vehicle to process their frustrations and incredulities about a business they say is rife with abuse and misogyny.

In this Talking TV conversation, Kennedy and Glaros share their thoughts on what they see as local TV’s most broken parts, the third rail experience of the morning shift and their anger at the lasting personal damage a TV news career can have.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Erin Kennedy and Megan Glaros were, until 2020, very familiar faces to viewers of CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago. Erin was an anchor. Megan was a meteorologist. But a sweeping round of layoffs saw them both out at the station. The two have since regrouped with a weekly video podcast, Broken News, that pulls back the curtain on the far less glamorous aspects of working in local TV news. On it, they share their war stories and they’ve invited other past colleagues to do so as well. In the process, they’ve been steadily building a loyal audience of others working in the same trenches, eager to commiserate.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. Up next, a conversation with Erin Kennedy and Megan Glaros about some TV news inside baseball.

Welcome, Erin Kennedy and Megan Glaros to Talking TV.

Megan Glaros: Thank you, Michael.

Good to have you both here. So first, your podcast is called Broken TV. How much is broken in TV news?

Erin Kennedy: Yeah, well it’s Broken News with Erin and Megan, you can find this on YouTube. And we like to say that there’s a lot of things that fall under the umbrella of broken news. And I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head with the intro there that things are much less glamorous than they seem, like how the sausage is made is really kind of toxic at times and funny at other times. So, it’s been fun to peel back the curtain. And Meghan and I have such a deep well of stories that we know it’s never going to end, especially when we start bringing on guests.

Megan Glaros: Yeah, I think so. And you know what part of I think for both of us, part of what was broken was kind of how we were forced to live our lives because of that industry. So, in many ways, not getting enough sleep, extra stress, working those holidays, all the things that kind of build up, you know, that really just starts to get under your skin. You don’t even realize it until you get out.

And then you realize as you start to piece yourself back together to a certain degree, that like, man, that was hard. And the question that was always asked to both of us is, How do you wake up at 2:00 in the morning? And we’d say, Oh, it’s not that bad. We’re fine. In hindsight, I’m not sure.

You know, morning hosts always tell me that question the most get asked is about how hard it is to get up in the morning. And certainly, you two do not make the case for getting up early as early as you have had to do in the past to have to do your morning shifts.

Erin Kennedy: Well, it’s one of those things Meghan and I always liken to an abusive relationship. It’s almost like you don’t realize it until you’re out. All the sacrifices that you made waking up in the middle of the night is always tough. But I think it’s almost the sacrifices in the evening that are really difficult.

And we talk about have having to balance it with families and we both have three kids, and it was like I would put the kids to bed after having dinner and then go to bed immediately. And you realize that, you know, you sacrifice a lot because you’re doing a job that you really love. And that’s what we really kind of want to get across to people is we loved this job and we were not breaking rocks.

But that being said, what goes into putting a newscast together is really nuts. And I think a lot of people don’t realize it and they don’t realize how hard it is and how many people it takes to put the product on air. So, it’s been really fun to kind of just talk about those stories. Meghan and I recorded one today talking about whether or not she’s ever been asked to sensationalize the weather and play up or play down climate change. And that’s a thing that I think a lot of people at home want to know about.

Can you do a spoiler? Have you ever been asked to play up the weather?

Megan Glaros: I have. I’ve been asked to do both directions. I’ve been asked to specifically tie things to climate change. And in many cases, the science was there to do so. But in other situations, it was really like, don’t say that word because it’s very political. And, you know, I think that that’s what you find. So as a meteorologist, if you do talk about climate change, inevitably you’re going to get some comments right into the Twitter feed, right into your Facebook, your email, whatever it may be. So, it’s a really weird dynamic.

And sometimes stations do want you to take a particular course on it. And when it comes out, then you have to deal with the repercussions of talking about it. So, it’s kind of crazy because I was telling Erin, it’s science, right? Like, but it’s so political now that there’s so many little facets that really pop up.

Right, right. Although I have heard from some meteorologists that they’re they get less pushback now talking about climate change than they did even a couple of years ago.

Megan Glaros: To a certain degree, I think that is true. Yeah, I do think that there are more implications that people are feeling on a regular basis. So, people are starting to say, OK, wait, you know what this is? This is real. This is a thing. And part of what Erin and I were talking about was just the misnomer of global warming and that confusion. So, we get into all of that. But yeah, it was an interesting topic.

Well, let’s get into the sausage making where the nitrates are coming in. What do both of you are the most broken parts of this process?

Erin Kennedy: I would like to hope that some of the things that we lived through (Megan and I were laid off on the same day at the very beginning of COVID). I think that even in those short years since we’ve been laid off, things have changed dramatically. We were at an O&O, which means an owned and operated by New York CBS station, and there were, you know, sweeping layoffs. But after we were laid off, I think it is widely known because it was widely reported how toxic their many CBS O&Os were.

And Megan and I both were deposed and were able to share things. Looking back on it, we were like, I can’t believe that we agreed to this. I can’t believe that you would be OK with these things. And you were. Because what we talk about is you always have the ax dangling over your head and you’re concerned that if you don’t say yes that you’re going to be fired, which inevitably happens because we live our lives in two-year contract cycles.

And we talk about this. There might be a new news director who liked his old anchor and wants to bring that person in. And so just feeling the ground always shift under you, makes you say yes to things that you shouldn’t say yes to and makes just it makes it very toxic.

Well, of course, there has been a whole regime change, as you noted, at the CBS O&Os since your time there. But what are we talking about here? I mean, you’re talking about harassment or the sort of things you were asked to do that that were clearly out of line?

Erin Kennedy: So I can only speak to this in a very general sense because Megan and I both signed NDAs, so I can only speak about this as industry specific, but having people measure your bodies to tell you what body type you are, to tell you what clothing you should wear, women being told to, you know, dress a certain way or wear their hair a certain way within the guidelines of what would be considered their brand. And I was not allowed to put my hair behind my ear because it had to be the same, the same, the same, but if another man were, if he would maybe be allowed to wear glasses or a three-piece suit when that was against, you know, guidelines.

So, a lot of little things like that looking back on it and then realizing that there was a pattern throughout the industry of course, we know this already, how women are perceived and how men were perceived.

Megan Glaros: Yeah. And I think what she’s talking to there is really there’s a lot that goes on in the television industry, the whole industry. So, I’m talking about from my very first job in a tiny little market all the way through, all the way through my career, there are things that just aren’t the way it is for every other industry.

For instance, vacations you may or may not even get to take the vacations that you scheduled, getting those holidays off. There’s really no conversation about that. Those things that are just accepted as commonplace for everybody else. You have to fight tooth and nail to get that in your career through maybe just time at the station or whatever it may be.

But unfortunately, as you’re moving up the ladder, chances are you’re moving stations, right? So just the second you get that seniority to be able to live your life in a way that feels good to you with vacations, with taking time for your family, whatever it may be, you move to the next station, low man on the totem pole again.

So, I think for me, that’s part of what was really broken in the industry as a whole is really just that your time as a human being. Did it feel very valued? And by that, I mean like there’s breaking news, you got to come in or we need you to work a weekend because somebody else was out. Like all of that kind of stuff.

Still to this day, every time we approach a holiday, it stresses me out and I have to take a second and go, Wait a second, why am I freaking out? Then I’m like, Oh, right, because for like 18 years having to tell my family I couldn’t have Christmas off or no, I’m sorry you’ve got to go without me was really a stressful thing. So that’s the one thing that I wish would change for people who are in the industry now is that why can we not operate like the rest of the world in many other businesses, you know, outside of maybe hospitals and things like that.

So you two are both still feeling the psychological aftershocks around holidays, I see?

Erin Kennedy: We have several episodes on it. We call it TV PTSD.

Looking back on your own personal experiences, specifically, what was something, one thing that happened to you where you thought it really just doesn’t need to be this way. We can make this one little adjustment and so many people’s quality of life experience at work would be so much better? Is there a moment that that either or both of you could put your finger on like that?

Erin Kennedy: A moment? I don’t think that I could. I mean, I could point to several different factors. I can’t tell you how many times I would come home from work and put my bags down and just cry to my husband for any number of reasons.

But the TV industry has been kind of… we are competing for fewer and fewer eyeballs. And so, a lot of station’s solution to that is to bring in consultants who have studied years of market research to tell you how a newscast should look. And when you are not at a first-place station, which I never worked at a first-place station, you will get so many different consultants giving you so much different feedback that the show has an identity crisis. You have an identity crisis.

You might be told, hey, don’t say your name this time. Don’t say hello. Get right into the news. And then next week, the consultant is going to say, I want you to tell me about, you know, what your closet looks like and take a picture of inside your fridge and people really want to get to know you. And to me, that was really hard because it was less of a focus on the quality of the product that you were putting on air and more about the minutia that stresses you out.

And I said this to Megan, too. I was on the other side of a two-way mirror, one-way mirror, I guess being focus grouped before. And I mean that’s just that’s bananas to hear people you know focus group you and I mean that’s not going to happen in any other world right?

Megan Glaros: Well, not usually.

Dystopian, kind of. Yeah. Being on the other side of that mirror, being on the receiving end of it, I should say. So, I wonder, not naming any names, but maybe just by more of their position in the business, who do you think are some of the worst actors out there in terms of being exploitative, inconsiderate or maybe just unsympathetic to where their colleagues and their subordinates are suffering?

Megan Glaros: I don’t even know that you could put a finger on an exact position because people are people everywhere. You could find amazing anchors and you can find anchors who are absolute torture to work with. And you can find the same of news directors and general managers and producers.

Sometimes I think what happens is that especially if I could pinpoint it to a shift, I would say that the morning news shift becomes the most difficult in many ways. You’re all sleep deprived, you are all exhausted, you’re all barely hanging on. Usually, you have fewer resources. Usually you have, you know, just less help in general. And I think sometimes on morning shows, and I don’t even just mean at any station, but everywhere you’re just running on fumes. And that doesn’t always bring the best out in people.

And so, I have worked on, you know, different shifts and it’s different types of things and it just seems a little bit lighter and a little less intense in the daylight, in those dark of morning hours, things can get kind of nasty sometimes. And it’s not I would never even pinpoint like a specific position. It’s really something that comes about just because everyone’s being pushed to the edge.

Erin Kennedy: I’d say industry versus people. And Meghan and I have both worked with — and are still friends with — people who had developed drinking problems or drug problems or had to go through really painful divorces, specifically because of the industry. And for the most part, the people who leave are doing much better now.

And that is something that, you know, dealing with your demons in front of a camera every day is just a very strange duality of trying to be like, you know, a journalist with a capital J, but balance these intense pressures. That being said, like Megan said, when you get to work with wonderful people like Megan and I really enjoy each other, it makes it all worth it. And like I said, the fact that you’re doing what you love, it helps you rationalize all these crazy things that you put up with in the meantime.

Megan Glaros: It was interesting because I think Erin and I both knew that we were good at our jobs and liked doing them. The on-air part and you know, the breaking news part, the breaking weather part, all of that. But many, many, many times we said like, God, I’m ready to be done, but I’m going to need to be pushed out.

Like it’s going to be difficult because the fear of the unknown, I think, is really strong, you know, especially when you’re in TV, because it’s so unlike many other industries that it’s like, Are my skills are going to be valuable somewhere else? Am I even going to be able to get another job? Am I going to make as much money? And I get all those questions. And then you kind of tend to think like, God, I guess I’m just good at TV and I’ll stay put and then getting pushed out, I think for both of us was really good because you have no choice but to go do those things you were afraid of. And then you realize like, OK, you know what?

TV really did prepare us to be successful pretty much anywhere we go. Because I find that being able to think on your feet, being able to hit a deadline like earlier than most of the rest of the world would even get started on it. All that stuff that we apply on a regular basis to TV, it completely works everywhere else.

It’s transferable skills.

Megan Glaros: Totally.

Well, it does seem, though, that the tables have really turned or are starting to begin to turn in the industry with the phenomenon of the Great Resignation. And given the shortages in almost every newsroom right now, that seems to have had an empowering, value-adding effect for skilled journalists, meteorologists, producers. What do you see as the potential outcome of that phenomenon in the industry?

Erin Kennedy: Yeah, Michael, I’d almost push back on that a little bit. It pains my heart as a journalist because I feel like just before the Great Resignation and of course through it, we lost a lot of seasoned journalists with deep market value and years of industry expertise. And TV will always have the shine on it where, you know, you can hire.

The terrible saying, which I don’t agree with, is hire 20-somethings for 20 something. But I am very concerned about the state of local journalism because fewer and fewer resources are being given to local newsrooms. As you know, newspapers, I mean, are struggling if they’re even in a paper form anymore, most of them a lot of them are going online. So, I think that’s what TV news always had going for it. It’s so tough that you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t love it. Right. So, you’re going to stay in it because you love it. But at some point, either you get kicked off the merry go round like we did, or something else happens where you realize and step back and say, Oh my, I was giving up a lot to do this job that I really loved. And I don’t know, I, I get so many phone calls now, Michael, from people who want to know how I got out and how if I have any advice to help them leave.

Megan Glaros: Yeah, we actually are part of a Facebook group and it’s mostly TV women, various different-sized markets all over everywhere. And at the time when Erin and I joined into the group and a bunch of other people from the station because it was like, you know, we’re sharing dresses and links to things and whatever. It seemed all very like just par for the course.

Now, in hindsight, after I’m out of the business and I’ve gone through the adjustment of going back to like civilian life or whatever you want to call it, now I realize, Oh God, when I read some of these posts, I’m just so sad for them because I’m like others still on the merry go round and they’re miserable. They don’t know how to get off. They’re dealing with things that they shouldn’t have to deal with. You know what I mean? Like I can’t afford. I’m working on TV and I’m working 57 shifts, but I have to have another job or whatever it may be. It’s not worth it.

Megan Glaros: Yeah. Get out while you can.

Let me ask you about the newscast itself. What would you change about its structure, how it looks now that you’re outside of this and you’re able to speak more freely and you’re just looking at the total product itself and not just the work experience, but what we see as consumers. What about it is just not working for you?

Erin Kennedy: I asked myself that when I was in the industry and I never had a good answer. All I can tell you now is as a civilian, I cannot tell you the last time I watched TV news. Right. So, what’s wrong there? Well, I can tell you that I truly don’t care about a house fire halfway across town or, you know, things that aren’t relevant to my life or my children. I mean, Megan, I can’t. There were so many times where we would be sitting in a morning newscast going, If I were a mom right now making breakfast for my kids, I would not want my kids to hear this, you know? So what?

There is no easy answer. I mean, I can tell you a handful of consultants who would tell you they have all the answers in front of them. But I just I don’t know that TV news can sustain itself the way in a journalism sense. But it is still one of the cheapest ways to put a product on air that still sells car commercials and turns a pretty profit. So, there is not a lot of motivation at this point for them to change the model because it’s working. They’re making money.

So you’re not eating what they’re cooking right now?

Erin Kennedy: I’m not. I don’t even miss it.

What would you do now? What do you want to see? What’s within their capability? What should be there content wise or format wise? If there was some elasticity that was allowed that perhaps wasn’t in your tenure, what would it be?

Erin Kennedy: I think that it would be more adding depth to stories because we can all get the headlines on our phone. And Meghan and I worked with many talented investigative journalists. But investigative journalism, as you know, is more expensive to produce than, you know, than going to a house fire and rolling up with a live truck, because investigations require time and they require producers and they might not have a daily turn. And as we said many times, we don’t go on because we’re ready at 4:30 in the morning. We go on because it’s 4:30.

Right, right, right. Well, Megan, you’re a meteorologist. What could be different or better, do you think, in how local stations approach weather?

Megan Glaros: Yeah, that’s interesting, too, because look at severe weather in many cases. The second that starts happening, people do turn their local news back on, OK, you’re not going to necessarily pick up your phone and trust just seeing the word tornado warning. You’re going to then want some perspective on it.

So, I think TV news weather is actually doing a really good job of that. But that’s a place where I see that it impacts everybody. Right? Like, I care about it because it impacts my life. My mom cares about it because it impacts her life. My taking my kids to their practice, when is the severe weather coming? All that stuff feels like it’s all very important to all of us.

So, to me, we’ve gotten away from that ability in the TV news industry to really touch everybody, sort of because we have so many shows now, because there’s so many, you know, things that you can watch. It’s like it doesn’t apply to everybody anymore. And I think sometimes there’s the overarching feeling that they’re just filling time.

The weather is the place to me where people still care. I mean, I’ve heard that from consultants. Like people are turning in to watch the weather, you know, and you know that. But you don’t have a whole show of weather. Right. And then when you talk about the Weather Channel, they may be doing that, but it’s a bigger, broader picture. It’s really that local weather, that local impact for people’s lives that I think still does work.

But I don’t watch either, myself, anymore. Frankly, I can pick up my phone and look at all the same models I used to and figure out my forecast. But I don’t watch the news anymore in terms of like seeing what happened like eight towns over. You know, it would take something really big for me to just have it be my curiosity, to be sparked, to turn it on, I think, at this point. And it’s not because Erin and I are upset about being done. We’re actually quite happy with the way our lives are now. It’s literally just because I’m not really that interested.

Both of you have brought up consultants numerous times so far in this conversation and not in good ways. So, what is the problem here with consultants? Do they have too much power? Too much sway? Do they have anything to bring to the table substantively here? Or is your experience, your personal experience, almost entirely negative?

Erin Kennedy: That’s a great question. I have had good consultants who I would owe a lot to. That was in smaller markets, too. And maybe that’s because I was like a blank slate and I had more to work with.

Megan Glaros: Needed help?

Erin Kennedy: Yeah, I did. I did need help and all. I got great pointed feedback. So, in that sense, I can still remember little things that I learned that would still be part of my job now. Coaching people on presenting as well. Little things that I picked up.

But I think what’s hard is there is no solution to get people to turn on news when you again have fewer eyeballs watching, more platforms and more options. There is not going to be a silver bullet. And so, it’s frustrating when — and I do think it’s almost endemic to second-place, third-place, fourth-place stations — when you’re trying to compete with an 800 pound gorilla.

Well, you can do apples to apples, then you’re going to lose. Well, then let’s do apples to oranges. Well, those oranges were good. Let’s try lemons, you know. And so, I think that it’s just trying to always compete to be a No. 1. I think that there are a lot of stations where they know they have a good thing, and they leave it alone. But I have never worked at a place like that.

Megan Glaros: Neither have I. And I think the thing that local TV news is missing right now is valuing the personality of the person that’s on the air. So, you know, throughout my career, I have worked in places where I felt like they would let me breathe because maybe I was well-liked in the market. And so, OK, just go out and do your thing and that’s cool. And it went well.

Then I have been places where it’s like, it’s not about you. It’s about, you know, the weather. Like, don’t talk to the anchors beforehand, don’t talk to the anchors after we’re going to run to open. You’re going to do the weather. We’re going to get out.

Well, guess what? I never met a single viewer in, like, my 15-plus years of TV who was like, thank God that, you know, you just went in and out with the weather with only details that I can get off my phone. Thank you for that. No, never. It was always like, I love that story that you told, and I love that thing that you and Erin did together.

So, to me, the more they get away from allowing people to be on TV and the more it’s like we’re just plugging and playing and it doesn’t matter who says it, like the words are getting out and we’re done, then you’ve lost the soul of it to me.

People watched Walter Cronkite. Why? Because they trusted him. Also, there were very few options at that point, right? Like so you pick who you trusted most. But there was something about him. There was something about this person or this person. And when you get away from that connection, why would you turn to TV news when you can just pick up your phone?

Well, Megan, I guess as a meteorologist, you might have more latitude. It seems like when I watch local TV news that the meteorologists have a little bit more latitude to talk, to go off script, to kind of be who they are. And also your brand commodities tend to be really strong and in the relationships that you have with viewers are stronger than, say, a beat reporter or even sometimes an anchor. And anchors do seem to have more rigidity. Perhaps you can correct me on this, Erin, if your own experience is not this, but there is a rigidity to it and you kind of have to keep the trains running on time. And so, you maybe don’t have as much latitude as a meteorologist might have.

Megan Glaros: Yeah, I think that’s true. But for me, like I said, I’ve worked places where I felt I could be fully myself on the air. And then I’ve worked places where — places I was renewed, you know, time and time again — but depending on the consultant that was in place or like the, you know, the vibe of the day, it was like, you know, I’ve heard before, like, you need to be less Megan. I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

And I remember thinking at that time, like, I have one me and it’s pretty much me and people normally like it. Of course, some people don’t. That’s fine. You know, not everybody can like you. But I hated the feeling sometimes in places I’ve worked where I had to leave, like most of what I had to offer the show on the table.

So who, if I may ask not the person but the subject type, who was saying the less Megan? Was that a consultant? Was that a news director?

Megan Glaros: I don’t know, honestly. I mean. It was usually because like we’ve just probably consultant driven in that like OK we’ve decided that it’s going to be only like 45 seconds for weather now. So, you’ve got to get it all out and you got like, you know, 18 hours worth of stuff you could talk about, so, you know, squeeze it in. For me, I liked it more when they would frame the meteorologist as like the station scientist. Maybe you can talk about some other things, but when it got down to just all we want you to do is literally just talk about the numbers. It was like it hurt my soul and I like to talk, so you know what I mean?

Erin Kennedy: Megan can only be Megan.

Megan Glaros: That’s it. Yes. One mode. Yeah.

Just a question about the podcast you’re doing. You mentioned your NDAs before. I wonder, do you find that is hard to navigate? The whole point of your show is to be frank about the business and your experiences in it. Are you bumping up against those guardrails a little more than you’d like?

Erin Kennedy: You know, in the beginning I think we were concerned, but to be honest, it is a toxic industry, so we don’t really have to be specific to tell you specific stories that everybody who’s been in TV news can say, Oh, yeah, that happened to me, too. So, it is frustrating in some ways, and I probably should have spoken with a lawyer before we signed it because it is forever. But that being said, we don’t feel hamstrung the way that you would think maybe we would.

Megan Glaros: And it’s not even it’s not even anything specific that happened at any one station ever. What we are really talking about is an industry, I feel, that doesn’t necessarily value the people who are working within it and that gets very hard to deal with as you get older and you have a family. Like, I remember there was a moment where you have, like, that dream job that you always wanted to get. Oh, there was a moment I had an opportunity to take my dream job sort of situation, and I realized, like, I don’t want it anymore because I would never see my kids. I would never be able to take them places.

I think as you mature and grow up and have a family and have children and start to value those things that you value more as you get older, you know, health, happiness, time with people you love, it gets harder and harder to stay in that industry. And I think if I could talk to my younger self. I love the things that I achieved. I love everything I feel like I accomplished. I couldn’t say any more about like, yes, Megan, you did it. But at the same time, at what cost? Sometimes. So that’s what goes through my head with it.

So that being said, what do each of you envision beyond this podcast as your own futures in the industry? Is there a future in the industry? Or do you see yourselves working in some adjacent industry to it going forward? What do you think is in the cards for you?

Erin Kennedy: Megan and I have both received other offers from other stations since being laid off and we have both emphatically said no. In fact, we talk about this, too. I received two offers. One was from a Sinclair and one was from a Nexstar, and they both have 60-day clauses in their contracts. So, while you may sign a two-or even three-year contract, you still come up every 60 days. So as long as they give you 60 days’ notice or 60 days’ pay, it doesn’t matter how long your contract is. It’s just essentially an agreement that this is what we’ll pay you if you’re still around here in year two. So, as we would call each other and say like, Oh, yeah, well, this is what they’re expecting of me. And I could move my family, you know, to City X and have to move again in City X. And Meghan has that great anecdote where one of the women she was interviewing with said, Oh, well, how old are your kids again now? And Megan told her and she said, Oh, so now what was it again, Megan? Now they’re old enough. You don’t need to.

Megan Glaros: Yeah, they don’t need you so much anymore. And I was like, um, they’re like 9 and 11. I think they need their mom.

Erin Kennedy: She didn’t mean it in a mean way. It was it was like, Oh, that’s great. They’re not babies anymore.

Megan Glaros: Like, you can leave them at home. Yeah.

Erin Kennedy: So it’s just expected that you will sacrifice because why not? You love what you do, and there’s 84 people behind you who are willing to do the job. So, it’s only when you actually are able to step back or something happens when you’re like, What am I giving up again? How old are my kids now? My son’s eight and he’s been in eight schools? I might be trying to take a critical look at what we’re doing.

Erin Kennedy: Poor kid.

Megan Glaros: Yeah.

So lots of fodder here of a lot of unsustainable practices and abuses going on. And I hope that you don’t pull your punches as your show continues.

Megan Glaros: I don’t even think we need to, quite honestly, because like Erin and I are looking at this as a whole really about this industry and why it has to be the way it is. But also, it’s fascinating to talk to people who have been watching and aren’t in the industry because they have no idea what it’s all about.

So that’s kind of fun for us because, you know, we were just in it and the people we were working with were in it and our families knew about it and that was, OK, fine. But now it’s like, you guys have no idea what that’s really like.

So we’re kind of just telling those stories. And I don’t hate anybody I ever worked with. I don’t hate even the fact that we got laid off. What I hate is what I chose to give up and I don’t know why I was expected to do so, I think is what I’m looking at like why can’t it have been different and why couldn’t it be different for people who come after us?

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing these stories as they continue to come out across the podcast. That’s all the time we have today. So, thank you so much, Erin Kennedy and Megan Clarisse, for being here today.

Megan Glaros: Yeah, thank you, Michael.

And thanks to all of you for watching and listening. And if you find us on YouTube, I invite you to like and subscribe to us there. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode of Talking TV, and you can watch back episodes at TV NewsCheck.com, where we’ve got loads of other video content to remember, to check in with TV news check every day for continuously updated TV industry news and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Exposing Local TV’s Darker Side In ‘Broken News’ appeared first on TV News Check.

Those two exceptional milestones foreground this week’s Talking TV conversation with Holliday and Carol Fowler, the station’s director of content. They discuss how crime has become the city’s main story, and how they’re trying to differentiate their approach by adding context and perspective to its bleak upward trajectory. They also share their proactive approach to heading off newsroom burnout while simultaneously giving young talent a head start in the industry.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Tegna-owned KSDK in St Louis is celebrating 75 years on the air this year, having signed on in 1947 as the first television station in Missouri. Art Holliday is its news director, and Carol Fowler is its director of content. Both are here today to talk about how they work to keep their station relevant and competitive in a multi-platform world and what’s on their minds in a volatile summer on the cusp of midterm elections.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. We’ll be right back with that conversation. Welcome Art Holiday and Carol Fowler to Talking TV.

Carol Fowler: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Art Holliday: Thank you, Michael.

KSDK is marking 75 years on the air this year. What are you doing to recognize and commemorate that on air and online?

Fowler: Hmm. Well, I’ll take that, and then I’m sure Art can talk at length about the great history of KSDK. Content has been front and center with us. We, first of all, wanted to just celebrate 75 years, let our audience know in a number of ways. We’ve produced a special that aired earlier this year, a year, an hour long, really a tribute to the greatest stories of St. Louis over those 75 years, because news and cover and community has really been at the heart of the mission of this station 75 years ago. And as it stands today, but integrated in the newscast, you can’t miss it.

We changed our bug. We produced stories to air inside the newscast. We produced three stories a month to air at various times during the month, and we’ll continue that through the end of the year. And then and later in August, we’re going to be having a big public event at the Missouri History Museum with a panel of people who’ve worked at KSDK over the years. It’s really going to be a great look back and also look forward to what the future looks like celebrating the past, but also being pretty excited about the future and what KSDK Five on Your Side means to St. Louis.

Holliday: I think over the years we’ve struggled to figure out what exactly to do with our archives. When I first started working here in 1979, I think we had just transitioned from film to videotape. So, we have 75 years of news coverage in our archives, all different sorts of technological formats. So that’s a challenge to continue to pay attention to that, to cherish it the way that it should. But in a situation like we are this year with our 75th anniversary, we’ve kind of rediscovered it and fallen in love with our archives again. We have a sports special with some of the iconic interviews that we’ve done decade after decade. So, it’s a really unique time for me personally. Next week is my 43rd anniversary.

Fowler: Yay, Art!

Holliday: Still standing, that’s the miracle. But, you know, so a lot of the stories I’ve grown up with professionally that we’re revisiting, whether it’s weather events, political events, celebrities coming to St. Louis, just big news stories of all sorts. So, it’s really an interesting time for us to look back and also try to figure out how much do people care about 75 years. I think there is there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that for some people that’s very significant. For others, probably less so. But isn’t that true of most things?

It’s a platinum jubilee, isn’t it? And Art, that’s a remarkable run. I didn’t realize we started this conversation you were such a vet at the station.

Holliday: I am. I am a vet. Yes, that’s right.

Fowler: Yeah. Art was on the air for the vast majority of his career and only in the last couple of years stepped behind the camera and is now news director. So, we could probably do the whole show just on Art’s portfolio.

Could do a retrospective of your career.

Holliday: And my family might care.

Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. So, you have a different kind of hierarchy at the station than many other stations have. Carol, you’re the director of content, you’re kind of sitting right under the GM and then you are in charge of both the linear and the digital, and then you have Art on the linear side and you have a digital director there as well.

Fowler: Correct. It works well here. It works well at KSDK. And I think across the industry, more stations are leaning into this model. You know, there was a time in TV when broadcast was virtually everything and digital was like, oh, it was kind of well, digital was kind of over here. But then there was broadcast and over time and certainly today, digital commands equal attention from the leadership in the newsroom. And this works out well for us.

I have my hand in both. I worked in the digital space. I certainly worked in broadcast for a lot of years. It is fantastic to work with someone like Art as news director. He supervises broadcast and also takes the lead on our recruiting and retention, which is I don’t have to tell anybody listening to this is a big deal at the moment. And then we have a digital director who does a great job watching our digital platforms and developing strategy. She and I work with that, so I have my hand in a lot of different things.

I really can’t imagine another model, but I think it depends on the talent you have in the room. You have to decide which hat is what leans into their strength, what’s their highest use is how I sometimes phrase it. And this works out actually. It’s worked out really well for us.

I want to come back to staffing issues in just a moment. But before that, I always love talking to GM’s news directors, other station executives, because they have their finger on the pulse of what’s going on like almost nobody else does in the industry. So, I’m wondering for both of you and starting with Art, what are you thinking about? What are your viewers thinking about? Where are you focusing your reporting resources most directly right now in this moment?

Holliday: I think one of the challenges that we’re facing right now is how do we cover crime in a meaningful way? Gun violence is prevalent all over the nation and certainly true in St. Louis. I mean, we had a high-profile shooting incident last night with 100 shell casings in downtown St. Louis. It’s really damaged the reputation of St. Louis.

So that’s part of the storytelling. But how do you provide a public service to the community rather than just the drive by journalism where you show the cops standing around in the shell casings and the crime tape? Because that doesn’t [help]. All that does is scare people.

Sure. And it becomes noise after a while, too. So, what are you doing to bring, I don’t know, more context, or what’s your solution so far to the problem?

Holliday: By reinforcing the message that the best crime stories are the next day or the next week or the next month, trying to find the humanity of the story. Who are the people that are affected? Are they willing to talk or are they willing to share how crime has impacted their lives? By certainly talking to public officials, which, you know, sometimes that’s like, you know, you don’t get the result that you would like, but you have to hold people accountable. You have to ask the right questions. You have to look at maybe solutions that may be working somewhere else and ask, OK, is this something that could work in St. Louis?

So, there’s a variety of ways. Late last year, we had a really unusual carjacking situation. It was a mother and her 11-year-old son were a carjacking team. So, if you see a mother and son, your defenses are down because you think it’s the mother and her child. Well, they got they carjacked the guy. The 11-year-old pistol whipped him. So that was the initial story, which on its face is, you know, somewhat dramatic. So, the original reporter, Robert Townsend, did some follow up work. We tracked down the victim and it turned out he was someone who had emigrated to the United States from another country, was not particularly street smart, was a good Samaritan who thought he was helping a mother and her son and wound up losing his car.

So that was story number two. So, the victim, a day or two later, called Robert back, Hey, I got my car back. And you’ll never imagine what they found. Well, apparently, the carjackers left some documents in the backseat of the car that identified them. But the police didn’t search the car. They just they just turned it back over to the owner. So now we’ve got a two for one story. The guy gets his car back and oh, by the way, the police aren’t very good at investigating stolen cars.

You know, so that story’s unusual. But it reinforces the idea that if you keep digging, keep asking questions, keep looking for the people who are affected, that’s the kind of crime coverage that provides some context and hopefully some information to people that goes beyond the first draft of crime that we started off with.

Well, Art, that example makes me wonder, how is your relationship with the police evolving as crime is surging, as cases are getting worse and the volume of crime is increasing? Do you have a more fractious relationship with the police than you did at the outset of the current crime wave? Or in what ways is that changing?

Holliday: I don’t know that it’s worse and I don’t know that it’s better. I know last year we invited public information officers, PIOs from multiple law enforcement entities in our region, to join our newsroom on Zoom so that we could just have a conversation when we’re not under deadline pressure or political pressure and just have a conversation about the symbiotic relationship that we have. There are times when the police need us, when they have important information to get to the public. There are times when we have to hold the police accountable, which they probably don’t care for very much, but that’s part of the job as well. So, I think the goal when I tried to create this conversation was to just recognize what each one of us has to deal with and the Venn diagram that brings us together on a daily basis. And I don’t know if it made things better, but it certainly I think it maybe there was some enlightenment on both sides, hopefully.

Fowler: I think in the last year, Art and I and the station as a whole have worked really hard to be more thoughtful about how we use information that the police provide. Just because the police say the suspect was Black without any other description doesn’t mean that we use that in our reporting. Just because we’re given a mugshot of someone who is charged, we have a process that’s on our Microsoft Teams. We immediately start a conversation. Is it newsworthy to use this photo? Is it newsworthy to include this fact? Are we going to report the story? I think Art raised an excellent point about not just covering it in the moment, but the best stories happen two or three days after the crime. Go back, circle back.

We don’t cover every crime. We don’t cover every shooting. We don’t cover every murder. You know, I’m sure a lot of stations grapple with this, too, but we don’t cover as much as because we’re being more thoughtful about it. Is it something that we can provide context to? Is it just another carjacking? Let’s not cover it unless we can bring a perspective. And also, our audience is telling us we want solutions. News is depressing, and I think that’s probably one of the biggest things as an industry that we’ve got to come to terms with is people are watching because it’s such a serious world they don’t want to hear anymore unless we can bring forth stories and then take that extra step to find out, is there a path forward? What is the solution? Is there hope? We have to put that as part of our reporting in crime report.

This applies to a lot of different reporting, but certainly crime. All of that gets into discussions. We have really robust discussions in our editorial meetings. Art and I are almost always present. We prioritize the editorial meeting because this is really where the decisions are getting made in terms of who’s covering what and where we’re putting our resources on any given day.

I want to switch gears and ask you about streaming and your streaming trajectory. Where is the station currently represented on streaming platforms? Are you on most of the major ones or what are you doing on that front?

Fowler: We’re on Roku and Amazon Fire. And we’ve launched, along with all of our sister stations inside Tegna, a new platform a couple of months ago and really are a first mover in our market, St. Louis. In this space, we take it very seriously. We look at the analytics every day and have been surprised by a few things. I thought I knew streaming. I thought I kind of knew. But this is really uncharted territory. And, you know, audience habits are taking shape. So, we’re kind of watching. We’re in the infancy of a delivery platform that is growing by leaps and bounds. The metrics really are growing so fast that, you know, to have triple digit growth month to month is really expected.

I’m curious, what surprised you in the in the audience behavior of the analytics that you saw?

Fowler: That people want to watch newscasts and don’t necessarily care if they’re live. So, for instance, we’re seeing strong interest in the morning. And I think it’s a function of, you know, people working at home. Habits in the morning are changing a lot in terms of the amount of people that are in the workforce and that have to get out the door and or fighting a commute. We’re an NBC station. So, at 7 a.m., we close our local newscast and go to Today. If I wake up, if I’m a consumer, I wake up at 7 a.m. I’ve missed our live broadcast. Maybe I want a local show and not the Today show, as good as it is. And now streaming is a free and a real convenient way to catch up on a local newscast that may be only a half hour old. We have a simulcast and then and I’ll just use the morning as an example. We have a show, 6 a.m. So at 7 a.m., we recue that show and we play it and we have found a really strong audience for that.

Are you also producing original content for streaming at this point?

Fowler: Only weather. We’re producing what we call big weathers and that’s our top video. So, what we’re not doing is just cutting up the newscast and putting it like a video jukebox in our Roku and our Fire TV. Our strategy is really to lean into longer form. So, instead of taking the two minutes of weather from the 6 p.m. news after the 6 p.m. news, our chief meteorologist will record a four-or-five-minute weather that then we post and it runs as it interstitial with our other content. And then we also have a weather section. Someone with the app can go straight to the weather section and see an extended [forecast]. We even have started teasing it during our weather that, you know, the extra content that we’ll be talking about on our OTT.

What’s the road map on streaming? Is it a goal to produce more original content newscasts or special, you know, documentary content, exclusively for streaming?

Fowler: Probably at some point. We’re still learning what the audience has the biggest appetite for. You know, longer-form custom content is expensive to produce and it’s labor intensive. And right now, we have to make tough choices on how we’re going to use our resources down the road. It’s the perfect place for documentaries. I mean, think about the things that you watch on the entertainment streaming platforms. You watch movies and documentaries that are longer.

And when you’re in that space, you’re kind of expecting to have an experience. That certainly is. And I’m speaking locally. Nationally, Tegna has big plans for producing content that can run across the company. But as far as KSDK goes, if we could just produce a fantastic newscast experience that people want to seek out in the streaming space on their own schedule and have weather and showcase breaking news in that streaming box. I think in the short term, if we could check all those boxes and do them very well, we would be really happy.

Perhaps then the next step is to think about creating content that lives there. We have a Missouri primary coming up in the next few weeks and we’re experimenting with streaming in the Illinois primary, which was about a month ago. We at right after the polls closed, we streamed an election show from 7 p.m. until our late news. To me, that’s the perfect place to take advantage of having a lot of room to run and things that are happening in the moment. So breaking situations like election night. We’ll be doing a lot of custom content in that respect. But as far as storytelling, that’s probably down the road a bit for KSDK.

Well, talking of cross-Tegna initiatives, Art, I know Verify is a very big product inside of Tegna. It’s got a national unit and iterates it on local stations. How are you handling that inside of your newsroom? Do you have a dedicated person who’s sort of your Verify reporter? Is that spread across multiple people or how does it work?

Art Holliday: Our Verify reporter is one of our main anchors and she’s probably doing locally, maybe one or two Verifys a week. She worked in conjunction with our special project unit. So that’s kind of how we handle it locally. And then obviously Tegna has a national unit that’s feeding to all the Tegna stations. So, it’s a combination of those two ways of producing content for Verify.

And just one more thing on the content side in terms of weather, which came up a few minutes ago. Midwest summer is always about major storms. Potential tornadic activity commands a lot of attention. It’s very important, life or death sometimes. So, what are you doing to stay competitive on the weather front in your market?

Fowler: Well, our market, like most markets, is very competitive on weather. It’s our number one priority. We talk constantly about how to make our weather distinctive, to excel at breaking weather, and to have protocols in place in which you have a mindset not only your newsroom but in your entire station that you jump into action. Everybody knows the hat they’re wearing when we’re in situations where there’s a tornado warning, for instance. So, we’re looking at everything from resources to staffing.

We’re making staffing decisions right now to bolster weather, to get more resources where we have openings and, you know, there’s a lot of churn going in on in the business right now. We’re taking a look. Do we need that opening for that purpose or is it better suited to supporting weather, for instance? We made that decision recently, so I don’t think weather is ever going to take a backseat to another content category and a TV stations. It’s still a reason to watch.

And even as we all know audience, you know, some of the audience that traditionally watch broadcast are now getting their news online. But those folks still come back, and we know they still come back in severe, life threatening weather situations. And you have to be at the top of your game. You have to be first, and you also have to be right. You have to have the credibility. We work on that every day.

Staffing has come up a couple of times now. I want to pivot to that as our final topic here. Obviously, the Great Resignation has impacted this entire industry and many others, but it seems to be pretty acutely growing as a problem. So, Art, you’re the recruitment man there. How are you dealing with that? I mean, people are not moving into this field. People are leaving it. They’re burned out. They’re exhausted. They’re tired of doing multiple shifts. You know, they have a litany of complaints. So, how are you confronting that?

Holliday: Well, I think there’s a couple of components there that you talked about. One is the people who are already mid-career who are deciding or at least giving some serious thought to, you know, I’m tired, I want to do something else. So, there’s that part of it. We do see that in St. Louis.

We also see people that we hired four, five, six years ago did a lot better and then move on to other markets. So that’s part of the churn. And then part of it is recruiting new people. I spent a lot of time looking at resumes and tapes. There’s a lot of people that still want to do this, whether it’s sports, whether it’s weather, whether it’s news. So, that’s the good news. The challenge is that most of those people are kind of in in terms of talent and performance, they’re kind of in the vast middle, right? They could probably do the job, but there’s not a whole lot that necessarily sets them apart from everyone else. So, are you going to coach them up or are you going to wait a little while longer and hope that you find someone that really does stand out?

I mean, Carol and I were talking earlier this week. Carol, you sent me a text of a young reporter that we thought we had kind of discovered. She was working in Springfield, Illinois. And I you know, the first time I looked at her reel I’m like, wow, she’s really good. And I looked at her resume and she was like less than two years out of college. So, I’m like, whoa, OK.

She’s just a ringer.

Holliday: That we wanted to zero in on. She just started her new job in Philadelphia. So, she went from Springfield.

And bypassed Missouri.

Which is in the in the triple digits in terms of market size from Springfield to Philadelphia. So, our instincts were great, but Philly beat us to the punch.

Well, you just brought up the conundrum that you have: Do you take somebody and train them up to the level you want them to be? Or do you hold out for that better candidate? What’s the solution that you typically then come up with yourself?

Holliday: I would say that we do both. And so far, it’s working. The one of the challenges is that the longer you wait to replace someone, the more it becomes punishment for your newsroom because you’re short staffed and people are like, what’s taking so long? And we hear that all the time.

And, you know, conspiracy theories are usually oh, they’re just trying to save money. No, we’re trying to get it right. And so far, our track record in the last year, where we’ve hired a lot of people last year and a half, is that we brought a lot of great people into our newsroom. But occasionally we will take a chance on someone who shows that based on where they are in their career that they haven’t reached their ceiling yet.

A specific example would be that we just created a reporter in residence program as an experiment. So, it is a one-year contract, market rate salary, but it’s someone who has just graduated. And we identified a young lady who just graduated from the University of Missouri. She was one of the one of a handful of people who clearly seemed to be ahead of her peers. And so, we use that as vacation relief. She works a variety of schedules. When people go on vacation or get sick so that you’re not disrupting your entire schedule when someone inevitably goes on vacation or is ill or whatever. And in exchange, we coach her up.

And, you know, and the worst-case scenario for the reporter in residence is that at the end of the year, they would have jumpstarted their career to start in the 23rd market. Their resumé tape is probably going to be light years ahead of where it would have been if they had started it in Market 95. But what’s more likely is that sometime in that year, we’re going to have a reporter leave for one reason or another. And we have someone, hopefully that we think is good enough to just plug and play.

It sounds like an elegant solution to kill two problems at once. But also, it’s not just about recruitment. It’s about retention. So, what are you as the newsroom manager and everybody’s boss doing to mitigate all of the stress that [employees] have right now to head off burnout and to try to keep them not just at your station, but in the business?

Holliday: We are trying to do a lot of different things. One, we talk openly about the stress associated with this particular line of work, especially in the context of the last two years of a pandemic. It has taken a toll mentally on a lot of people. On a more personal note for me, there was the school shooting in Nevada recently. For whatever reason, it hit me harder than other mass shootings because my daughter is an elementary school teacher.

Now, we encourage people to speak to a news manager, speak to someone close to them, make sure that they understand that there is professional help that is provided by the company, that it’s OK to talk about your mental health in our newsroom. So that’s one thing that we do.

Fowler: We do regular check ins, too. We have a minimum monthly, we sit down with all the employees. And I have to tell you, coming up in the business, I don’t remember that ever happening. We’ve gotten a lot smarter with, you know, staying close to our people so that if somebody is really feeling like they want to quit, that it doesn’t come as a complete shock. Like you never said anything. I thought things were OK. It’s not so much a shock anymore. And there are people who are leaving the business for really good reasons and ones that I wouldn’t quarrel with for a second.

But more of it is going on and there are more career options. I will just say for people who work in TV news, there are a lot of jobs now that are outside of your market that you can do from home. And so those career opportunities that didn’t exist before the pandemic now exist. So, there may be several jobs that are appealing, not necessarily in television. Maybe in media, maybe in digital that I can do now because of Zoom and because of everything going virtual. So, we have competition now. We have competition for our really smart people who are great writers and are critical thinkers.

Other industries want these sort of people, too. And now they can offer them a really attractive career path that involves perhaps 100% work remote or a good chunk of it working remote. So, we’re being really proactive in the work from home space, too, because our employees told us that we did it by necessity in the pandemic and now by choice. We’re doing it because we know what makes for happier people.

Holliday: And we also encourage people to talk about their desire for advancement and how we can play a role. I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people are concerned not just about today, but the next year or the next five years. And will they have opportunities to grow? Will they have opportunities to get trained to acquire new skills? And in our newsroom, all the answers are yes.

And so, we have to do a great job over and over and over again of communicating that and making sure that those topics also come up in our monthly meetings with the people that we report directly to.

Well you certainly have a lot going on, a lot to handle, a lot to manage as things are not getting any easier.

Holliday: You’re a master of understatement.

And all that amid a 75-year anniversary at KSDK. So, congratulations on that milestone to both of you. And thank you very much, Art Holliday and Carol Fowler, for being with me here today. Appreciate it.

Carol Fowler: Thank you, Michael.

Art Holliday: Thanks for having us.

And thanks to all of you for watching and listening and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Creative Approaches To Crime Coverage And The Great Resignation At St. Louis’ KDSK appeared first on TV News Check.

In June, TVNewsCheck’s Michael Stahl first reported on accusations of workplace toxicity and a compromised news product at the Altice-owned company’s New Jersey channel. The story resulted in the firing of the Jacques Natz, the company’s GM at the center of many of the story’s accusations.

This week, Stahl is back with a more sweeping follow-up in which over a dozen sources, including current and former News 12 employees, allege the problems were far more systemic at the company than originally reported. Sources identify a wider circle of upper management who they say have bullied scores of senior staffers into resigning, habitually berating many more.

These sources also say that Altice has fundamentally damaged News 12’s hyperlocal news brand by defaulting on its promise, offering instead an unacceptably high barrage of sponsored content and generic features that favor scalability over substance.

In this Talking TV conversation, Stahl lays out the litany of accusations against Altice and several top News 12 managers, how the company has responded and the longer-term implications for its brand.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Back in June, TVNewsCheck reported on a concerning situation at News 12 New Jersey. Numerous sources shared with us stories of toxic workplace conditions that led to the resignations of many of the channel’s newsroom leaders. In response, owner Altice launched an investigation which led to the firing of News 12’s General Manager Jacques Natz. TVNewsCheck reporter Michael Stahl wrote that story and he’s back this week with a follow-up that reveals News 12’s problems extend far beyond New Jersey to all of its metro area New York newsrooms. Many more sources have come forward to share with him deep concerns about micromanagement, abuses and an erosion of News 12’s fundamental value proposition of providing hyperlocal news to its New York markets.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcast. Coming up, a conversation with TVNewsCheck’s Michael Stahl about what his reporting has revealed about News 12 and what that means for the future of a news brand in the country’s number one market.

Welcome, Michael Stahl, to Talking TV.

Michael Stahl: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s an important story, happy to be here.

It is. Michael, your first story on News 12 in New Jersey revealed some very adversarial working conditions under Jacques Natz, the general manager for the entire network at the time. But according to your sources across the company who’ve approached you since that first piece, it seems that conditions were much worse and much more widespread than you initially revealed. What’s the crux of the problem there and who is experiencing that?

I mean, there’s so much to unpack here. My sources have told me that ostensibly they believe that Altice, since they took over News 12 in 2016 — they purchased it from the Dolan family — they feel that they, the new company, has wanted to cut costs. And one big way that they’ve looked to cut costs while also driving up revenue is to hire younger, cheaper labor, but at the cost of sort of pushing out experienced, trusted news people out of their newsrooms.

And allegedly they’re not they’re not firing them. They’re pushing them out there, making conditions untenable for them to stay, as these sources allege.

Yeah, precisely. And the reason for that approach, apparently, again, according to sources, is that the Dolan family sued Altice in 2018, if memory serves, over mass layoffs, and the Dolans contended that in their sale agreement, Altice had promised to maintain the integrity of the News 12 brands, and they felt that unloading a large portion of staffers, experienced staffers compromised the integrity of the News 12 brand.

Shortly after that, perhaps to the surprise of nobody, Pat Dolan, who was the president, was removed from News 12. And the lawsuit was settled a year later. Pat Dolan at the time said that he was happy with it. But it seems as though Altice has kind of moved in a different direction with the same endgame. And like you said, they’re looking to make life difficult for people, especially the most veteran of reporters, the most veteran of staffers, because they command a lot of money.

And so, what these people are telling you, they’re being micromanaged, being bullied at work. A lot of harsh words there, sort of a litany of quality of workplace condition concerns that they have.

The worst charge that I’ve heard is that Altice, or upper management in Altice at News 12, are kind of trumping up charges of poor performance and what they deem are fireable offenses that really have no bearing in reality. Again, allegedly according to sources.

How bad is morale at this company right now?

From what I’m gathering, it’s very poor across the entire landscape, it seems, because people feel as though that they’re not trusted to do their jobs. People feel as though, you know, nothing that they can ever do is good enough because at the slightest little error that is at least perceived by upper management, they’re going to be berated. So, I’m sure there are some people that work there that are happy. We do have sources in the story that that say that and they’re doing good work.

But, you know, a lot of people came out of the woodwork for this one. We have more than a dozen sources for this piece alone, and we had three for the first one. And I’m not even including them. And these are also sources from, I think, a total now of four of the seven newsrooms.

Now, Altice, the parent company, did take action after your first story was published, and they fired Jacques Natz, the group’s GM, who seemed to be at the heart of many of these problems. But is this problem bigger than him, bigger than one individual manager?

It appears to be. The assistant vice president of news, Audrey Gruber, who was hired by News 12 after some reports from her time in New York 1, came out about her being, you know, not exactly the most likable character from a management perspective. She was hired by News 12. And even at the time, a lot of people were kind of like a lot of workers in News 12 were sort of questioning the judgment of Altice and upper management leadership in hiring her. Someone that came with that kind of baggage, they felt as though, you know, their best interests weren’t really a top priority in terms more.

More than even her baggage was that there has been, sources tell you, friction that she brought with her into this new workplace.

Yeah, exactly. Again, you know the way that she kind of began, allegedly, according to sources, she speaks to people sort of very condescendingly, is something that I’ve heard a lot about. She kind of has this air about her as though she knows better than everybody else.

And then there’s another person that was named by a few people, Amy Waldman, who, similarly to Gruber, had some baggage from her time at WPIX here in New York. She was hired by News 12 shortly before Jacques Natz. But she’s implemented some very heavy handed, rigid sort of management, has had a very rigid, heavy handed management style that people have not taken to.

1. So, what does Altice say to all of this?

They say that they value News 12. Well, they value the brands. They say that they’re investing in News 12. They say that, you know, that they want the people at News 12 to feel comfortable. They want the people in News 12 to continue to deliver good news at a hyperlocal level. You know, that’s another big thing that you and I haven’t discussed yet here. But, you know, a lot of people feel as though some programing changes have been made to, at least in Altice’s mind, to boost revenue.

Let’s discuss that now. A key element of the story that’s going to be of interest to all of News 12 ‘s competitors in the New York area is that potentially a news brand is suffering here in all of this, according to your sources. I mean, they say that sponsored content has crept up to well beyond a healthy amount. Hyperlocal stories are being replaced with these more generic, anodyne stories that can play across all of its channels in the area. I mean, on the one hand, it looks like they’re cutting costs by creating more scalable content. They’re driving up revenue opportunities. But on the other, staffers see this as self-inflicted damage to a very well-regarded news brand up to this point.

As one source put it, it’s become watered down. And the more that you work in these sort of anodyne, non-market, specific stories that can air across multiple markets, across the News 12 networks, it doesn’t really serve the communities that they have been serving, in some cases for over 30 years. And then you also throw in the sponsored content. They all say, look, we understand we need sponsored content. This is how our salaries get paid. They get it. They just feel that it’s become excessive. They feel that sometimes it’s producing kind of poor taste that serves to sort of de-legitimize the news value of the brand.

And all of this, the sponsored content, the general interest segments. All of that takes time away, broadcast time away from impactful, community-based stories that has been a hallmark of the News 12 brand, again, for more than 30 years.

Well, to be equivocal about this, this is a hard line for any news organization to walk. You’ve got to have sponsored content as a part of life at almost every station. They’ve got some level of it. It’s just a question of where you draw those lines. But I mean, amid all of this, News 12’s ratings are up, aren’t they?

We have some evidence of that. And I think what Altice has pointed out, even besides ratings, Altice is very quick to point out that at the very least, they have widened the number of broadcast channels. You know, they have streaming services, all kinds of OTT services or platforms where News 12 can be seen now. So, brand exposure, they seem to feel, is at an all-time high. They’ve also said ratings are up as well. But just generally, brand exposure is growing. So, from all sides, that’s true.

But there’s a caveat there that they had a big distribution pick up as well, via Fios, that brought in whole flanks of viewership in a new platform that they didn’t have before. And so that’s made it sort of hard to where do you factor that in. How much of the bump can be attributable to that?

And that was controversial, too, because what happened was Fios One News was terminated by Optimum or Verizon, I always get them confused. Verizon terminated News One, excuse me, and then wound up partnering with Altice, which had previously been a rival as News 12 was on Optimum. And now News 12 is also on Verizon. So as a matter of fact, a number of local politicians came out and said that the elimination of Fios News One was eliminating voices and free press and could have an impact on democracy.

Well, for News 12 it’s certainly a hell of a boost to get. So, we have to factor that in to see to what extent the bump is attributable to that as well. So, what’s likely to happen next here? I mean, do you see more upper management heads rolling potentially? What are sources telling you?

Well, I really don’t want to speculate. I feel like I have to give credit where credit is due. And when I spoke to [Altice’s] spokesperson about this, I said to her, I said, hey, you know, you already exhibited that you don’t want to put up with what amounts to, in some cases, bullying by firing Jacques Natz. But there are some very troubling stories coming out of this report about some other upper management figures. And if what they’ve done is true and I have reason to believe it is because, again, multiple sources have confirmed all these stories, I think some punitive measures should be taken because as another source from outside the company said, this is something that is happening a lot, they believe. This was a recruiter. This is something that they believe is happening a lot throughout the industry and it needs to change because the news is suffering.

Well, other shoes may yet drop in this story. And there’s lots more to read, of course, in your story. A very long story, very, very detailed out this week, Michael. So, I would encourage everybody watching and listening to this podcast to do so. We’ve got a link to the piece in the deck for this podcast, so do check it out.

Now, if you’re working in a newsroom where you see abuses happening and your concerns are falling on deaf ears with management, reach out to us. The industry won’t sustain itself by allowing unsustainable working conditions to flourish. So, talk to us. And alas, that’s all the time we have this week. So, I want to thank you, TVNewsCheck reporter Michael Stahl, for joining me and for your very important work here.

Thank you.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on our videos page of TVNewsCheck.com. And remember to check with us throughout the day for continuously updated industry news. You’ll also find our video podcast and other video content on YouTube, and I encourage you to like and follow us there. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: News 12’s Self-Inflicted Wounds appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Zee and her co-host Sheldon Yellen, co-host and CEO of Belfor disaster recovery services, the show’s sponsor, look at their show’s efforts to better prepare viewers for extreme weather. They also explain how broadcasters can strike the right tone to ensure viewers heed warnings as signals in the noise, and how they can step up their viewer preparedness game beyond bullet points and rote reminders of proactive safety.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Hearts of Heroes is a series from Hearst Media Production Group that showcases the work of first responders across the U.S. each Saturday morning. The show is headed into its fourth season and is hosted by ABC chief meteorologist Ginger Zee and Sheldon Yellen, CEO of Belfor Property Restoration, the show’s sponsor.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. Today, a conversation with Ginger Zee and Sheldon Yellen about telling the stories of first responders, a frontline group whose mettle has been tested like never before, given that we seem to be careening between natural and man-made disasters at an unsustainable velocity. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome. Ginger Zee and Sheldon Yellen to Talking TV.

Zee: Thank you so much for having us.

Yellen: Thanks for having us.

Thanks for being here. Ginger, you’ve been doing this show for going on four years. And the number of disasters that we all seem to confront seem to be multiplying by orders of magnitude all the time. In your day job as ABC’s chief meteorologist, you’re looking at meteorological disasters happening regularly across the country. What’s your take on what we’re facing here?

Zee: So, I started covering storms and chasing tornadoes back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. My first big hurricane was Hurricane Katrina. I would say in the last decade, I have seen a remarkable difference. And that’s when I started with ABC and I had the opportunity with the network to travel to almost every tropical storm, every hurricane, every major tornado outbreak wildfire. And I’ve seen a remarkable shift and the implications also to more humans happening more quickly so that the breaks between these storms and the breaks between disasters globally as well, I’ve seen an uptick.

Science tells us well below, you know, well beyond my anecdotal evidence of what I’ve covered and what I’ve done, that this is true. And we are able to. Yes, technology has allowed us to actually see more where we have a camera and every place. But there’s actually data behind an increase in extreme events and their proximity together, and that’s where we really see it. It’s the ramp up of the intensity with how closely together all of this is happening.

It’s not just that it seems to be happening all over, but it really is. The data is there to back it up, the sort of calamitous period that we’re in. Sheldon, is the purpose of this show chiefly to share stories of frontline responders, or is it just as much about disaster preparedness? What do you want viewers to take away?

Yellen: I think that’s a great question. There are a few takeaways in that. We do want people to be prepared and we’re trying to get a message out about this don’t think it won’t happen to me. Think it could happen to you, and it’s happening, like Ginger just said, more and more often.

Additionally, to highlight these heroic first responders who without pause, just run in as everybody else is running out. And I think that the message of respect and gratitude to the first responders and at some point in time, somebody’s life is going to be saved by these heroic people.

Back to your original question. The more prepared you are, the better planning you have in place, the better chance of avoiding disaster yourself. And those are the messages we’re trying to put out.

And how do you source out the stories inside of the show, Sheldon? What are your criteria for inclusion? These are all situations where Belfor was involved in a disaster recovery?

Yellen: A lot of the situations do have a Belfor element to them, but we are hearing stories outside as well. And again, it’s primarily highlighting the first responders and how they are actively rescuing and saving people in moments of need. So, these stories are coming to us both internally and externally. But for people, again, to understand the severity of what’s going on out there, it’s really important for us to capture great stories, to get out a great message.

Zee: And if I can just jump on to say that even before knowing Sheldon or Belfor, I knew of Belfor because I was that independent person who’s been in all of the situations, and we have this unique perspective of being the first people there. If we’re the first people there, aside from first responders, you also have the common first five people there and Belfor is often right there, right behind the storm or sometimes ahead of it.

I think that that’s an important part to distinguish. I don’t know that there’s much that you miss with Belfor, just like the American Red Cross would be there, just like, you know, that that’s kind of the progression, I would say that I’ve seen. And that unique perspective of being there and having the experience that whether Sheldon and Belfor or myself have is that we’ve kind of been in that second line right behind those first responders, and we’ve gotten to admire them. And now this is a way for us to share that with the world.

We’re in the midst of hurricane season, which seems to be extending along with getting more severe. We’ve just had a 1,000-year flood at Yosemite. Wildfire season doesn’t seem to be confined to a season now, but just sort of a year-round condition of life for people who are living in the West. Ginger, do you see people adequately adjusting their mindset around this as a new reality now?

Zee: I think the interest is there more than it was even 10 years ago. I think the education and understanding of what that means to them is perhaps not there. I’m still amazed on a regular day in Manhattan and if I’m walking around, I’ll see a mother pushing two kids in a stroller. And I know that we’re about to have a severe thunderstorm because I’m attached to my radar. I never let it go. I’m really up close with this. And I’ll find myself being like the town crier. And I’m running over like, hey, you know, there’s to be 60-mile-per-hour winds, so I might want to get the kids inside there.

I see that separation of people, it’s not necessarily even responsibility, just it’s not their first thought. And so, in a hurricane situation, it’s different. Usually, you’ve heard about it for three, four or five, sometimes up to 10 days in advance. But in a wildfire situation, our interface as humans with the natural world and the uptick in natural disaster is something that we’re going to have to also see education and preparedness go along with that rapid uptick.

In terms of flash flooding, the danger of that just seems to be more intense. And now you get these violent rainstorms, sudden inches of rain, it seems like it happens in a very compressed period of time. So banal events are not even banal anymore so much.

Zee: I’ll say Ida last year was a perfect example of this. So, I was in New Orleans covering it and here comes Ida, knocks out the power, does what it does, and the Gulf Coast knows how to do that. It was a really rough one, and they were out of power for a lot longer in a lot of places, even New Orleans proper. I had to leave before they even got water back on because we had to follow the storm. I knew as meteorologist this that there was to be four to seven inches of rain. Now, I’m a meteorologist. I sat there, I forecasted it. I rushed back so I could cover it. But that night, when I’m at home and I’m watching my rain gauge go to seven inches in four hours, I’m even amazed.

So, I’m the one connected to this, and I forecast it. But it’s one thing to forecast it, it’s another to then live it. And that’s something where these folks have never done that. The people in Queens that were in their basements, they didn’t think because they’ve never seen that. They’ve never seen the engineering fail to the degree that it did. And then they lose neighbors and friends and family members. So, I think there has to be a bit more urgency in the understanding of what four to seven inches of rain looks like in three hours.

Absolutely. I was also in New Orleans living through that storm for the 12 or so hours of hurricane force winds that were going through. I’d never seen anything like that.

Zee: That fury that lasts that long over land, even if it’s marshy land, was something I had never conceived of. If you would have told me that in my studies of meteorology, I’d have been like yeah, right the friction of the land will rip it up. Not the case.

No, no. So, Ginger, as a broadcast meteorologist, do you see the meteorologist’s role or responsibilities as changing in response to the dramatic uptick in deadly weather?

Zee: I think local meteorologists have always been the heart of forecasting for deadly weather. They’ve been the communicators. So even if the National Hurricane Center had the information, they were that communicator of it. The great part about most meteorologists that you’re watching at most stations is they are also scientists, and they can take their science background, their education and utilize the NHC and the NWS and all of that to put together the best broadcast that will give you the best information.

Is it changing in the way that we talk about how to prepare and how to prepare for more, you know, more storms more often or what this water could look like? Absolutely. Even at my position, I’m not that one that’s there for the 10 days. I’m probably in a big one there for three days in advance. Two days maybe. They’ve been talking about it and following there.

It’s kind of a double-edged sword because our science has gotten so good, especially with tropical weather, with hurricanes, that we can see these really far out, often with great, precise effort. But it was last year and 2020, it was within a couple of miles for landfall. Pretty outstanding. What we can do, communicating that change over time, just like medicine has had to communicate what we do know and what we don’t know. That’s challenging and that’s something that they’re going to have to continue to find ways to do on my end.

I walked away after Katrina and then Sandy and Harvey. But Sandy especially was the one that instigated this in me. One woman told me about losing her husband and her daughter, and she told me about how the storm surge had twisted her home off of its foundation. It had bounced down the street and then ripped apart, and that’s when they lost each other. And that’s when she lost her husband and her daughter.

That heartfelt story is one that’s been told before. But I thought scientifically, when I stand in front of a map and I show this line along the coast and I say, there’s going to be 10 to 20 feet of storm surge, people don’t know what that is. So, it was my job then to say, how does this apply to people? And we made these 3D graphics where it really showed the force of the water, the velocity of how quickly it would come in your home. And then we make this amazing 3D graphic to describe what that looks and feels like, right? To kind of make it apply to people’s lives. The panhandle of Florida, 2018. I am standing across from a home that does exactly what my graphics said. It does exactly what that woman said. So, it’s like being able to put it in real life situations instead of just a line on a map. That’s what we have to think about and what local meteorologists will have to do as well.

Visualizations are going to be more imperative, then.

Zee: Yeah, absolutely. Because video is one thing. You say, that’s not me. If you can put yourself in that virtual reality, you know, this is that’s kind of how people live now. It’s like, how would it look in my home? It would look like this.

Yellen: Of course, disasters are always a local story first. What do each of you think about what broadcasters should be doing to even further promote preparedness? Many of them do already. But where can they go further with that? Or what should they do that they’re perhaps not thinking of?

I think, you know, like Ginger said, that if people are listening and the broadcasters are saying this could happen to you, this could happen to your geography, people should take heed and listen because so many people for so many years have brushed it off like, well, it didn’t happen. They projected this and it didn’t happen. It was supposed to be a category five and it was only a category three. I think that people should hear these warning signs and absolutely react to them. If that doesn’t get reacted to it causes problems for people.

And I think people need to take heed of what’s being said by these broadcasters. Ginger said it. There’s science here. This is not a guess all the time. This is scientifically backed up and these things are happening. They monitor them when they show the 3D effects that can happen. It’s real. We encourage people to listen to the authorities and listen to the broadcasters.

Zee: And I think humility is important. I think it’s important to say when something went wrong, when it didn’t go wrong. But also proof of performance is really important to kind of hammer home. We told you it was going to hit right here, and it happened within two miles. Next door. We told you this was going to be a wall of water 10 feet high. Here’s the waterline. It’s 10 feet high. Humility is important, too. We thought we were going to get only four to six inches, but some places got eight. And that is a huge deal. And here’s why. Those are all important communication skills without worrying about what that makes you look like or what it makes you not look like.

In local, I really avoided the question mark. People would put like the 40% where they’d put a question mark. And I’d be like, why are we putting a question mark? I have no question about what I’m forecasting.

Only 40%, right.

Zee: Right, and my job is to explain what that means. Sometimes science doesn’t have the easy answer of like 49 degrees or 50 degrees on a March day in the Great Lakes. The big difference is how people perceive it, if it’s going to be windy, I’m going away from accuracy. I’m going to call it 49, even though we may even get a 50 or 51 because people need to know what to expect that’s going to impact them, what it’s going to feel like on their skin, how it’s going to fill their home with water.

So those are the more important things, the actual application versus just numbers and just science. And that’s something I’ve been so lucky and I’m sure Sheldon could say, too. And having the opportunity to be with these first responders, where we get the compassion of the storm, not just like my passion for meteorology, it’s the humanity of what we see. That’s really what these storms and what forecasting is about.

How often do you think that preparedness messaging should be a part of the newscast? It’s sort of at the beginning of a hurricane season. You’ll see also, you know, special reports about how to be ready. But should we start hearing about preparedness on a more daily or weekly basis with more frequency than we do?

Yellen: I don’t know that you can overdo it, but I think that, like you said, with the beginning of hurricane season, obviously it’s spoken of quite often and I think a few times throughout the year it should be mentioned. I also think, as Ginger said, educationally, the schools. I think, you know, education in the school systems, when the kids can come home from school and talk about a lesson today and find an exhilarating way to teach it and to transfer that knowledge to children, I think it comes home with them.

And I think that will help because all too often we see people that are unprepared. And even in addition to that, the fact that once an event happens, they reaction that people do that they shouldn’t do and what people don’t do as opposed to what they should do after the event happens. So, I think education, not just from broadcasters, but in the school system itself, I think would help and go a long way.

Zee: I also think it’s making it engaging like, television-wise. I can’t tell you the last time I put up a bunch of bullet points of what to do for preparedness, because people do not listen to that. They’ve seen it before. It doesn’t really hit home. So, I would say that I’ve seen a couple of local stations — and I’ve been trying to employ some of this myself and the National Weather Service made the most effective changes with tornado safety when they did a national preparedness selfie day.

Basically, you go in your basement, you put your helmet on and you put all of your gear that you have there. They made it something that’s in the ether right now, and that’s selfies. So, they got you to take your kids, put it down there, you get your shoes in place, you get the whistle. All the things that we don’t always hear about with tornadoes.

And then you take a picture of all of it, and you share on social media. I thought that has been a very effective way because when I post that, first of all, people love seeing pictures of my kids, then they’re like, you need a helmet. Why? Right. And then you can explain what’s the whistle for, you know, just kind of changes things. The shoes, the rubber-soled shoes, those are all things that within the last couple of years have been changes in what people ask you to prepare for. And I think they’re more exciting than just go to your basement like we know that part, but what do we have to have there? It gets them engaged.

How do you get people involved? My mentor, who I interned with back in 1999, James Spann, he and his station are so good about, OK, so we all tell you, get to know weather radio. What do you do when you take it out of the box? It’s not the most intuitive thing in the world. So they go to the Walgreen’s, to the CVS, as to the places that people shop, and they have them for $10 and then they show you how to program it and they explain it. So, there’s a lot of like that. It’s kind of hands-on community involvement that goes a long, long way because then all you need is batteries and you’re good to go.

So, lose the bullet points, get more creative about the ways in which you’re trying to engage people on this. What about the tone? How do broadcasters strike the right tone between sounding too shrill or alarmist while they’re still getting across the severity of an impending potential disaster? Because, I mean, there’s a danger of disaster becoming a kind of background noise, especially given the frequency that we have them now, isn’t there?

Zee: I think I can answer for my end, it’s about how I always tell my child. I think that this is the same for everyone: Don’t be scared, be prepared. And that’s usually the tone that I go into every broadcast with.

If there are words that the National Hurricane Center are using, like you could see power knocked out for months. I’m going to hit that hard because that is scary, right? That is life changing. So, if there is something to that level, that’s where I’m going to take a dramatic pause and make sure people just heard what I said. I’ll repeat that. Months. We’re talking about that type of damage, you know, because that’s really an idle fear that will come true. The last three times I’ve said that it has come true every single time.

I think that that’s the other thing is I’ve had proof of performance of our own science by being able to be there when you see it come to fruition. So, I think that being more about preparation and being very even keeled because that’s what people want, I think.

The only thing I’ve really struggled with is in the political part of fake news. People, even in hurricanes, have come up to me in the last couple of years and they’ll get right in my face and say, ‘you’re fake news.’ And I’m like, I’m just talking about a hurricane that is right off the coast. It’s there on the satellite, but those are often the loudest voices. And I think not allowing any of that noise to deter your preparation and your broadcast would be very important. And that’s what I’ve usually done. I’m just speaking about it here because I think that that could impact someone in a smaller market.

People are really outspoken.

Yellen: I also think when you talk about tone again, if you listen to Ginger, there’s often intensity. I mean, this is it’s authentic. She is all invested into this. And I think that the messaging it’s real and I think it connects to people. And I think more people listen to this message than to some of the other messages that could be out there. So, as it relates to tone, I would say authenticity is absolutely critical.

All right. Well, so much disaster, so much calamity. Hopefully we’ll have a quiet summer, though probably not. 

Zee: We’ve got three areas of interest right now on the map, so let’s see.

Let’s just say hopefully they won’t be that interesting and they’ll just go down. I want to thank Ginger Zee and Sheldon Yellen for joining me today. Their show is Hearts of Heroes from Hearst Media Production Group. It’s on Saturday mornings as part of Hearst’s E/I offerings. Stay safe and stay ready, you two.

Zee: Thank you.

Yellen: Thank you.

And thanks to all of you for watching and listening. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Ginger Zee On Preparing Viewers For Disaster appeared first on TV News Check.

Anastos stepped away from the grind in 2020 to head back to school — Harvard Business School, in this case — to gain a fresh perspective on his life’s work. This fall, he’ll be returning to television with Positively America with Ernie Anastos, a riff on his Positively Ernie segments from his anchoring days.

The new show will feature conversations with a diverse array of Americans in which he hopes to excavate nuggets of wisdom and viable principles to live by. In this Talking TV conversation, he explains his ambitions for the show and his thoughts on how local news anchoring has become more complex — but essential — in a polarized and anxious world.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: When I was growing up in New York, Ernie Anastos was one of those TV anchors who was simply ubiquitous and part of the fabric of my television experience. The Hall of Fame broadcaster racked up more than 30 Emmy awards and nominations in his long career, along with a Murrow award. Every March 21 is now Ernie Anastos Day in New York City, such is the scope of his legend there. Well, Anastos is coming back to TV this fall with a new show, Positively America with Ernie Anastos, which will premiere on Gray Television stations in 113 markets.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. This week, a conversation with Ernie Anastos about his show and his plans for it and his thoughts about local TV news, its future in an ever more fracturing landscape. We’ll be right back with that.

Welcome, Ernie Anastos, to Talking TV.

Ernie Anastos: How are you, good to see you, Michael. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

It’s a real pleasure to talk to you.

Oh, it’s great, it’s great. And, you know, I love this this whole atmosphere that we have. I mean, a lot of change with the pandemic and television, in fact, you know, has gone in that direction where so many of the interviews are virtual like we’re doing now. And you see them on all the channels and all the major networks. It’s become a way of doing things.

It’s easier in many ways. It’s certainly a little more protective because of the pandemic. But in another way, you know, it makes it more flexible for people like you and myself to be able to contact guests and say, could you do an interview? And it’s so much easier in terms of scheduling to do it from their home or office or somewhere else.

Absolutely. It’s been an indispensable tool for broadening, I think, all of our interview horizons, the possibility of who we can talk to and as you said, just as easily as we can. Now, with that, Ernie, I want to ask you about the show. Positivity seems to be the name of the game with this new show. What’s it going to be about?

Well, first of all, I want to thank Gray Television. They do have 113 markets that they cover. They’re starting me off. I hope to be in all of those markets eventually. They’re doing a great job to help me. But I’m grateful for whoever will be watching me across the country. And as we build our following, it’s a wonderful program, in my opinion. I’ve been on television, Michael, as you know, I mean, four decades in New York. And I’m honored by that. I mean, I really am. And we’ll talk about that in a little while. But I said, you know, what can I do now at this point in my career that will really crystallize a lot of the things that I’ve worked for all this time. And I did Positively Ernie in New York, which was, you know, a feature where I would go out on the street, talk to people, ask them questions. I would give some quotes and opinions on the air, positive opinions about good things. I didn’t get into politics or any of that. The program is not about politics, for sure. The program is really about trying to educate people, to inform them, entertain them, and to inspire people, and in many ways to empower them.

So, I took a break from television for a while because of the pandemic. I had a wonderful experience going to Harvard Business School. I studied there for a year. I took many courses, got my diplomas, and I felt really good about it. And it was a great experience talking to students all over the world. So, I learned a lot about leadership and sort of management skills, and I said, OK, let me apply some of these principles and what I’ve learned.

So, I came up with Positively America and I said, what we need is some balance. I applaud a lot of — and they’re colleagues of mine — hardworking journalists every day, try to do their job and try to cover the news. And it’s not easy because that news, Michael, as you know, is very negative. I mean, there are a lot of terrible stories out there that people feel every day. It’s harmful, harmful to our health, harmful to our mental attitude. And I hear from a lot of people who tell me, can we have something better? Can we get some good news? And I decided that I wanted to do that. I wanted to continue my effort to champion more positive stories on the air.

So, this program is going to be very personal. It’s a half-hour weekend show, and it’s the kind of program that I feel I’m going to have a lot of fun with. There are a number of people that I have had on my shows over the years who are really professionals and experts in their field, whether it’s lifestyle, health, education, travel, careers, everything that you can think about that affects your life.

So, I sat down, I made my list contact. I’ve got about 50 people that will be on the air with me during the course of 26 weeks. And so, we decided on topics, and I was looking for things that people could really relate to, some cutting edge material to things that people would be able to say, Gee, I learned something and now I’m going to apply it to my life or to the lives of my family, my children. And the format is good because as I talk to people in a nice, casual way about whatever the subject is, let’s talk about health, for example, you know, mental health. What can we do to help ourselves get through these issues, whether it’s the pandemic or whether it’s just personal problems, that we may have to face challenges every day. But as we do it, I want it to be a learning experience.

I wish I had been a teacher. I really love that field. I think teachers are wonderful and we’re going to put up on the screen, you know, some bullet points, things that we’re talking about. And at the very end of the interview, I want to make sure that the viewer has somewhere to go, the payoff, if you will. I’m going to say, OK, now, we just had a great interview talking about this subject. If people want more help, where can they go? And we’ll put up on the screen a website, a book to read somewhere where they can get additional information.

I’m excited about the content. And in addition to that, I love going out on the street. I enjoy talking to people. I love that one-on-one connection. And I’ve done probably close to a thousand questions on my 6 o’clock show. I go out and I ask people, you know, what advice would you give a newborn baby? What’s been the best day of your life? Or if you could relive your life one day, what would it be? And other good questions that I really think people can relate to.

I’m going to be doing my questions, be doing some in New York. I hope to be able to travel and do some in other cities. But I’m also going to give a quotation. I love quotations, so I’m going to put a quote on the screen, and then later I’m going to elaborate, but I’m going to make it personal. For example, the show that I’m doing now, the quote that comes to my mind, don’t go where the path may lead. Go where there’s no path and leave a trail. And that’s what I’m trying to do. And at the end of that quote, I want to make it a very personal comment to my viewers. I want them to know how I feel.

I was talking to somebody recently and she said to me, Ernie, we have watched you and listened to you talk to other people and do interviews for years. Now it’s time for you, for us to hear from you. What are you thinking? What are you feeling?

So, the format here, are we talking about you’re entirely out in the field or is there a studio or are you going to be doing it from your home?

Yes, there is a studio. And in fact, I must tell you, it’s a beautiful studio. It looks great. The colors are wonderful, they’re bright yellows and oranges. I didn’t want to get into the traditional colors that most stations use. So, it’s a beautiful set. It looks fabulous. And the technology is amazing. Michael, I mean, you know, this is your beat. It’s going to look great on the screen. We have a lot of zoom effects. When I talk to my interviewees, there will be a split screen. It’s going to look great. So, my interviews are virtual. I’ll be in the studio, but I’m going to go out on the street, ask some questions, and you’ll see me involved in certain stories that I’m doing. But it is a studio show with some aspects of me being out there talking to people.

This is basically meant to be, in a sense, a balm against all the toxicity that we’re seeing out there. And do you think that’s even a bomb that’s capable of being diffused right now, given how high tensions are running and they seem to be still moving toward the boiling point?

Michael, you’re asking a very good question that many people ask. This is a difficult time, stressful time. You know, it has been you know, if you look at history, you know, this isn’t the first time we’ve been through some really serious moments in our country and in our world. But I believe in optimism, and I believe in hope. And I believe that people feel that deep down it’s kind of inherent. It’s like, you know, I want to make things better. I want to I want to create something that can make me happier. And I believe that we have a place.

Yes, I’m going to be that voice. And I’m hoping that other people will accept that, and maybe other stations will promote their own positive stories. Some stations are doing that, but I’m devoting all my programs to that. I hope that it will help. I’m going to make this interactive. We’re going to be asking people to send us some story ideas that they have. We’re going to share their information. We’re going to put it up on the screen because there will be other stations, of course, carrying this in syndication. I’m going to be calling on some of those stations to share some of their positive stories that they’ve put on their local news that we can share with the rest of the country. But I want to I want to make it something that people will feel.

You know, Maya Angelou had a great line: People may not remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. And that’s very important to me. There is a sense when you come through that screen, as I’m talking to you, of what the other person is like, what their emotions are like. You know, I majored in sociology in college. I had been on the air from the age of 16, 16 years old, had my first radio job where I grew up back in New Hampshire, built a radio station in my basement at 13. I had all these microphones and records and all that kind of stuff. And at 16, I went to the local station and the guy said to me, You got a good voice. You want to take an audition? And I did. And he said, I’m going to give you your own radio show on the weekend. It’s going to be called Saturday Morning Discussion. You’re going to do an interview show with all young people from high school, talk about issues, play their music. And there you are. And I have been on the air since 16 years old. So, I have a passion for this. I love what I do, but I feel that over the years, I’ve learned so much. Walter Cronkite became a real good mentor to me. There’s a wonderful videotape that he recorded for me when I was having an anniversary in New York, and he paid me such a high compliment. And coming from Walter, that really touched my heart.

Walter taught me a lot of basics. He said to me, you know, Ernie, things that you have to remember in your career. You’re a watchdog. You’re not an attack dog. You’re not a lap dog. You’re a watchdog. You bark. You tell people what’s going on. You let them respond. That’s our job. Neutral. I don’t voice my opinion. Never have. Michael. You’ve seen me on the air. People don’t know what my [political] feelings may be because I’m very neutral. But I think that that’s important. That people have that trust in me, a confidence in my voice, that I’m genuine and I’m trying to help them get through life just like the rest of us.

Let me ask you for the show’s distribution footprint. Is it exclusive to Gray Television or are you going to be offering it for distribution with other groups?

Well, you know, the people at Gray are terrific. There’s a gentleman there, Greg Conklin, who’s been helping me and has developed a program with me in terms of setting it up for distribution. He’s really done a great job and he’s put me on a number of stations, and I’m grateful for that. And they’re going to continue to build. He did tell me that there are some other companies that are interested in working with Gray to be able to distribute. So, I think that’s how it works. I’ve never done syndication, but I believe that’s how it works. So yes, obviously the objective is to get on as many stations as possible, and that’s what I’m looking to do. The more people I can reach, the better off the program will be.

You mentioned earlier you’d left WNYW in New York to attend Harvard Business School to study leadership. So, what did you draw from that experience? You mentioned you were there for a year.

There are several things that I that I experienced as I started to tell you in the beginning. The program was wonderful, the professors are terrific. And they really offer not only good information that they have obtained through their studies, but they also bring in experts, people who are CEOs of companies, people who are interested in sustainability, people who want to do good.

And that was one of the messages that I that I got from the Harvard programs, that if you want to be a good leader, you have to set an example. You have to listen. You have to help others become leaders. You give them the kind of information that you think is important. You learn as you’re growing, but you help other people to become leaders.

I learned about the passion that I have. It strengthened my commitment. I’ve always wanted to be an ambassador of goodwill, and I think the Harvard program taught me a lot of that through the courses and through the information that I picked up from not only the professors, but from experts who were invited to speak to us and believe it or not, from other students globally, people from different parts of the world in Paris and London and Abu Dhabi, wherever it was, giving their experiences. A lot of these people obviously were not undergraduate students. They were graduate people. They had already had their education and they were also working in whatever industry they were in. So, I learned a lot from that.

But I must say that during that time I also had the opportunity to take a break that I haven’t had in years, Michael, and I love this. I’m not complaining. I have been really working since I was 16 years old. I had a job when I was in college. When I got out of school, I worked in Boston, Providence, Chicago, New York. I have been working and my family knows that I love what I do, and I devote my time to my family more than anything.

But I learned to think a little bit more and take the time to solidify my feelings. And I think that that’s what I did over that two-year period, the Harvard program. And then time for me to just sit back and observe, to be able to really listen to what’s going on out there, to listen to myself and to strengthen my own personal commitment to what I want to do.

They use the word legacy a lot. We all have that. Everyone has some legacy in life. I believe that we all have a purpose. Some of the interviews that I’ve done over the years have been fabulous. And I remember talking to someone who was on my program, and I said, What is life all about anyway? What should we learn from life? She was a social scientist. And she said to me, you know, many people think that if you achieve three things in life, you’re going to be happy. Three things.

What are they? Well, she said people think that if they get more, more of something, whatever it is, more money, more power, they’ll be happy. They achieve more. But they’re still empty. They’re still searching. So, they say, Well, more now, I’ll make it better, or I’ll just have a better house, a better car. Whatever it is, I’ll just make it all better, better, better, better. So, they make everything better. The progression, she said. They’re not as happy. They’re still not satisfied. So, they go to the third thing. What’s that? Different. Now I will set myself apart from everybody. I don’t want to be like everybody else. I want to be different.

Now, Michael, when you think about this, I mean, you can see this. I mean, it happens with a lot of celebrities, but it happens with a lot of people who are very successful. It just happens with everyone more, better and different. But they’re not happy. They’re not satisfied. But there’s one thing that changes your life. I said, What’s that? She says, Purpose. Purpose. When a person has a sense of purpose in their life, some kind of commitment. Could be anything. It could be just being a good teacher, a good a good parent, being good at your work, having a commitment to something that you really believe in. If you have a sense of why you’re here, why were you born.

You have to ask these questions. I do it all the time. I do with a lot of young people. I’ve written a couple of books. The last one I did was Ernie and the Big News for young readers. And I’ve gone out to so many schools in New York for 500 kids in an auditorium, and we’ve given away 15,000 books, free books. Ernie and the Big News, you dream about what you want to be and how you can change the world. And, you know, I started thinking about all these things and I said, this is this is the commitment, a sense of purpose in your life. And I’ve learned that over the over the two years to even strengthen and solidify what I’ve always believed in all my life. And now I have a chance to do it. I don’t have to worry about, you know, reporting the news every night, and that was it.

I think we’re getting a pretty good preview of this show right here. I want to ask you a little bit about your anchoring career. You’ve spent decades at the anchor desk of every major station in the country’s number one DMA, which is the brass ring for people all across the U.S. Now that you’ve stepped back from the daily intensity of it, how do you assess the state of local TV news? Will you still eat what they’re cooking?

Michael, I will say something that’s very important about local news. I have done some national programs. I have guest hosted on Good Morning America, CBS This Morning. I was on CBS on the overnight. I had a program, America’s Asking. So, I’ve had some network exposure and certainly have a lot of good friends that are in network television. But I spent my time in local television. And the thing that I must express is that I have seen so many dedicated people in local news. If you watch a local newscast, you’re not going to find opinion. You really are not. It’s just news of the day, the facts. We cover the local stories. We cover the national stories, the international stories, feature stories. But I think when you’re watching a local newscast, you’re getting information. I think you’ll agree with me. You’re getting information. So, I applaud them for that.

Oftentimes, when you’re watching network television, particularly cable, they’ll give you news as a hook and then they give you their opinion. You get a lot of commentary, which is fine. This is America. I will always defend the right to freedom of speech. But it’s different. It’s different from the local news. So, I have to wave the flag for local television all across America because I think they do a great job. But I’ve learned a lot.

That said, do you think local news is evolving fast enough to keep up with the tastes and expectation of viewers, especially since streaming has opened up so many choices and now allowed viewers to time shift their consumption of news?

Well, I think a lot of stations are doing it. And Michael, you and I both know it comes down to economics. Things are expensive. And I think a lot of the local stations and some of the smaller markets that don’t have the resources, they don’t have money, or they don’t have the people to be able to do a lot of things, do their best. Some of the larger stations, let’s say in the top 15, 20 markets who are owned by major corporations, they do have the opportunity to initiate, you know, websites of their own live streaming. And you’re seeing that particularly in New York. A lot of the stations are doing that, and they’re trying to expand their reach from not just the local channel that they’re on, but other ways to be able to reach people. And I think they’re doing a good job at that. But it’s difficult competition.

I have to tell you about competition. My goodness. I mean, when I first started, right, there were really only three networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox was not there yet, and we didn’t have anything but a 6 p.m. news for a half hour of local. 6:30 was national. And then you had an 11 p.m. show. That was it. When I first started in New York in 1978, our ratings at 11 were huge. Now, when you start looking at ratings, they’ve dropped. Why? Because you have so much competition. There are so many channels to watch. I mean, internet, satellite, cable, social media, everything you can imagine. What you’re doing. There are so many places for people to go to. At one time, we didn’t have all of that. A lot of it is good. A lot of it is great. I applaud the, you know, the technology that’s out there and what they’re doing, but a lot of it is very confusing.

There was a book written several years back. I’m trying to remember the author and it was called Information Anxiety. And it was all about how people, and I can understand this, people are anxious about what to watch, what to see, what to hear, what to read, and trying to find a way to narrow it down to how it applies to them is difficult because you have so much. I’m going to go back for one minute. I did another interview, or I’ve done some interviews like in an interview with someone, and I ask the same kind of question, What’s the problem? How come everybody is so stressed out today? And he said to me, I’m going to simplify this for you. And this was a very smart guy. He said: We have too many choices. I said, Really? Yeah. You should think about it. We have too many choices. I mean, you know, it’s great that a lot of, you know, areas have exploded, you know? Buying a car, buying toothpaste. But people are confused, and it makes us anxious. We have too much to choose from and it’s contributing to our anxiety.

And fundamentally, people want and I’m saying this respectfully, people want some simplicity in life. Simplicity. I mean, if you go somewhere with your loved ones, your family, what’s the best kind of day you can have? Most people say, oh, we sat under a tree with my kids. We had a picnic. We were just, you know, watching the water, you know, by the river. We just talked. We played ball. We came home, we sat down, we ate. Simplicity.

Too many choices and the fear of missing out.

It’s tough. And you know what? It’s getting worse because we’re getting more. We’re getting more of everything more, better, different.

I want to ask you one more question about anchoring Ernie, since you are among the deans of American anchors. Given viewers’ political polarization and their abiding mistrust in news generally, now accepting that local news fares better in those in surveys of trust, it doesn’t seem that the anchor’s job is getting any easier. How do you think that anchors need to adapt and evolve into what viewers need them to be right now? How do they stay relevant?

Good question. Difficult question. I’m not sure of the answer. It puts a lot of anchors in a very awkward position where they have to decide. And you know, the stories. There have been anchors working for some networks who have decided that they didn’t believe in the ideology or the views of that particular cable network or whatever it happens to be. And they’ve walked away. I think it’s very personal.

I think if you are strong in your beliefs and you follow the philosophy of the company that you’re working for, then you stay. If not, you move. You try to find a place that’s more comfortable for you, that’s more fitting to your personality, to your beliefs, to your feelings. I’m always very cautious about opinion. I think I started mentioning that from the very beginning.

The media has changed. The media is chock full of opinion and many people like it. Because they believe in that same concept, the same idea, whatever the philosophy is. And then there are other people who are annoyed by it. And are trying to find the truth. That’s a big question.

Many people, if you look at the research in the surveys, this is my opinion necessarily, but people are worried about finding the truth. Where can I learn what really is going on? And I think that’s become a challenge to a lot of anchors and a lot of broadcasters. I remember when I was a young desk assistant at CBS2, right after college, I came to New York and went into the Army Reserves, came to New York, and I worked at Channel 2 as a desk assistant. I was like 20 years old, 21 years old. And I remember they handed a book out, and it was for the journalists, for the anchors and for the reporters. And I remember reading that book and it said, When you’re on the air — I’m just to paraphrase — when you’re on the air, you ought to show no emotion. No facial expressions, no bodily gestures. The inflection in your voice must be neutral. Imagine it. I remember reading that I was 21 years old, just starting in the business, and they were saying that this is what we needed. We had standards and practices. I mean, everywhere, whether it was entertainment or the news, you couldn’t show certain things. You couldn’t say certain things. You couldn’t do certain things. There were these practices that people adhere to. How has that changed, Michael? I ask you. People now have changed, and the industry has changed, and we have to adapt to it in our own way.

And do you think that viewers still need an empathic figure anchoring the desk, someone to, you know, in terms of their relationship with the viewers? How do you think that is changing that relationship?

Oh, that relationship, I think it’s crucial. I think people need to feel confident in whoever is anchoring. I think they have to feel that there is some relationship with that person. They have to have some trust that there’s some feeling and some sense that this person is giving them the truth. And there are so many viewers out there that are loyal to whoever it happens to be. I think that’s important

I’ve always appreciated the fact that people, when I see them on the street, will always say to me, you know, if I’m going to get any kind of bad news, I want to get it from you, because I think that you’re going to tell me what really is going on and you’re going to feel something. You’re going to sense of it. People need to feel that. Going back to what we said, they won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. I walk down the street and people come to me. It’s a sense of companionship. We’ve shared social history together. We feel family. And I love that.

So, the anchor has a very important role to make sure that they stand up for the integrity and the trust that has been given to them. But it’s their own way of doing it that makes the difference and that comes into personality and who you are.

I think that’s good advice on which to end this conversation.

Michael, I want to thank you very much. And all good things to you and your family, Michael. Keep up the good work. We haven’t said anything about you’ve got an impeccable and a sterling personality and a great reputation. I mean that and I thank you very much for the good work that you’re doing.

You’re very kind, Ernie. The new show, Positively America with Ernie Anastos, will be out this fall on Gray Television stations across the land and perhaps spreading with an even wider footprint. Thank you so much, Ernie.

Thank you, Michael. Take care.

Take care. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Ernie Anastos On News Anchoring And Fostering Positivity appeared first on TV News Check.

Amid the boom, POV, PBS’s long-running docuseries, is celebrating a significant milestone this month with the launch of its 35^th season, consistently turning its lens on social justice issues and giving numerous communities a voice.

Erika Dilday is the series executive producer, and in this Talking TV conversation, she shares the qualities behind POV’s longevity, what makes a documentary effective and how local television stations can tap their community relationships to create their own potent documentary content.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: POV is America’s longest running nonfiction series on PBS. The show is celebrating a 35th year milestone with its new season. This year’s 14 new features will tackle environmental justice, systemic inequity and global perspectives on motherhood and caregiving during multiple crises. I’m Michael Depp, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. And this week, that conversation is happening from beautiful, verdant Vermont on my end. Our conversation this week is with Erika Dilday, executive director of American Documentary and executive producer of POV. We’ll talk about the show’s longevity, the proliferation of documentary content on the TV landscape and the essential elements of an enduring documentary. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Erika Dilday, to Talking TV.

Erika Dilday: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Happy to have you. So, Erika, 35 seasons is a long run for a documentary series. How many individual documentaries are we talking about here, roughly?

Oh, now you’re going to test my math skills. We run about 15 a season.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it’s over 400.

And you’ve been with the show for how long?

Just a year now. I’ve been in the orbit of it for a while, but just it’s a little over a year that I’ve been running the organization.

Is it safe to say that documentaries have come into a kind of golden age, or at least a prolific one? Because they seem to have populated every corner of streaming now. And then if we expand that tent to include podcasts, it’s absolutely massive. I mean, are you surprised by this?

I am a little surprised by it. But when you think about it, it makes sense. I think as we’ve evolved in how we consume news, there has been sort of an opening of people’s minds as to where they get it, how they get it, what they get. And so there’s been, I think, an opportunity for journalists to create content in different ways, like you said, with podcasts, with documentaries. And I think people are more open to alternative sources of media. You know, when nobody’s setting down to watch the nightly news every night at 6:00 as the way, you know, they consume their information or find out what’s going on in the world, most people have several different sources, and I think documentary has become one of those sources, especially when people want to get more in-depth on a topic.

And do you think having more distribution points helps as well now?

Absolutely. I mean, streaming services, I think, have changed the game on that a lot. The fact that you can, you know, go on to Netflix or go on to Amazon Prime or even on demand TV, and there’s a whole category of documentaries that’s fully populated, has just changed people’s ability to be able to see these shows.

Oftentimes documentaries have been accused, and not always wrongly, in my view, of having a medicinal quality. Is that fair to say?

I think that would be fair about 15 years ago. And I do think that the form has evolved. I think the entertainment factor was there and a lot of documentaries. I don’t think it really became as potent until about 10 or 15 years ago when people realized that it wasn’t just about science or nature or teaching somebody something that was purely educational. I feel like documentaries moved more from strictly educational to more journalistic. You see more stories that feel like a long news piece in a sense, unless they feel like they’d be rolling the cart in in your fifth-grade class to teach you about the lifespan of plants.

Right. Well, we also began to see some real experimentation, like aesthetic experimentation with the form, even a few decades ago. I’m thinking, for instance, of filmmakers like Errol Morris, you know, kind of reinventing the rules in the 1980s with The Thin Blue Line, you know, for example. So, how have documentary style and aesthetics evolved since you’ve been working in the field?

One of the things that I have seen that is the most interesting is how communities, people, places, subjects are represented. There used to be this idea that the filmmaker would be speaking into the microphone or whoever it was they were representing. And there’s been a real move to allow communities and people and subjects to speak for themselves, that there is no such thing as a lack of bias. But one thing that you can do is be more authentic. It’s the same way when you’re reporting something, you want to get a primary source. And I think film has moved to that, too. Let me not paraphrase what someone is saying about, you know, why the environmental disaster in their community is so dire. Let me have then say it. And I think that has made a lot of the content that we create more honest.

There’s also sort of a cinematic quality, I think, that’s crept in and taken hold in, at least in documentaries that I’ve seen of late. Is that sort of a hallmark now characteristic?

That I think was there in a lot of ways before. I think that it’s being applied more broadly. And also, I think part of it has to do with the fact that it’s very easy to go into a movie theater and see a documentary. And because there has been an appreciation of documentaries as films, there has been, I think, an uptick in the ability to create them as, you know, art, entertainment and journalism at the same time.

I want to come back to a point you made a second ago. Your show is called POV. Do good documentaries characteristically require a strong point of view? And conversely, can that create a problem?

Well, this is my personal opinion, but I don’t think there is anything anybody spends a long time creating that does not have a strong point of view. They may pretend that it doesn’t, but it does. And I think when you acknowledge that and when you represent something from that point of view, that you’re making something where the audience can trust you and trust what they’re seeing more. I think for too long we have presented topics, information as if it’s neutral and there is no such thing as neutrality. So, my feeling is you own your point, you own your biases and you put it out there as it is, and then you let people decide.

Should viewers draw distinctions between documentaries and news?

Sometimes there is no distinction to be drawn. What I often tell people and you know, I started actually in TV news and I moved into documentary, but that the way I see it, a news story is something that is useful in the moment and may be referred to again at some point. A documentary is something that will last for years and years and isn’t just referred to. It’s something that you’ll watch years later to see that moment in time.

So, local news is making forays into the documentary space, and they’re finding they can get a long tail with such content, particularly on their streaming channels as well. Have any of those projects come onto your radar, and do you have any advice for TV newsrooms that are making a run at making documentaries?

Yeah, and actually, I’ve talked to a lot of different stations that are looking at how they create that content. And what I my advice has been is to go out into the communities, go out into your audiences where you know them better than anyone, and create a partnership to tell stories. Do something where it is not about you telling the story, but you knowing your community well enough to know where the story is and facilitating the telling of that story. You know, one of my things is, you know, hold the mic instead of speaking into it for someone. And I feel that when you are in a local community, when you are of that local community, you understand it better than anyone. But the process should be not just to tell their story, but to work with them, to tell their stories.

Do you have advice on the editing side, too? Because one thing about documentaries is they can stretch and go on and people feel less constrained, especially it’s going on streaming as a distribution point. They’re not really hemmed in by specific time constraints. That said, sometimes more editing is better.

So, it’s funny that you bring that up because one of the things that I feel that people have not embraced enough is documentary shorts. There is this desire sometimes to tell everything in, you know, broadcast hour or, you know, feature length, cinema, feature length, documentary. And some of the most effective subjects are covered in a 20, 25 minute short. And not only is it effective, but it’s also more likely to get views. We have short attention spans as viewers now and listeners, and I think that embracing the short form of documentary is less risky. But also, I think it makes the content richer a lot of the time.

POV has been around for 35 years. Why do you think it’s endured so long?

I think we’ve evolved. I think one of the things that POV has tried to do is figure out what point of view means at the time and at the moment we’re in and to try and use that to really reflect back into our society the things that are important to us that we’re thinking about, that we want to know about. And so, the evolution hasn’t been that it’s gotten better. It’s just been a little different over time because things have changed in our world. And I think our focus is always what does the audience want to see? What does the audience need to see? And who is the audience? And that, you know, over 35 years, you know, that’s had some changes.

Has that audience changed a lot over 35 years?

It has. I wouldn’t say it’s changed tons, but our audience is getting younger. It’s getting browner. We’re seeing people actually view and use our content in different ways. We’re seeing people who watch it on PBS’s streaming. We also have seen a growing movement with a lot of community groups who will actually use content, use it to inspire dialogue or action, or see things that are important to them. And that’s one thing that I feel that our stations also do as well. They’ll say, You know what? You’ve got this documentary on the Philippines and we have a large Filipino community which would be really interested in it. So, we’d love to do something to create a public screening for that. And I think there is a desire to bring realize just, you know, the diversity in the fabric of this nation and not just put our broadcast up there and hope that people see them, but to actively look for people who would appreciate them.

When you’re selecting documentaries for inclusion in the series now, what are your broad criteria?

There has to be an authenticity to the story. Either the storyteller should be from the community, or have a good reason why they’re telling the story and how they told the story. It has to be something that will resonate with our audiences, something that will bring them from their armchair to another world or to a different community, help them foster some sort of understanding. And also, it just it has to be good quality journalism or documentary. How is the story told? How are the points of view covered? Is it something that we feel is ethical and fair and representational and entertaining? I mean, one of the things, too, is, you know, also with news is that, you know, a lot of it can be downers. So, we try and put some things in to that will be, you know, interesting, but, you know, not necessarily depressing.

Yeah. No light topics in this upcoming season are there, though?

No, not really. There are some I feel uplifting stories, but not a lot of light topics.

Maybe you’ll get a balloon animal making one mixed into. Well, that’s all the time we have. Thanks very much, Erika Dilday from POV, for this discussion about documentaries and congratulations on the milestone 35 seasons for the series.

Thank you so much and thank you for having me.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Documentary Advice From PBS’s ‘POV’ appeared first on TV News Check.

As he prepares to retire at the end of June, Fratrik shares his thoughts on some of the more tectonic forces shaping the industry in an increasingly fragmented landscape. At the top of the list is streaming, which he says offers both a viable business model and a disruptive threat to local broadcasters.

Fratrik weighs in on retrans, digital revenue’s potential and his bullish hopes for datacasting applications of ATSC 3.0 in this Talking TV conversation.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Dr. Mark Fratrik is the SVP and chief economist for BIA Advisory Services and a longtime source for TVNewsCheck. He’s retiring this month after a long career as a leading industry analyst, stepping back into the role of strategic advisor, I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. This week, that conversation is with Mark Fratrik, a kind of exit interview, if you will. We’ll talk about a local media industry that is radically transformed during the decades he has studied it and what he sees as its road ahead. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Mark Fratrik, to Talking TV.

Hey, Michael. How are you doing?

Good to see you. Mark, you are a renowned collector of data, a trend spotter, prognosticator. So, let’s get a last look at all of that from you and get some predictions that can be as freewheeling as you like. And first, let’s talk retrans. There are more and more voices saying that the gravy train is going to slow down very dramatically or that it’s headed toward a cliff. What do you think is going to happen and when?

I don’t think the gravy train is heading toward the cliff. I certainly would agree that it is slowing down, obviously with cord cutting and cord nevering. There are many people, many younger people who won’t be subscribing to the MVPD.

On the other hand, they may be subscribing to a virtual MVPD or Hulu Live, YouTube Live where they do get access to the local television stations. And those services do provide retransmission consent payments to local television stations, much like the cable operators, then the satellite operators.

So, it is slowing down. Thankfully, the local television stations have negotiated contracts with rate increases. So even if they are losing subscribers, they may be still increasing their retrans revenues because the rates keep going up. So that that’s going to slow down as well. But the heyday of very big increases, I think it’s long since gone.

And the network affiliation is getting so expensive that if a station gives up its network or it’s dropped and can keep, say, 50% of its retrans dollars and remain competitive in news, it can actually be more profitable running news and syndicated shows. Do you think that’s a realistic strategy for stations in small to medium markets that rank No. 1 or 2 in news?

That’s a real dicey proposition, Michael. I think it’s a very dicey and chancy type of way of operating. Given that you’ve been associated with ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox for historical years, that suddenly you’re going to have not have that programing and will consumers continue to watch that station without their programing? It, I think, is very dicey. Now, obviously, stations with good news departments and a good following are in a position to try and do that. But I think it’s a little chancy for a television station, even in 2022, to do to try and do that.

We’ve been seeing the word streaming like a mantra for the last several years in this business. Will local TV stations be able to successfully build business models there or will it end up having more of a negative disruptive effect on their core linear TV business?

I think the answer is yes and yes. I’m an economist. I’m allowed to say those type of answers. Yes, and yes. I think it’s incredibly disruptive. And as a result, I think local television stations, many of whom we can name, have to get involved in that game. And some of them are successfully doing that and getting into streaming and showing only streaming ads and complementing that with their over-the-air advertising.

And so, I think it’s incredibly disruptive, but I think local television stations, many local stations are responding to that disruption by getting involved, playing in the game, much like they did five or six years ago with other digital advertising revenues, their websites and mobile apps, etc. I think a lot of thoughtful television groups have adapted and realize that they’re not just a lot of spots and dots, they’re not just over-the-air advertising, that they’re in many different lines of businesses now and as a result, they enter into the streaming business.

Well, speaking of that other kind of digital revenue, will TV stations and groups ever see digital revenue grow as a significant percentage of their overall revenue? What do you think is a realistic or best-case percentage there?

Well, the question is how you define that digital revenue. If you include the [streaming] revenue directly, then I think, yes, it will be significant. And even though it is in the majority, it still is a significant number of 10% or 15%. It’s still a significant number of dollars. And some groups are doing even more than that. So, I think, yes, they will.

And I also believe that other revenue streams, such as datacasting through ATSC 3.0, that all will be a significant revenue stream in the future. So, I think there are lots of different ways that local television stations, much like other traditional media, are expanding their business lines.

And I think most groups rope OTT under their digital umbrella, so that would be fair. What has changed most significantly about local advertisers in the past few years, and where do you think they’re headed in terms of where they’re going to be putting their ad dollars?

The significant change had been that the amazing amount of different opportunities and whether it’s just digital banner ads or whether it’s social media or Twitter or things like that, local advertisers have an incredible number of avenues to reach their potential customers. And so, this presents a challenge to local television stations.

Local television stations also face increased competition. Way back when, when I first started in the mid-’80s, from increased cable networks and improvements in their programing and they’ve weathered that storm and they seem to be able to weathering this storm as well. But at the end, I apologize for keep repeating but trying to expand into different other areas and trying to be part of that digital game. It’s a real challenge for local television stations. And many of them are adapting very well.

Of course, the fragmentation is always compounding. It’s never getting lighter.

Viewers know that there are many new advertising platforms that are very exciting.

What about local viewers? Where do you see the most significant shifts in their consumption patterns and where do you think they’re headed?

Well, truly, the streaming opportunity the local viewers have, instead of just having three or four networks to watch, six or seven, if you want, including the small ones. They now have an unlimited number of choices and not having to watch it at the specific time that they’re streaming it and binge watching it to view it, you have so many more choices.

So it’s a challenge for local television stations to keep up with that and provide programing that local viewers desperately want to watch. And you’ve already mentioned it earlier. You know, the local news, it’s key. Being able to provide local news and information is so incredibly important. You do have internet, the online choices that can get you an ad by a local television station still with a primary source of watching, finding out about what’s going on in your local community and national news as well.

When you look at how the local TV industry C-suite looks at the market, what do you wish that they would more better understand or take more seriously than they do now?

Oh, good question. Threw me a curve one there. I think they’re just focusing on investing in local news. I think many of them do. That’s why I hesitate to respond to your question, because I think that a lot of a lot of good C-suite individuals and thinking about how they maintain their position in this ever-increasing local marketplace. So, I think it’s maintaining that local present and continuing and also thinking about the future.

And I made a quick reference earlier, BIA and I am very bullish about ATSC 3.0 next year in television and the opportunities that that it does bring to local broadcast entry in a whole new line of business.

Well, on the 3.0 front, I mean, it’s been five years since the FCC authorized it and really no real serious business model has emerged yet. I mean, you brought up datacasting, but that’s still, I mean, they’re trialing it, but it’s nowhere near to an execution as a business model right now.

That’s true. And obviously, the transition to ATSC or NextGen broadcasting, it’s challenging. You don’t have the additional spectrum that they did when they did the original digital transition. So, it’s a balancing your 1.0 and 3.0 and trying to get consumers to buy television sets.

I think there’ll be a there’ll be a critical turning point when there are 3.0 signals in every market. I think there will be. I think that a nationwide coverage of nearly every market is the real key ingredient for successful datacasting.

Not that all of the datacasting clients will be national scope. Some may want to go to New York or Washington, D.C., but they have the ability to sell a nationwide coverage, I think will be very key in making that market develop.

What do you think the timeline is for datacasting? Three years? Five years? Less?

Yeah, well, we BIA has come out with an estimate that by 2030 it’ll be a $15 billion business. It’s a gross amount. Television stations won’t get all of that. But we think it, it’ll be another three to five years when we start seeing some significant revenues.

I mean, I think a lot of the datacasting businesses at the recent NAB convention with them are training some new applications and new approaches to it. That would seem that may come to market a little sooner than I thought. I think the interesting thing about it is that it’s viable because there isn’t going to be any additional costs besides some technical equipment, but there isn’t any additional cost for broadcast. It’s just not putting out a two megabits per second stream and collect revenues.

Beyond 3.0, are there any big potential opportunities out there right now for broadcasters that you don’t think that they’re sufficiently capitalizing on at the moment?

No, because I think one thing holding back some broadcasters are the remaining local ownership rules. I think that in many medium and small markets, the Top Four rule is very significant in preventing all of the television stations in the market to be competitive. They could be against all the other advertising and audience competitors. That’s holding that back.

But I don’t think that anything that broadcast groups could do, given their constraints right now to really further, except just changing the mindset about what businesses they’re in and just thinking of an expanded roster or lines of businesses that you’re not just a local television station, you’re providing a lot of different access to local audiences through many different means.

Like digital marketing services.

Digital marketing service. Datacasting can fit into that and other types of events, other types of services.

Well, if datacasting doesn’t work out in three to five years, we’ll pull you out of retirement and call you to the carpet.

Oh, yeah. That’s one of the attributes of retiring.

Station consolidation was supposed to give broadcasters the financial muscle to run newsrooms that go past crimes, fire, car wrecks and regularly do great local journalism, as newspapers once did. So why hasn’t that materialized? Or at least why hasn’t it materialized sufficiently so far?

I don’t study that as much as you probably keep up in terms of whether or not it’s sufficient. I do know of some consolidation that has brought local news to outlets where they have and whether or not it’s sufficient investigative journalism or beyond reporting on fires and weather… I wouldn’t dismiss just reporting on fires and weather. I think consumers want to find out about that.

And I think there is still a role that local television broadcast is providing. They’re doing a good job that they ought to be doing better, probably. I mean, I’m not a journalism major and a journalism expert. I just I think that given the constraints that they have, especially in medium and small markets, they are doing a good enough job.

What are your other major parting thoughts for local media? More broadly, what should we be looking out for?

Looking out for the next potential competitor that we don’t even think about. I mean, who would have thought about OTT four or five years ago? Who would have thought about digital? Who would have thought about going back to the ’80s and mid-’80s at ESPN with NFL football becoming much more competitive?

I think it’s staying on top of things. We always told broadcasters that you should hire more 18-year-olds so as to keep up on top of what’s going on. A lot of the broadcasters are heavily involved in social media, so I think that they’re doing a good job in that. But I think it’s just keeping on and thinking of yourself as more than just a local television broadcast. You’re a local outlet, media outlet, reaching your audiences in many, many different ways and selling those ways to national, regional and local advertisers.

All right. So always keep an eye out for whoever is coming out for you next. Right. Well, thanks for joining me today, Mark Fratrik, of BIA Advisory Services, and congratulations on your retirement.

Thank you very much, Michael.

You’ve been a great resource to TVNewsCheck over the years and you will be missed. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening, and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Parting Industry Thoughts From BIA’s Mark Fratrik appeared first on TV News Check.

Bonita Sostre, president of NYABJ and a coordinating producer at CBS News, says the event will highlight Black journalists’ achievements while honoring ABC News President Kim Godwin, among others.

In this Talking TV conversation, Sostre shares details of the event, discusses how local newsrooms can share unique stories about the new holiday and explains the work NYABJ is doing to cultivate young talent.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Juneteenth, the United States’ newest federal holiday, is coming on June 18 and will be observed this year on June 20. The holiday celebrates the freedom of enslaved people at the end of the Civil War and has a long history of being observed prior to the federal holiday being enacted in 2021.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. This week, a conversation about Juneteenth with Bonita Sostre, a coordinating producer with CBS News and the president of the New York Association of Black Journalists. We’ll talk about what NYABJ is doing to observe the holiday this year. The work it does to cultivate young journalists and efforts that news media can and should make to mark the new holiday and its significance for all Americans. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Bonita Sostre, to Talking TV.

Bonita Sostre: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Well, thanks for being here. Bonita, first off, we should mention that the New York Association of Black Journalists is going to be observing Juneteenth in a big way this year with a celebration dubbed “A Voyage Through Black Brilliance” on June 20 in New York. Tell us about that event.

Absolutely. So, this is going to be our first gala since the pandemic hit, we had them in the past. And we are super excited to be doing this one on June 20. We’re going to be honoring Kim Godwin of ABC News, Nate Burleson of CBS News in the podcast Still Processing that The New York Times obviously does. And we are just excited to bring together people. It’s a scholarship gala. We’re also raising money toward First Take, which is our program for high school students that we’ve had since 1988.

And I want to talk First Take in just a minute. So, if people want to get involved in this event, how can they get information or tickets?

Absolutely. We have an Eventbrite website that they can go to. They can buy tickets there. They can email the president at NYABJ.org. And we are happy to get them tickets.

So, tell us a little bit about the organization. The NYABJ is, of course, the New York chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, which has over 4,100 members. You’ve got 1,200 members in your chapter alone. For those who don’t know the work of either or either organization, explain a little bit about what you do.

Absolutely. Our organization helps journalists throughout the New York City area. We work as a place of advocacy for those who may be having trouble within the workplace. Those who are looking for jobs, training, resumé assistance, that sort of thing.

We also have a high school program called First Take. And we do monthly panels. So, within those monthly panels, some of those are for fun things. During the pandemic, we did a wine tasting. We did a little bingo. We did some trivia. Currently this month in June, we’re going to be doing one on self-care. We did one for Women’s History Month, one on entertainment journalism.

So, it goes on and on. We also do in-person events, so we recently had a mixer with the NAHJ New York chapter, AAJA New York and the DEADLINE groups. It was all of us all together, lots of journalists in one room talking lots of news and just networking and having fun. So, our local chapter does that. The national chapter also does a lot of those same things. But on that national scale, as well as having the NABJ convention, that’s every year. This year it’s going to be in Las Vegas.

So happy to be in-person again finally, with in-person events, I’m sure. Let’s look a little bit closer at First Take. So, this is a free six-week program where high school journalists are involved. It’s a workshop. I think it’s sponsored or rather hosted by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. And I understand that many graduates from the program have gone on to work at Nickelodeon, ABC and CNN. So, tell us a little bit about how the program works.

Absolutely. So, the program has been around since 1988, so a really long time. And as you mentioned, we’ve had some really great success stories. Another one is Aisha al-Muslim. She works at The Wall Street Journal, and she was just up for a Pulitzer for her work on Tulsa for that. So, we also had Cristina Pereda, who works over at the Capital B now, and she’s their lead reporter there. So, lots of people have gone through the program and a lot of them get back. They come back as volunteers. The program itself usually takes about 10 students who are interested in journalism, and we do field trips.

We do hands-on training. So, let’s say we have someone come and visit. They will take them to that street fair, have them go out, do some man-on-the-street interviews, come back in, discuss those interviews, put them together as a story and students love it. We’ve had such an amazing group of students over the years, and we’re thankful that this year we’re back in person. We’re starting on June 25th. So, we’re still taking student applications right now for our new class, and they’re also taking some volunteers.

But we’re excited that we already have The New York Times, Audacity and Bronx Snap, who have agreed to work with us so far. And there’s some other ones, The New Yorker as well, those folks are going to be volunteers for us for one week. And also, students are going to be able to learn from them. Students are usually so excited to do it.

It sounds like a great opportunity and competitive with 10 students only. So, what are the criteria for acceptance? Does one need to be a minority student to apply?

We accept all students. Anyone who’s interested in journalism, they can apply to it, and we’ll have that application available for them and we’re going through it. They just need to be interested in journalism and really show that interest in when they fill out the application.

Let me let me switch gears and ask you, from your vantage point, how is the news media doing, particularly TV news, with the recruitment and retention of young Black journalists right now? Where do you see and where else would you see work still needing to be done?

I think we’re doing a better job. I don’t work in HR personally, so I can’t speak to the specific numbers, but I’m seeing more faces, especially when I go to the conventions. I’m seeing so many media organizations there and they’re putting in that effort to at least show up and talk to journalists of color.

I know we’ve worked with The Wall Street Journal at NYABJ, they came they did a whole panel with us all about the jobs that they had available. They also took down email addresses so that they could be in touch with different people who participated. So, through organizations like NYABJ, we work with a number of different companies who will do panels with us because they want diverse talent. They’ll do partnerships with us or come to mixers to talk to that diverse talent. It is nice to see more diverse faces on TV and also behind the scenes.

And in this moment, do the DEI efforts underway feel different? Do they feel like they’re having more purchase, in effect, than they have in the past?

I can only speak to what I’m seeing, and it does seem that way. Just from talking to members, they do feel like they’re being seen. They’re being spoken to more and they’re having more opportunities. But that’s just hearsay. And we’re all journalists, so we want the facts. But just from hearing from members, that’s what I’m hearing.

Let’s flip back to Juneteenth itself as a topic. Many American households have observed this for years in some fashion, but for others, it’s entirely unfamiliar. So as news organizations, people watching this right now, still have a little bit of time to get some coverage together, what do you recommend, especially for local TV? How might those newsrooms help in sort of introducing this this event and bringing it into a broader awareness?

I think it’s all about the research. I know for CBS News, we’ve talked to Ms. Opal, who is the grandmother of the Juneteenth holiday. And also, in doing that research and in booking that segment, I found that there are parts of northern Mexico where some of the slaves went, and they also celebrate Juneteenth. So, it’s all these really interesting stories that you may not know are out there.

And it’s all about doing that research and seeing who’s been celebrating them. There are people here in the Northeast — I’m in New York — who may not have been aware of it, but they have friends who celebrated in different ways. So, it’s learning about all those different ways. In Atlanta, they do a big camp out. I believe Freedom, Ga., is doing a huge event. I’m sure you’re aware those are the 19 families that bought those 91 acres of land and they’re building their own community there now. So, there are so many celebrations that I would tell producers and journalists out there just like just start Googling and get on social media and see like what places are doing these events that we should be covering.

So, do a little homework and it’s well worth it. Well, Bonita, that’s all the time we have for today. I want to thank you for being here to discuss this Juneteenth gala that you’re having as well as the holiday itself. Remember, you can get tickets to the gala, gets more information at this address on your screen. Thanks very much for watching and see you next time. 

Thank you so much.

The post Talking TV: NYABJ Celebrates Juneteenth appeared first on TV News Check.

According to its findings, the five top spenders in Q1 included Berkshire Hathaway, Capital One, Microsoft, State Farm, and Verizon, accounting for over $49 million and 13% of the quarter’s total OTT investment.

In this Talking TV conversation, MediaRadar CEO Todd Krizelman explains which brands and categories are dominating AVOD streaming so far and where spending is likely to go by the end of the year.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Advertising intelligence platform media radar says that brands invested more than $369 million in ad spend on OTT platforms in the first quarter of 2022. Just who is it that spending on AVOD platforms, and where are they gravitating? I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting.

This week, that conversation is with Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar’s CEO and co-founder. In just a minute, we’ll be talking about advertising on OTT, how that space is evolving, and what that means for broadcasters who have launched their own fast channels and apps into the space. Welcome, Todd Krizelman, to Talking TV.

Todd Krizelman: Thank you for having me.

Michael Depp: Todd, your data says that brands spent over 369 million in Q1 on AVOD advertising. Can you put that in perspective? I know that’s a dip from Q4 of last year, but basically, what are the trend lines?

Todd Krizelman: Well, look, I think we see year over year we see improvements in spend. I think the biggest trend we see, Michael, is just that there are more AVOD channels winning business. You know, a full year ago in Q1 of 2021, Hulu was really the primary winner from any format from advertising. And in that in that time, right by the time we got to march, we had Paramount+ launching, then Peacock, then by summer, HBO Max.

And I think there is an evolution of maturing where these other platforms are. And it’s not that Hulu is becoming worse, it’s just that the others are becoming better at selling ads. So that’s been the biggest change, is that we’re seeing more advertising on these different platforms.

Michael Depp: So how closely do the brands and categories that we see advertising in OTT line up with what we see in spot TV? Is it a pretty direct correlation?

Todd Krizelman: So, it’s similar, but there are there definitely are some differences. I’ll give you an example. Direct to consumer companies like Casper or, you know, any of these D to C companies are more likely to be leaning into OTT because OTT or CTV has the characteristics of direct marketing and digital marketing in that you can really click through and follow people and see if they purchase. So, there’s more of an emphasis on direct marketing from these D to C companies than we would see in linear for sure, in spot.

Michael Depp: OK. Well, that’s interesting. Well, let’s talk about categories here. What are some of the biggest categories currently making AVOD buys?

Todd Krizelman: Sure. When we look at them, there are six categories that drive disproportionate amount. No. 1, pharma, we see very significant spend. Media and entertainment remain the No. 2. And media and entertainment are really tremendous. I want to make sure everyone knows what I mean when I say media and entertainment. That’s other streaming, that’s video games, that’s music. Right. So, there’s a lot in there that’s movies. But all of that in total, that’s the second highest category.

I want to go back. No. 1 was finance, not pharma. On my screen the colors were almost identical, apologies. So, finance No. 1, and finance is everything from big banks, but also in finance is insurance, which is a submarket but a big piece of that.

Michael Depp: Are we talking about a GEICO, Progressive?

Todd Krizelman: Yes, that’s exactly right. Not health insurance. So, in this case, we’re talking about the GEICOs of the world and then technology. Then automotive. Then restaurants and bars in most states. In most cases, we’re talking about QSRs. So, fast foods, quick service restaurants. And then finally out of that, top six is pharma.

Michael Depp: Interesting. So, what about sports betting? Is that that figuring in at all?

Todd Krizelman: So, it is although it’s not disproportionate, you know, to the market. When we looked at the Super Bowl this year, obviously, all of us noticed this major increase in sports betting. And those campaigns are large across Q1, but they’re not affecting the categories disproportionately.

When we look outside of these tentpole events, where these brands are really built, these brands are, you know, building up. So, as an example, sports betting is a part of media and entertainment. But when we tease it apart, it’s not like it’s a third or something. It might be 10% to 15%.

Michael Depp: So, you categorize that under media and entertainment.

Todd Krizelman: We do.

Michael Depp: There’s a bit of a different taxonomy here than we might use with spot television, it sounds like. So, if we can drill into that media entertainment category a little further, can you cite some companies that you might categorize that way?

Todd Krizelman: Certainly, DraftKings is a good example of someone who falls under that. But we do, break it out. In that category within media and entertainment is sports betting, video games streaming. And so, we make it easy for anyone to do the breakout as necessary.

Michael Depp: With the streaming advertising, you wouldn’t see streamers advertising for other streamers on their AVOD services?

Todd Krizelman: So, that’s a great question. None of them technically allow it, but we do observe a small amount that exists on most of them. So, you will sometimes see a, you know, a competitive ad placed on someone’s own streaming platform. The reason in other cases is because someone might not sell all of their own inventory.

So, certain streamers allow either third parties to stream or they allow a certain amount of inventory to be sold by a partner who provides the content. And in those cases, in giving up that inventory, they give up some control about what’s placed. But again, I don’t want to frame it as like there’s a lot there’s just a little bit. Presumably, these are mostly accidents.

Michael Depp: So, in this neighborhood of $369 million-plus, who are the biggest spenders, company-wise, that we’re talking about here?

Todd Krizelman: So, for example, in automotive and I bring this up only because it’s an example of how sometimes people who are not the biggest in sports or in linear or end up very large in OTT. Hyundai Motor Group for their buys of both their Hyundai product and Kia products. You know, they were No. 1 in the automotive category. You know, certainly we see other names in there, like Toyota has an enormous bet also. But it’s not a case where it’s not identical proportionally to what we would see in regular television, for sure. Like some brands, Michael, have leaned into OTT to own that audience a little bit more.

Michael Depp: What are we talking about in terms of the number of new categories and individual advertisers who are dipping a toe into the AVOD waters? Are the existing advertisers largely making the bigger buys, or is it that there’s also a lot more people coming on board?

Todd Krizelman: No, it actually remains still a relatively small market. I think the numbers are still relatively small. You’re talking about, you know, sub 5,000 per quarter. So, between 4,000 and 5,000. So, it’s a much it’s still a smaller number than we would expect out of out of linear.

Michael Depp: There are a lot of local television stations, really, most of them at this point, who have launched FAST channels on apps. What insights can you share into local advertisers here?

Todd Krizelman: We see a lot of parallels between local affiliate television and local OTT. So, we see local auto groups investing and becoming early adopters. We also see university systems. We see hospitals, major events taking place in a city. But definitely there is some sophistication that we observe. That is, the buyers who are the most sophisticated are the most likely to be leaning in first.

The good news is many local advertisers are using the creative that they already have on hand. There’s no new creative needed. That’s the good news. If there’s any negative, is there is some friction getting used to a new platform. I thought it was interesting, Hulu has recently introduced, and it’s still in beta, invite only. They allow anyone to place ads self-service and that’s Hulu trying to get local advertisers so someone could go in and say self-service.

Hey, I want to figure out how to buy on an OTT platform in a local way. The bad news is I think local affiliates end up competing against Hulu or I mean, that’s just the nature of the market. It’s becoming more competitive.

Michael Depp: That sounds like Facebook, you know, sort of self-service. I mean, how Facebook’s permeated a lot of local markets by making it quick and easy. I think it’s a bit of a different thing, though, to set up a social media ad versus uploading a spot.

Todd Krizelman: You know, I’ve used I’ve used it and I think it’s elegant. I think it’s double-edged. I think it is more competitive. And I think it is going to be very similar to Facebook entering the local markets, which they’ve been very successful doing over the last 10 years. On the other hand, I think the good news it is it is conditioning and training local advertisers how to do it and that it can work. And so, look, I think it’s double-edged, but for sure, the largest advertisers in the local market are going to be the earliest adopters to try OTT and CTV first.

Michael Depp: Well, I think if self-service platforms start taking off, that’s going to worry a lot of local spot sellers about being disintermediated from that process. I would think that would give them some cause for concern. So, looking ahead, $369 million this quarter down from a little bit higher last quarter with the holiday spending. What are your best prognostications as to where we can see these numbers going by next quarter and by the end of the year?

Todd Krizelman: We don’t see any slowdown in the market right now. Not yesterday. Not last week. You know, there’s so much discussion. While we’re watching the stock market tank over the last week, we’re getting a lot of calls, people saying, hey, are you seeing any slowdown? And we really don’t.

While there are broader mixed signals in the national stock market, for example, we saw Facebook was way off in their report in their earnings this last week. We also saw Snapchat up, Google up and a number of others who, who even I saw that Paramount or formerly ViacomCBS came out with very positive streaming numbers on both Pluto TV and on Paramount.

So, look, I don’t think we see any slowdown coming based on the models we’re running right now. I think like anyone else, you read about inflation, and we do these models with our own analysts where we’ll say, all right, well, what is what portion of the market is being most impacted by inflation? And a lot of it is around energy and automobiles. And that’s starting to soften just over the last few weeks. There’s inflation everywhere, but it’s actually quite concentrated in in certain categories.

We don’t see dips in areas with high inflation. So, we don’t see airlines or petroleum companies, sort of people who are under enormous pressure from inflation are not dialing back on their investments at all in marketing. So, I think we’re bullish about it. But I would also say I’m enough years into my career where it’s hard to make a prognostication for this holiday season. You know, better or worse from last year. I think it’s too early to call.

Michael Depp: Well, do you think it’ll crack $400 million?

Todd Krizelman: I do, yes.

Michael Depp: Well, that’s all the time we have. I’d like to thank Todd Krizelman of MediaRadar for being here today. And thanks to all of you for watching. See you next time.

Todd Krizelman: Thanks, everyone.

The post Talking TV: Which Brands Are Flocking To AVOD Ads? appeared first on TV News Check.

Produced by Hearst Media Production Group, Rocca’s hosting segments are largely filmed at The Henry Ford, a museum that celebrates its namesake automaker and other innovators and provides an inspiring backdrop for many of the show’s segments, while others are filmed on location with different correspondents.

In this Talking TV conversation, Rocca explains what appeals to him about hosting the show, how it’s framed for an omni-generational audience and where it sits in an evolving landscape of educational/informational programming in an age where YouTube is stepping heavily into the category.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Last month, Innovation Nation rounded the corner of its 200th episode on CBS as part of the network’s Saturday morning lineup. The show profiles contemporary innovators and those throughout history. Produced by Hearst Media Production Group, it draws nearly 1.2 million weekly viewers and will enter its ninth season this fall. I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. The podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. This week, that conversation is with Mo Rocca, the host of Innovation Nation. We’ll be talking about the show’s enduring appeal, where it sits in the educational/informational programing landscape and how it keeps a competitive edge against a lot of other interesting EI type newcomers on YouTube. Welcome. Mo Rocca, to Talking TV.

Mo Rocca: Thank you, Michael, for having me.

Michael Depp: [Mo, what do you like best about hosting Innovation Nation?

Mo Rocca: I like learning on the job. I’ve been fortunate to have several jobs like this in my TV career where I feel like I’m almost going back to school and taking only electives, which I wish I could have done the first time. So, you know, every time I shoot Innovation Nation, I am learning something new. And so, I love it. And I get to spend a lot of time in a great museum at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which is a museum I’d heard about for years before I started on this job, and frankly, was one of the reasons I wanted the job of hosting. I grew up now in the D.C. area with the Smithsonian, which, you know, it’s the Smithsonian and it’s great, but this museum is special.

Michael Depp: What would you say is the most innovative thing itself about Innovation Nation?

Mo Rocca: I think the most innovative thing has become the way we define innovation. It’s like a box within a box within a box here. For a 200th episode, the field piece I did at the end of the episode – and I always do one that’s based at the museum that makes use of the museum’s collection – was about standardization, which is kind of wonky and nerdy, the kind of thing I like. But [it was] about the history of standardization and why it made construction less expensive, easier and safer. It made assembly lines possible. I guess if necessity is the mother of invention, I guess 200 episodes is the mother of innovation. You’ve got to figure out how you’re defining innovation and dig deeper. Now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re really having to think outside the box, and that’s become really fun.

Michael Depp: May I tell you what I think the most innovative thing about your show is? You do these remote interviews in the most intriguing way with holographic-looking technology. It’s like Zoom crossed with a Jedi Council meeting. So how do you do that?

Mo Rocca: Well, Michael, that’s not even me. That is that’s just an animation of me. I’m going to give away our trade secret here. This was the brainchild of Jim Lichtenstein, our showrunner. I am, in fact, looking at a set spot. I know what the topic is. I’m well-versed in it already. But indeed, we are often shooting those segments before we have the primary interview set. There’s been a pre-interview, so we know what the answers are going to be. I hope that I haven’t destroyed the magic.

Michael Depp: A little, I’m not going to lie. I’m a little deflated by that because it looks so convincing. It’s just so cool.

Mo Rocca: I hope I don’t get killed for telling you that.

Michael Depp: Well, we’ll just keep it between us and anybody watching and listening to this. The show seems not necessarily just targeted to kids, but rather kind of omni-generational. Is that by design?

Mo Rocca: It is by design. First of all, I think we wanted that in general. The more people, the better. I think we knew we wanted a kind of a youthful spirit. And my hair, the color that it is, I’m grateful that that they even signed me up for it. But we knew that especially on CBS and with the people that are used to seeing me, we’ll call them my fan base from CBS Sunday Morning, that we wanted, that we were going to have a lot of adults, parents, even grandparents likely to be watching. So, it’s definitely we went into it with sort of a big tent mentality. The fact that we have more than a million viewers a week speaks to that, that I think we have drawn in a wide range of people. And I know from my own personal people meter, which is me walking through an airport, that the people that come up to me and say they love the show are a wide range. And I’ll oftentimes have parents who will say, hey, you know, I’m telling the oldest viewer and, you know, but I just love the show. And I kind of say, yeah, you know, but they’re generally not the oldest viewer. It’s a big range.

Michael Depp: Of all the innovations, past and present, that you’ve talked about over the course of the show, which one was the biggest standout to you either because you wanted one of those things yourself or it was just very cool?

Mo Rocca: You know, the ones that have a story and a moral behind them are very powerful to me. One which you wouldn’t automatically put under the rubric of innovation was the designer, Alexander Girard. Alexander Girard was a great designer of interiors who, if anyone, remembers from the 1970s, Braniff Airways had a very distinctive design. He designed everything for the plane, all those implements inside of it.

The curators are my co-stars here. They’re not actors playing curators at the Henry Ford, but the curator there. She said, you know, what he liked was not trendy at the time. His design aesthetic, which was folk art based, was really seen as passé by that point. But he liked what he liked. And I think that is such a powerful lesson for kids, especially to like what you like. Don’t crowdsource it. Don’t go on to Twitter and ask people like, Should I like this? Is it okay if I like that? Just like what you like. I mean, it took me a long time to really come to terms with that. I think it’s a road to a happy, successful future, liking what you like and exploring that. I’ve oftentimes cited it from season one, I think the story of Alexander Sikorski and the invention of the helicopter, because it was really inspired. He was a boy in Czarist Russia, and he read in Russian, presumably a Jules Verne novel or short story that posited a kind of a single propeller aircraft, which didn’t exist. I found that so powerful, the role, that narrative and in this case, science fiction played in planting a seed. And it went with this kid all the way to America. And he lived with it for decades, trying and trying and trying and finally succeeding. I think it’s just wonderful.

Michael Depp: Any of the innovators or inventions over the years that you were kind of privately dubious about? This is the most ridiculous thing. It should not be.

Mo Rocca: [You know, I certainly have been surprised by the huge success of the Ring doorbell. I live in an apartment, so I don’t [have one]. There have been a few occasions where we’ve profiled inventions, contemporary inventions early on, and then they exploded. [There] was just one in a few weeks ago, and I wasn’t dubious about this at all. But really, I found inspiring certainly, the technology for organ transplant delivery. I thought that was kind of amazing. I mean, you know, our correspondent Adam Yamaguchi was watching a heart actually beating from inside what would be glib to call a tricked-out cooler. It was more than that, but it was this really extraordinary technology that will allow a much higher rate of success in the transportation of organs for transplant, which have a pretty low success rate up until now because of the problem of transporting them. But I’m trying to think if there’s others that I’ve been sort of skeptical about and then they become successes. I haven’t tracked a lot of them to see.

Michael Depp: Maybe a “where are they now” segment?

Mo Rocca: And we do occasionally, but we should do it more often.

Michael Depp: So, you mentioned earlier you present from The Henry Ford. It sort of sounds like a Brooklyn hipster bar. So, you shoot there for how long?

Mo Rocca: I visit the museum depending on the season three or four times a year, and it’s a remarkably efficient operation, the crews in Detroit. I’ve worked with some pretty great crews in my life. This crew is way up there, you know, matches the best that I’ve ever worked with. The efficiency is really extraordinary. I’ll make about four different trips. The pandemic has been obviously messed with that. This year I think maybe I’m only making three trips. It works certain muscles for me because those field pieces that are based at the museum, there’s no sleight of hand. They’re real field pieces that I’m doing. Granted, it helps that I’m interviewing curators who are experts in these respective innovations. But we’re in and out there very quickly. It’s been interesting to see a different way of working than I work on CBS Sunday Morning.

Michael Depp: The show fits into the E/I category. It’s requisite for broadcasters to include weekly E/I offerings. Still, the rules have loosened a bit. Growing up, what were the educational shows that made the biggest impression on you?

Mo Rocca: [00:12:25] Well, I got to tell Rita Moreno that my very first TV memory is her saying, “Hey, you guys” on Electric Company. For some reason, Electric Company. I completely connected with it, I think, because it was comedic. It was sort of essentially almost like Saturday Night Live, before I knew what that was, for kids. I liked it. I didn’t love Sesame Street. For some reason, I don’t know, because it didn’t have the sense of humor that an Electric Company had. Sorry, I hate to beat up on Big Bird.

Then I ended up working in what we could certainly qualify as E/I space. I was a writer and producer on the series Wishbone. It was my first job in television, the PBS series, about a Jack Russell terrier who in his dream life becomes the hero of classic novels. That’s the job that I’ve had in television that I go back to more than any other. I mean that gave me the toolbox that I used for pretty much every job since then. I was taking great works of literature, mostly from the Western canon, and boiling them down to 30-minute stories to be performed by a dog. It was like a writing assignment concocted by an English professor on acid, and it was the freakiest kind of premise. It just really taught me, even after I’d had this fancy, expensive education, it taught me more than that education, how to tell a story. And I’ve used it ever since. Whether I’m doing an interview, whether I’m writing something, I mean, I always go back to those skills I learned there.

Michael Depp: As you look at what’s available in E/I programing now, if you do, what do you think? Are there examples out there where you say, yeah, broadcasters can still get this right if they try?

Mo Rocca: Oh, sure. The show that Jeff Corwin has done, I think is a good example of a great show. And he’s a great host. I think our show does it right. I’m trying to think I haven’t seen that many of the other shows. I mean, the animal shows, what’s not to love? There are a couple of them I know on the set in the CBS block.

Michael Depp: So, there’s still choice out there.

Mo Rocca: Yeah, there is choice. And I think it’s valuable. I’m not even really familiar with the actual parameters of [E/I]. But I wouldn’t mind if they’re a little stretched because I like… Creatively, I like being given a structure and having to make it work. I don’t like just being given carte blanche. So, I hope those E/I parameters remain. And I hope that networks continue.

Michael Depp: There’s also a lot of competition in this space from YouTubers. I mean, my 11-year-old daughter is addicted to watching people show her how to build things and how to do things. And none of those people are really held to any kind of broadcast conventions in the way that they present their show. Do you think that’s sort of the future of educational programing? It’ll shift more to YouTube possibly, or social platforms?

Mo Rocca: You know, it’s interesting. It makes me think of Wikipedia because I’m a big encyclopedia guy. I mean, I still I still have my 1974 World Book, the hardcover lining the walls of my bedroom. I just loved the encyclopedia. And we did a segment on Innovation Nation about the encyclopedia. So, I got to profess my love for it. And when Wikipedia came around, everybody, you know, kind of sneered. It was a little bit of snobbery. But I use it. I’ll still fact check, certainly for news pieces. I don’t take it as gospel, but I do think that when there’s enough crowdsourcing, it seems that that that there is a dynamic we hope where the fact checking sort of seems to happen in a lot of cases. So that’s all to say that I worry that educational programing is left to YouTube where there isn’t a staff of fact checkers. But I’d also like to think if there’s just so much innovation there, there’s so much experimenting going on and there’s such a volume of it that the good stuff will rise to the top, I hope.

Michael Depp: Indeed. Well, Mo, congratulations. 200 episodes of Innovation Nation, another season, the ninth dropping later this fall. Thanks so much for being here.

Mo Rocca: Michael, thank you for having me.

Michael Depp: Thanks to all of you for watching. See you next time.

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