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.

To which John Hane says pshaw.

Hane, president and CEO of the BitPath NextGen consortium between Nexstar and Sinclair, says data leasing revenue could start rolling in within select markets or regions inside of the next year. He sees that the mountain NextGen TV has yet to scale is massive, but argues the progress made so far in lighting up new ATSC 3.0 markets is also considerable.

In this Talking TV conversation, Hane takes the measure of that progress, lays out the challenges still in front of the technology’s implementation, and ventures a guess as to when it will finally become a significant percentage of broadcasters’ bottom line.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: BitPath is a spectrum consortium between Nexstar and Sinclair built on ATSC 3 architecture to deliver data and create new revenue streams for TV broadcasters. So, how is that whole new revenue stream thing going?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. My guest today is John Hane, president and CEO of BitPath. We’ll be doing a check in with how far along BitPath has come in building its network, the challenges it continues to face in its growth and the biggest question of all: When, if ever, is ATSC 3 going to become a viable revenue stream for broadcasters? We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, John Hane, to Talking TV.

John Hane: Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Good to see you. John, I wanted to talk about ATSC 3 and revenue right now because we’re coming up on the NAB Show in Las Vegas next month and checking in with NextGen TV is always an important part of the narrative at the show. I’m also supposed to be moderating a panel on NextGen revenue with a trio of station group leaders during the show, so there’s a good chance for me to do a little prep in advance. So, let’s check in with the situation. First of all, how many markets is Next-Gen lit up in now?

John Hane: In terms of number of markets, I don’t know. It’s well over 60% depending on how you count. People count differently, but 60% of the population in terms of markets, we have, I think as of the end of this month. We’re launching a top 10 market this month. We’ll have, I think, seven of the top 10. Something like 20 or 21 of the top 25 and 43 or 44 of the top 50. So, we’re filling in the gaps. I mean, there’s been a lot of activity. A lot of markets have launched. We’re still waiting for some big ones to pop, including one that we’re launching this month. But we’re continuing to roll out markets. We have markets on the rollout plan for every quarter of the year.

So, are you on schedule? Ahead? Behind?

We didn’t have a formal schedule for getting everything done because there’s no central management of this process. We’ve led the significant majority of BitPath, our team has led … and when I say led, I mean the people doing the work are the station groups. We’re just sort of nudging and providing some coordination services and helping figure out the hosting plans. But we’ve been involved in the great majority of the rollouts. Pearl has done a number of rollouts, including some of the big markets and others have sort of rolled out on their own without any sort of participation in either of BitPath or Pearl.

The industry is moving along. You know, I guess you can call it organically. We didn’t have a hard schedule. What I liked and, you know, I guess a good phrase is ‘how are we doing?’ Better than I expected, but not as good as I could have hoped for. I think we’re in a good place. We need to fill in these holes and the top 50, top 25 and especially in the top 10.

You know, as you get into the remaining large markets, they have various complicated issues that have to be worked through and they take time. And not everything is within all the players’ control. So, I’m highly confident that they’re going to be work out. I wish they were worked out, you know, now. But everybody in those markets that is planning to transition to 3.0 is working very hard on it.

You touched on a key issue there. There’s no central management of all this. So, that’s kind of one of the things that makes this very tough, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

All right. Your consortium believes that data leasing is going to be ATSC 3’s real revenue superpower, right?

I think it is a real revenue superpower. So, you know, I did I was involved in retransmission negotiations for the first 10 or 12 years of that and since some of the major and groundbreaking ones. So, I’m very aware of the changes and the profile of advertising versus subscription revenue. And I think with 3.0, the television side is extremely relevant to that. I won’t go down that rabbit hole now, but I think it’s super, super important. And people who discount the importance of 3.0 to revenue on the core television side, I think are selling it short.

You have to look at two factors: what are the growth opportunities and what are the opportunities of 3.0 to sort of mitigate some of the headwinds that are in the existing business in particular as they affect the revenue streams. So yes, I do think on a bit-for-bit basis, there is no question that much higher revenue can be delivered per bit through data services, through non-traditional television data services. But I’m not discounting at all, you know, the revenue opportunity inside the core business.

Well, let’s stick to the one rabbit hole, though, OK? For the uninitiated, very briefly, can you explain how that works?

The way that we evaluate it is in order to provide wireless data services, you need a tremendous amount of infrastructure. You need management systems, you need devices, you need control systems. You need all of those things. Well, the highest cost items really are the RF infrastructure, the spectrum licenses, the towers. That is far and away the highest capital cost associated with providing wireless data services.

We have that in place. So, the way that we view it is we need to provision these participating stations to be able to provide ATSC 3 data, and that’s once you’ve switched over, it’s really fairly uncomplicated and we’re sort of building a playbook of how we do that in an effective way. Then you’re able to transmit, then you’re able to put data in.

You have to have devices, right? You have to have receiver devices in addition to the regular television sets. So, we’re working on that part, too, and we’ve developed a few core businesses that we intend to launch first that we think are compatible with where we are in the transition.

And we’re working on optimizing the way we get that data into the television stations. We have a plan operating now, and also how we sort of get the market for user devices going so that we can have customers for those services.

OK, but in order to capitalize on data leasing, you have to have these important things that fall into place. First, you need a national footprint of NextGen stations to light up and then they have to join your network, right?

You don’t need a national network for everything. You need a national network for some services. And ultimately the full realization of that potential is when you have a national network. But the services that we’re launching initially are services that don’t require the national network or national coverage. They’re services that are sort of more market-oriented to individual markets.

And those would be, if you think about one of our first target verticals is energy distribution. Those tend to be clustered in specific geographic regions. And they’re heavy users of certain kind of data and in particular certain kinds of data services. So, we can provision those. If you think about, I mean, here in the Washington, D.C., metro, Pepco, which will make electric power, is the big electricity provider. Our coverage in D.C. already covers substantially all of Cape Coast footprint in the region.

But to get the full potential and to have the national network in place, about how far along are you from realizing that?

Well, we have over 60% of the country covered.

I mean timewise. Are we talking a couple of years?

I think we’re clearly over halfway. I mean, if you’re talking about the long tail and getting down to market 200, you know, some of those are very difficult because many of them have only one or two stations. If it’s one station, you have to flash cut it. But to have a substantially complete nationwide network, you know, I think if we could get some regulatory certainty from the FCC, I could see it being done in two years.

And the biggest markets you mentioned before, they’re the toughest to launch, right? The most complicated?

Well, they have a sort of a unique set of complications. There are some things that are more difficult. Some of them have not been that difficult. Some of them are proving exceptionally difficult and they’ve just taken a lot more work.

And the second dynamic required to monetize data leasing, as I understand, is the companies that want to lease the data transfer services from you need to build these compatible receivers on their ends as sort of destinations for the data that they send.

Right.

How hard of an ask is that to make of those companies?

You know, I think it’s a hard ask today because the full coverage and the full network is not in place and that’s why we’re not waiting for that. We’re building our own receiver devices and the first services we launch will be our own branded services that we will provide directly. And we’re building and working on acquiring compatible devices for that service. So, we’re not going to wait for third parties.

And I think there’s a lot to be said for this approach. If we wait for others to come build devices to buy our services, I think we’re going to be waiting until everything is built. You have to prove that it works, and we know that it works. We’re proving it in the field. We’re building the devices. We’re showing very high value on some particular verticals. Are the devices optimal today? No, they’re not.

But we’re working very hard on getting better form factors, lower power requirements, moving closer to where we ultimately want to be for a really widespread consumer B2C and B2B set of customers throughout the economy, including end user retail economists, customers. We’re building the devices depending on how well that goes. You know, we could have paying customers early next year.

I hear what you’re saying about this incremental kind of market-based or regional-based implementation of this right now as a lead up to more national services. But all in all, there are some pretty complicated things that need to fall into place here for the cash register to start really ringing for broadcasters. What do you say to the critics or the skeptics who say this is all just too complicated and it’s never going to happen?

People that say this is too complicated are people who have not launched, you know, wireless data services and they’re sort of not familiar with the processes. The project steps, the way you finance these things, it’s an unknown. So, if I took somebody from satellite or mobile wireless and drop them at the NAB and some of them work in some of the sessions that seem very important and topical to everybody who listens to and watches this podcast, you know, they wouldn’t know what we were talking about, and it would seem all very difficult and arcane. But, you know, our staff is built of people who do this.

Our contractors and providers are people who do this. I’ve done this in the past. You know, these are known steps, right? It’s just a matter of us taking them out, execution and success in the marketplace. You know, those depend on a lot of factors. But knowing how to get from point A to point B, how to build a network, how to start before the network is fully built, how to sort of step into it methodically, those are known things.

OK, you are a true believer. Obviously, you are John the Baptist here. So, given that, when do you think the broadcasters are really going to see an ROI on this technology? When are we going to see it as a business line in the earnings reports?

On the on the data side, only separating that from the core business you asked me to do, I think so. When you say an ROI, I would say if you’re talking about the incremental cost of propagating data, for our initial services it’s very, very low. So, I think the ROI will be really good as soon as it starts, and I think it could start next year. We’re not going to burden the full cost of the transition in the first year or two on the first data services that we launch. But if you look at them on a on a bit-for-bit basis for the capital cost of setting those services up and for the operating cost of provisioning them and for the capacity overhead that we’re taking away from television, which by the way, for everything we’re planning for the next four years is trivial. You don’t have to stop any television service at all in order to accommodate this.

Now, BIA sort of famously projected that by 2030, revenue from NextGen datacasting could run between $6.5 and $15 billion for the industry. How many millions are you personally willing to bet on the accuracy of that prediction?

Well, I didn’t make the predictions, so I don’t want to bet on the accuracy. But I definitely believe the business falls somewhere in there.

Does the timeline sound right to you as well?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, so here are the things that we don’t have within our control. When we set up these transition rules with the FCC, they were not the rules that we wanted. They were a negotiated set of rules that had a lot of input from cable competitors, and we didn’t get everything we wanted. And even if we had gotten everything we wanted, it was impossible to know back then exactly how this would play out. Right. So, we’re sort of at the midpoint or better and we need some adjustments.

So, you’re asking for that FCC task force?

Well, we need a task force, and we need some relief on the hosting rules. The hosting rules have some fairly perverse consequences, given the way that things are rolled out, particularly with the growth of diginets. So, you know, we’ve we’re working with the [FCC] Media Bureau and with the commission. I’m not sure that they fully appreciate the urgency of this. The rule changes can’t or are not a sufficient condition to wrap this up quickly, but they’re clearly a necessary condition. They’re absolutely a necessary condition.

And I’ll give you an example. In the largest market, and we’re not managing that market, but in the largest market, there’s a particularly difficult problem. And the parties have come up with different solutions. And one of the solutions would require what, to my mind, would be a very inconsequential modification or waiver of the hosting roles. And I think the commission is very concerned about it and overthinking it. But that’s my perspective.

So, I think relief from the FCC could definitely ease things and speed them up. It’s not going to solve it. We have a lot of commercial business and technical and other issues that we have to tackle. But, you know, we’re way along the way when you have, you know, 21, 22 of the top 25, you have most of the top 50. We have a lot more going up, the 75 and even 100. You know, there’s been a lot of metal bends. I mean, we’re bending metal, right? This is happening.

Well, you may get a chance to buttonhole FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel next month, if you’re lucky.

I hope so.

Well, John Hane, it’s been good to check in with you and see you at the NAB show in April.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.

The post Best Of Talking TV: When Is NextGen TV Revenue Coming? 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

In its best applications, it can help dramatically lighten the load of journalists’ more mundane and time-consuming tasks, freeing them up to do more reporting in the field. Think versioning content across multimedia, for instance. And for on-air journalists who feel shakier in their writing skills, it can aid in writing versions of their stories, helping them level up.

On the flip side, this fast-learning technology can also potentially elbow staffers out of newsrooms. AI-composed content can, unlabeled, deceive audiences. And in AI, bad actors looking to propagate misinformation have a tool that greatly expedites — and improves the quality of — their nefarious work.

Laura Ellis, head of technology forecasting at the BBC, is one of the media industry’s best-informed experts on the minute-by-minute developments in generative AI and how they will impact the industry. In this Talking TV conversation, she lays out the likeliest ways in which it will transform newsrooms and recast the role of the journalist. She also shares her greatest concerns for the harm it can do and how news organizations should best position themselves to keep informed, test new AI applications and ultimately implement — or veer away from — the array of capacities it can offer.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: AI has been woven into broadcast technology for years, but the development of generative AI has taken it to an entirely new level. I’m talking here about the chatGPT variety, AI that can synthesize massive bodies of knowledge, textual audio and video material and produce whole cloth new content. A news story, for instance, a promo or a whole package, among many other things.

The implications of generative AI for broadcasting and numerous other industries and professions are absolutely massive. This has news organizations scrambling to keep up with a technology that improves by orders of magnitude continuously. There are business, ethical and even existential considerations to undertake as generative AI presents a step change on par with the emergence of the internet.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Laura Ellis, head of technology forecasting at the BBC. We’ll talk about what that interesting position entails, along with the developments in generative AI and what they mean for the business of media and the practice of journalism. We’ll also look at what news organizations can and should be doing to meet the moment that AI has brought upon us. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Laura Ellis.

Laura Ellis: Nice to see you.

Laura, let’s start by clarifying what your position is at the BBC. Head of technology forecasting. What does that mean, and what does it entail?

It’s a great title, right? It’s a job which has many facets. Some of it is a balance — getting out into business and seeing what the technology that is coming is going to mean for the BBC and how we respond to that and how as an organization we get everybody involved and get them having conversations with us.

I run something called The Blue Room, which is a tech engagement space, and we bring people in, and we say to them, you know, this is happening, this new technological development, whatever it is. That might be generative AI, it might be digital identity, it might be something like picture quality. It’s a really big range of things. And we say to them, how is it going to affect where you work? What can we use it to do what you can’t do already? And how can we hear from you about your concerns and your thoughts?

It’s a very big conversation that we try to have with the organization, just linking up the kind of capabilities that are coming with it. And we [consider] the potential use to serve audiences. That’s a big part of the role. And then as another part of the role, I do some work on things like disinformation. When I started the role, we had begun a media provenance project looking at how we put signals into media to track it back to the source, which with the advent of generative AI, has become even more important. So, it’s wide ranging. I speak to a lot of people every single day inside the organization and outside. It’s never, never dull. You’re reading these things every minute. It’s exhausting, and I love it.

I want to just ask you a little bit more specifically about the process by which you go about keeping yourself informed. How do you do that? I mean, what are you scanning continuously in order to stay abreast?

Everything. I’ve got a stash of newsletters, and I’ve become very adept at scanning very quickly to see whether new stuff is [there]. It’s quite reassuring and comforting when you see the same thing two or three times, you think, yep, I’ve got that now. Some things are just like a flash in the pan and it’s catching those flash-in-the-pan moments. Some things you think, hang on a minute, it’s not a new trend. Is that something that’s starting? It’s not something we have heard about.

And one of the things I do to kind of process is write a newsletter, which sounds like a really odd way to address things because that’s even more time being used up. But I find the discipline good. A colleague of mine [and I are] writing it at the moment. It’s a generative AI newsletter. Every Monday we publish to about 200 people within the organization. It’s a great discipline because it makes you keep across it and it makes you absolutely scan those newsletters and those kind of chunks of content that you’re bringing in.

I used to go to lots of events, so I’m lucky enough to be invited to things. I turn up to others. I have conversations with colleagues. Last week we set up a little salon, as we called it, in London with some interesting broadcasters just to kind of get our heads around what we were thinking and share where that was appropriate. So, there’s lots of different ways and it does feel incredibly full on. It’s like proper fire hose, gen AI, at the moment.

That seems so. Well, let’s talk about generative AI and how deeply as of this recording it can wend into the newsgathering and compositional process of journalism. Catch us up to where it presently and competently can play a role in that.

So, before we go into where it can play a role, I just want to kind of talk a little bit about why we’re doing this carefully. And I think the reason that we need to say that is — you’ll be only too aware of this — but there are so many issues around copyrights, around legalities, around our own data, making sure that that’s safe. And I want accuracy. And I think all of these things have potential to impact trust, and trust in news is absolutely our kind of number one thing. And if we lose that, we lose everything. So, we’re approaching this, I think, as quickly as we can, but also with incredible caution when it comes to making sure that we don’t breach trust by messing up on any of those fronts.

The kind of primary thing we find genuinely is really useful is in things like summarizing. So, in the first instance, we’ve not had any of this audience facing [AI]. But what we have started to do is look at how we can take all pieces of material and genuinely kind of reconstitute them and give us different experiences of them.

Now, longer term, we’re not doing this yet, but you know, what could I say that I’ve spoken to believe that you could perhaps give experiences of content for different audience groupings as a result of that incredibly quickly, something that would take a team of journalists an awful lot of time to write a whole new set of content, you know, for audiences, say under 35 audiences with English language. We’re still investigating those things. And I think one of the things we’re very keen to do is to make sure that whatever we do with this technology, and the same applies to any new technology, is that we don’t get carried away with capabilities before we’ve really understood how we can use this strategically. The BBC, that’s a public service. Getting that groundwork in is where we’re at the moment, and that’s really important to us.

You posit that generative AI can help journalists level up? How so?

I have a lot of journalist colleagues who talk about this a lot. And it’s something we consider in quite a lot of detail. There are two elements to it. One of them is that some people, even journalists, some of our broadcasters, for example, have said this to me, don’t actually like writing. Don’t really enjoy writing and getting stuff down. Our online journalists, it’s their bread and butter, but broadcast journalists will sometimes say it’s not what I do. I speak.

And what generally I can do is to help you. If you’ve got some ideas, a rough assemblage of ideas, it can help you write them in different ways. If you want to write an email to somebody, if you want to write a story. And I think that is a really clever technology. One of the things that I think in the society generally we could do is potentially use generative AI as a kind of exoskeleton for people to help level up.

Imagine if you were struggling because of your literacy, because maybe with the language to write a letter to the local council of your child’s school. Generative AI that I can help you do that and with a little bit of input can give you the perfect way of communicating, which I think is an incredible piece of leveling up technology.

Might there be a problematic side to that as well? I mean, you know, if you have somebody who isn’t very good at cutting people open and messing around inside, do you want them to be your surgeon?

I think this is more about personal use cases. Let’s say, for example, that I have a debt issue and I want to kind of write to my bank or to my credit card provider, and I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to find the words to do that. I can, sure, I can go online, and I can look at the Citizens Advice Bureau or whatever it is, and I can find a way of doing it that. If I can use generative AI to take my knowledge and match it up with some skills around language that gives me a leg up, it gives me something that I can then use to take to that credit card agency, to that bank and say, you know, this is what I want to say to you. So, the whole kind of literacy aspect of it…

I know of a case of a guy, he runs a small business and he’s using it to write his customer emails and he says, you know, I got to the GCSE level in schools at 16. I left school. I left school without any qualifications, and I struggle to write. And I when I write stuff, I’m aware that people think, oh, that’s not grammatical, that’s not correct. And he’s using those to communicate with his customers. And that’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about when we were looking at how we might use in newsrooms. How can we use this incredible capacity to give people skills that they don’t currently have, see the benefit for a lot of people.

Just to that point, quickly, do you think that right from the jump that it’s important to let the audience know that AI has been used, that there might be some sort of notation in the story or maybe at the end of it that that indicates that? Because otherwise we think if it’s got a byline on the piece that that person has composed that piece.

I really do. I think it’s absolutely essential. Ever since the first days of us writing automated journalism, so just, you know, marrying up a database with a story which had gaps in it. We were able to write a story once and publish it a thousand times in a few different areas of the U.K., we thought it was essential to put on the bottom of the story that this story was written partly by a machine. Basically, we didn’t want to mislead the audiences and let them think any other way.

And I do think that’s a principle which in maybe a decade’s time we might find quaint and old fashioned, but for now I think is really important. And it’s a fantastic piece of work that’s been done by the Partnership on AI, an organization [that has] a framework for the use of synthetic media, which we worked on with them. And I think this this deep thinking going into how you communicate with audiences without being intrusive and kind of awkward.

Especially if there’s so much versioning work going on, as you were just citing through some examples of all the ways in which one bit of material might be versioned for various different types of audiences, it seems there needs to be some acknowledgment of that for transparency sake. I wonder how might generative AI effectively redefine what a journalist does and what consumers expect of a journalist?

Strong views about this as well, which is that, you know, at its very simplest, journalism is a human response to a situation, and it’s interpreting something that’s happening. I’m going to just use the kind of the broadest sense of this, and I’m going to just put you into Turkey where the earthquake was taking place. Having a journalist who’d had a really terrible journey to get to a place and was then reporting from the front line of this terrible tragedy is something which you cannot replicate, I don’t believe, using AI.

So, let’s say in years to come, we just had pictures shot by somebody else and we tried to put a generative AI voice over that. For me, that doesn’t cut it. And for me that is a specific piece of trust that we need to have in our media, which is that you have a real person, whatever their prejudices, you know, and we all have them, whatever the situation, you know, arriving, giving you that story through their eyes and ears and sentences is, for me something we should be very, very careful we don’t lose in this process because it is precious and it is the soul of journalism and what we do.

I think having said that, there’s lots of ways that this is an assistive technology. It isn’t a replacement technology. I don’t think it ever will be. But there are all kinds of people constructing all kinds of scenarios which mean that we might just need to guard against them.

We’ve teed up the very next thing I want to ask you, which is, you know, at least a couple of different companies have developed or are developing wholly AI-based media organizations. What is your take on the viability and the ethics of what they’re able to produce?

I think if you explaining again to your audiences that this is what you’re doing and that, you know, this is something which is generated by AI, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some organizations will see it as a fit for their business and others won’t. If you were in the business of providing real journalism, you know, from telling stories from places where things are happening that the world wants to know about, that’s never going to be a business model, but it might be a business model if you’re a celebrity gossip site and you know that you’ve got a corpus of material. You don’t have to be on a red carpet potentially. You know, you’re pulling stuff together.

I worry about two things. I worry about the proliferation of automatically generated material sort of swamping the whole zone where our news lives. And I also worry a little bit about just a sense of losing track of the sort of human creativity that we talked about, the observant nature of journalism, but also there’s a creativity involved in it. And however wonderful an output is, is it as valuable as having a human in the loop?

I always think about my favorite soap opera in the U.K., which is called EastEnders, and I think to myself, would I love it as much if I knew it had been written by an AI? And I tell myself that I wouldn’t. Now you might say, how would you know? How would you know? You might not know. And I might not know. And I would feel quite cheated if I didn’t know and then found out. But I like to see and feel the sense of a human hand and a human brain in the things that I’m consuming now. Maybe that’ll feel like an impossibly old-fashioned view in a decade, 20 years’ time. But I do think it’s something we need to bear in mind. And I think the kind of the preciousness of human creativity is something we should really work to discuss and to preserve.

Of course, in a decade’s time that preciousness of human creativity may be something that AI can effectively replicate.

It may. I mean, it is very clever. And I was musing only this week on the retirement of OpenAI’s tool, which was designed to detect whether generative content can be used. There are many ways they can tell you that there are ways of putting metadata in. There are all sorts of things you can do. Little visual signals. A lot of this is still being thought about. But if the person who’s created it is not minded to tell you, then, then, yes, you know, there is a chance that you might see something and you might consume something, and it would have been created entirely by an AI. You might enjoy it. You might go to bed at night thinking that is really good. That was fantastic. What’s wrong with that? In my view, the only thing that’s wrong with it is I do think you should be told, because we have lived with consuming the sum of human creativity for quite a long time.

And this is a big jump for us. And I think we need to ease people into it and see how we do feel about it, because there will be issues and there will be things that we need to deal with.

The BBC is among a number of news organizations developing guidance for newsroom implementation of AI. Can you share some of the outlines of that guidance? I realize it’s very nascent right now.

Yeah, I think that in common with most organizations, some of it feels quite superficial at the moment. It will develop and it will iterate along with these very fast-leaning tools that we’re seeing, you know, new capabilities from every week. For us, there is a bond of trust with the audience, which means that explainability is a really big part of what we are asking people to do.

Secondly, there is an absolute ban, if you like, on putting BBC data into these tools. We don’t know where that data is going, and we don’t want that to be a risk that our own or third-party data will wash up somewhere where it shouldn’t. So, there’s a real sense that we need to be very careful what the inputs are to these tools.

Thirdly, there is this accuracy issue, which is really pernicious because the tools are designed to please and they’re designed to make you believe that, you know, they’re having a great conversation with you and they’re telling you stuff that that works. Let’s just use chatGPT as an example. And the problem with that is I always say to people, when you first start using these tools, ask them about something you know, because then you’ll see. Ask them detailed questions. Do that before you ask them about things you don’t know.

I know a lot of organizations are trying to address it a lot. The fact is that’s something we’re going to need to keep a very close eye on. You will see in the court cases… there was a lawyer that used ChatGPT to try to create legal arguments, and it was completely wrong. And the judge was pretty angry. And there are consequences.

And I think that’s one of the things that we’re putting out in our guidance, you know, that we need to think about the consequences. Nothing is risk free. No technology is risk free. We need to be very cognizant of the risks. And finally, training, just making sure that we provide adequate training to people who are using these tools. We will be using these tools to give them the best chance of understanding what they’re doing and using it to the best extent and the most appropriate way.

Organizationally, what do you recommend is a good process for continuing to iterate that guidance as the technology obviously continues to rapidly improve? How should organizations set themselves up for that?

That’s a good question, and I can draw on some of the first things we did in this space, which was something called the Machine Learning Engine Principles we developed back in, gosh, must have been 2019 now. And these were designed in the early days to, first of all, examine what the use case was and then how this particular bit of machine learning they were using was going to help with that. And then look at the consequences, the potential unintended consequences.

And then once they’ve used it to look at what actually happened then go back and reflect on it, so very much a cyclical tool examining why somebody had done something, what it had achieved, what the outcomes were, maybe some of them unintended. And then do we need to revisit the whole process again and how do we take this on?

I think having that kind of process where you’ve got learnings being specifically captured, where you’ve got, you know, red flags where they exist because obviously, they will at some point being raised and having a proper process for acting on those and making sure that, you know, the problems that they have surfaced are addressed is going to be really crucial. Most organizations I speak to are thinking about having some kind of body in place or potentially a function attributed to an existing body. We have an editorial policy [panel] who are absolutely brilliant and have worked incredibly tirelessly for years on answering questions and dealing with this sort of thing. And it might be an offshoot of them. It might be a separate team. I don’t think we know yet. But somebody will need to be making sure that we learn as we go along because this stuff moves quickly. And I think there’ll be things that it throws up that we’re not even thinking about yet.

That’s why I’m just wondering who should be sitting at that table evaluating everything. Anecdotally, I’ve been talking to some broadcasters who in some cases seem to have a point person who is kind of assimilating everything and reading up and testing things out. They don’t necessarily have fully fleshed out committees yet per se, but it seems like that would be the direction in which things should be moving — a panel of people. Ideally at this point, what should that panel be comprised of at different levels or different aspects of a broadcast organization?

This is a really good bit of news because it throws into a room exactly the right people that should be talking about a lot of stuff like this — your lawyers, your data protection experts, your ethicists, your machine learning experts, your editorial people and your product people. And I think the more you get those people into a room together, the better your organization is.

Now technology is the medium and the message. And you know, depending on your choice of social platform, the way you’re going to deliver something, technology has much more of an impact about how you’re speaking to your audiences and the decisions and the choices you’re making. I think having those teams working collectively together will bring all their expertise to the table. It sounds unwieldy, but I think it’s something that we really do need to kind of get used to doing, because I don’t think that there is a single person.

And what about the C-suite? How often should they be briefed? How closely should the people there be brought into this discussion at this point?

It’s incredibly difficult for anyone working at that level to understand this fast-moving stuff very quickly unless they’re a specialist themselves. So, I think what it relies on is really good briefings and a real openness to receiving these briefings. Fortunately, both of which we have in the BBC and our team is called the Chief Technology Advisor Team, and we do weekly videos with the latest things you need to know. We do briefings, we do updates, we’ll do stuff ad hoc, and a lot of it is push, but it can also be sort of pull from the executives like, we want to find out more about this particular thing. We need to know about this company, whatever it is.

OK, we could go on for hours here, and I hope to pick up this conversation again with you very soon. But let me ask you one final question for now: Where are your current areas of greatest concern in terms of generative AI being weaponized for the creation and dissemination of disinformation?

My areas of concern are numerous because gen AI literally does things in seconds that would take a bad actor who wanted to create something horrible hours previously. One of the things that we really need to look out for is how we make sure that trustworthy content, however you define that — and it’s very much up to the audience who they choose to trust, so I don’t want to make any value judgments on any organizations… The technology we’ve been looking at under our media’s properties is agnostic. Anybody could use it.

But what it does do is it means that it will flag out where somebody is trying to spoof you. So, if somebody is trying to spoof a piece of BBC content, the signals that we have in that content normally will not show up or they will show up in a kind of corrupted way. And I think trying to get in this great expanding sea of content, the boats to rise that are going to give people a route through to trustworthy news from providers that they understand and know and want to trust is going to be one of the key issues.

And that’s going to be something we have to work [on] with the platforms, we have to work on with our audiences because there’s a media literacy, news literacy, tech literacy aspect to this, which is really important. And I think it’s going to be probably the foundational conversation in the new space in the next five to 10 years.

I think you’re probably right. Laura Ellis, you have probably one of the most interesting jobs in all of media today. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

You can watch all of our past episodes of Talking TV, including quite a few that tackle AI at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We also have an audio version of the podcast that’s available most places you get your podcasts. We have a new episode most Fridays. Thanks for tuning into this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: How The BBC Is Grappling With Generative AI 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.

The post Talking TV: Tapping The Authenticity Of Black Experience In ‘Johnson’ appeared first on TV News Check.

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.

The post Talking TV: How News Content Authentication Is Battling AI appeared first on TV News Check.

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.

The first salvo came from the affiliates, who less than two weeks ago launched the Coalition for Local News to reassert themselves in the long-simmering debate over who should be allowed to negotiate retransmission consent rights with the vMVPDs.

Owning to longstanding FCC rules, broadcasters hold all the cards there, and the affiliates have let it be known that doesn’t hold water with them any longer. To make their case, they’ve drawn a direct line between that potential vMVPD revenue funneling mostly to the networks as potentially impairing to their ability to produce local news.

Now a second coalition representing the networks and at least one vMVPD, the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition, has emerged. Its position is that things are perfectly fine as they are, and they’re drawing a line between affiliates getting those negotiation rights directly to impeding viewer choices on the streaming landscape.

Bryce Harlow is a veteran lobbyist from the broadcast industry tapped to speak for the networks’ coalition. In this Talking TV conversation, he lays out its rationale and speakers to the broader implications of a growing internecine conflict within broadcasting.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Just last week on this podcast, we chatted with Tanya Vea, a station group executive at Bonneville International, and one of the spokespeople for the newly formed Coalition for Local News. The coalition, which represents over 600 local TV stations, is looking to raise awareness over their current inability to negotiate directly with vMVPDs for retransmission consent on streaming.

That ability to negotiate remains solely with the networks with which their affiliated and the affiliates do not feel like they’re getting a good deal, to put it mildly. So far, to the coalition’s chagrin, the FCC has shown little interest in revisiting the issue.

Well, almost immediately after the Coalition for Local News announced itself to the world, there’s an even newer coalition in town. This one is called the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition, and it’s comprised of the big four networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — along with Univision, Telemundo, Warner Bros. Discovery and Roku. And do you want to take a guess on what side of the issue they fall on?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m talking with Bryce Harlow, a spokesperson for the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition and a lobbyist with the organization Subject Matter. We’re going to talk about the new coalition’s position and its rationale and the impact this issue may have on network affiliate relations. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Bryce Harlow.

Bryce Harlow: Michael, thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Bryce. I want to read you something from Preserve Viewer Choice’s press release last week that very likely you wrote: “Large station groups are pushing for FCC rule changes that would force online video providers and streaming platforms to negotiate with them for content that they do not own. These groups would revive a long dormant FCC proceeding that provoked an overwhelmingly negative response during a comprehensive public consultation, where commenters pointed to the potential harm to viewers, content creators and local news providers. Their proposed rule changes would turn back the clock and force online video providers and streaming platforms to be regulated like the cable industry of decades past.” Well, Bryce, there’s some heavy language in there.

Can we start with the phrase “content that they do not own”? Now, many TV stations produce as much as seven to eight, even nine hours of content per day of local news. And many also have contracts with syndicated provider program providers to stream shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune in their markets. So, why are you calling this content that they do not own?

It’s a good question. So, I think the short answer to that is because right now they can negotiate. And actually, it’s a great time to be a streaming consumer, right? A streaming viewer. You can watch anything any time. There are million platforms, if anything. And sometimes you’re paralyzed by indecision because you have too many choices. And that includes local stations, right? There are hundreds of local station apps on Roku, on Fubo, name your online streaming provider, for people to consume that content. I think what’s at issue here is negotiating for carriage of that additional network content that they don’t own the rights to. Right, so again, today, from our perspective, you can go ahead and negotiate for carriage of your local news to your heart’s content. And they’re doing that to a significant degree, and it benefits viewers.

Another phrase, “long dormant FCC proceeding.” Retransmission consent fee law has been part of copyright law for decades. And while cable operators dislike paying stations to retransmit their programing, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox have benefited since 2006 from fees that their affiliates pay them to provide them a share of that retransmission consent fee revenue that they collect. So, why should the networks not permit the stations to apply the same negotiating power that they have over cable and satellite providers with giants like Amazon video, Roku, Google Plus and other aggregators?

Well, I think a couple of things there, right. So, most streaming platforms probably just don’t have the bandwidth in the first place to negotiate individual deals with all of the separate broadcasters across the country. And the 210 DMAs, there’s a lot of individual stations. It’s not efficient. And honestly, I think if you were to apply that system, which we view as somewhat outdated to the streaming environment, you’re going to have a lot less carriage of local stations. Some of the bigger groups like that are really pushing this effort and seeking carriage of ancillary channels. They might do OK. But some of the smaller guys I think actually aren’t going to benefit from it at all. And the end result might actually end up being less online local content than we have today.

OK, well, I want to come back to the size of the groups in just a moment. But the networks get a lot of money on reverse comp from the affiliates, and the long-term outlook for their retrans revenue is negatively impacted by cord cutting. The consumer money that was being spent on cable and satellite is now being channeled into streaming services, including vMVPDs. The market is inexorably shifting in that direction, so why shouldn’t regulation reflect that?

That the answer to that question would be applying regulation… The FCC has had this proceeding pending since 2014, and I think they’ve pretty actively made the judgment. I know the other side characterizes it as a loophole. I don’t know that you can call something a loophole when you’ve actually had a conscious decision not to do something.

I think even Chairman Rosenworcel noted in her response to Sen. Grassley earlier this year that when they first opened this proceeding, there were significant concerns raised with the agency regulating streaming platforms. You do get into your question earlier, to questions of copyright. And if they have the ability to do that. And I think the answer clearly so far has been no. And then when you’re getting into dollars and cents, I know the Nexstar CEO has said previously that when you’re talking about an apples-to-apples basis, they’re actually getting the same amount of money roughly from the virtual MVPD deals that they’re able to opt into from the networks that they do from their linear deals on the traditional legacy side.

Well, you know, you mentioned 2014. I mean, I don’t know that in 2014 anybody could have anticipated the streaming landscape as it necessarily looks today. It’s evolved quite rapidly, perhaps, from prognostications back then of what it might be.

Now, the release also mentions “large station groups.” Four of the top 10 TV station groups are owned by ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. So, are you saying the companies like Nexstar, Sinclair, Hearst and Tegna are bullying Disney, NBCU, Paramount and Fox Corp.?

I don’t know that anyone’s bullying anyone. I’m just suggesting that the larger broadcast affiliate groups obviously think that they can leverage carriage, I think, of additional channels in some cases. If they were to do these negotiations on their own, the local guys, the smaller local stations, I don’t think are in that same bucket. So, they’re interested. The bigger groups I think are slightly different from those of smaller broadcasters. I don’t know that anyone is bullying anybody.

The Coalition for Local News presents its own position by drawing a direct line between the station groups’ ability to negotiate directly with the vMVPDs and their capacity to produce quality local news. Your group seems to draw that line between only networks having that right and protecting viewer choice. Are you talking about viewer choice being threatened by the occasional blackout or a fight between station groups and potentially vMVPDs?

I think that we’re talking about viewer choice as it relates to the current streaming environment being one that everyone enjoys. So, if you were to take the old regulation — and it’s very thick and complicated — as you noted at the outset, and apply that to a streaming environment that also, as you noted, has grown exponentially over the last several years, 10 years or so. We don’t think that that’s a net good result for consumers. And so, yeah, I just think they’re all vested in the local broadcasting business in total. Right. We have a plan, a morass of old rules to streaming platforms that doesn’t serve viewers well.

Well, how do you reckon the station groups directly negotiating with vMVPDs is going to stem innovation and increase the cost to consumers? I mean, streaming costs to consumers are pretty consistently rising anyway. I know mine are, are they not?

Streaming costs are certainly significant. Look, a lot of the bigger groups suggest that they’re going to be able to get more money as a result of negotiating these on their own. I think I would quibble with that. And I think the Nexstar CEO, CFO, said that they would get exactly the same amount. But if you follow their logic that they’re going to extract more money out of the streaming platforms, that then translates immediately to viewers having to pay more as well.

Well, I mean, how would the prospect of affiliates negotiating directly with the vMVPDs put upward pressure on the consumer any more than if it’s the networks doing the negotiating? Aren’t both groups trying to do the same things, get as much money as they can out of the vMVPDs? Are the networks going to ask for less money than the station groups would from the vMVPDs?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I just know today you have a streaming environment that everyone enjoys and the way that content is distributed works for all parties. Again, viewers have ubiquitous choice as it relates to local content. It’s all over the place. And it’s not as though the larger affiliate groups and all affiliates aren’t getting compensated. Again, they’re getting compensated commensurate with what they get on the traditional side. So, I don’t know. I think that we’re generally in a good spot for the streaming environment. And changing that in any way is not going to be a net positive for viewers.

It just seems to me hard to conceive that the networks would fight for any less money than the station groups might in those same negotiations. When I was talking with Tanya Vega from the Coalition for Local News last week, she was quite clear that the group wouldn’t be hiring a lobbyist but was instead focusing on raising awareness of the issue. Now, you, on the other hand, are a veteran lobbyist. You were nearly 14 years at CBS Corp. Before that, you were director of government relations at the NAB. It sort of feels like the Coalition for Local News has brought a knife to a gunfight.

How much network revenue is at stake here? In other words, how much revenue is currently being collected by the networks from the streamers retransmitted in their programing and that of affiliates and then subset to that, how much of that currently goes to the affiliates?

I don’t know an answer to that question. I just know, generally speaking, look, it’s an important issue to viewers, to streamers, to content providers. And that’s why we’re engaging in the argument that Senator Cantwell spoke out at a hearing a couple of weeks ago and talked about her view on the topic. And we just want to make certain that people recognize that there’s an alternative view, right, of a streaming environment that is working fantastically for viewers. And we want to maintain that and not seek to turn back the clock by applying old regulations to that environment.

I don’t know that they’re working fantastically for viewers. The premise might be a little problematic given, again, that costs are rising across the streamers. I’m paying more for each of the services to which I subscribe than I did a couple of years ago. I’m not getting any more service than I did before.

I just don’t typically hear people complain about the streaming environment and I guess we could quibble, right? Look, occasionally I have a bill that I don’t like, and I look, and I grimace at it. But for the most part, everyone, everyone I talk to enjoys the options that they have streaming. Right? You can get anything all the time and it benefits everybody. So, I don’t know, I might disagree with that.

Well, it seems like in this in this particular conflict that that you may have the upper hand not just being a lobbyist, but it doesn’t seem like the FCC is going to need to be lobbied too hard on this issue to keep things as they are. I mean, they’ve taken no action since 2014 when they first solicited comment. So, is your coalition really just an insurance policy to keep the status quo or are you anticipating some more aggressive tactics from the other coalition that you’re going to need to counter?

I think we just know that we need to articulate the viewpoint that the current streaming environment works. Well, I think you’re correct. The FCC, every signal that they have given over the years and even more recently, is that they recognize that though there are some groups that are, quote unquote, looking to refresh the record, that that would kind of be a fool’s errand. They’ve been pretty clear, I think, that they lack the authority to move forward in a way that the other side would suggest. And if you actually wanted to do that, you would need direction from Congress. I think Chairman Rosenworcel said as much in an Energy and Commerce hearing last month as well.

Tension in the network affiliate relationship is at an all-time high, and affiliates feel that the networks have been heavily favoring their own streamers for the past few years, saving their premium content for those platforms and leaving linear TV and more of a forgotten stepchild position. Of course, the networks are losing money on those streamers, and they’re locked in a thermonuclear war with each other over subscribers. And now the networks are showing their teeth and claws as the affiliates start to kick more over this vMVPD issue. So, is it in the best overall interests of broadcast television ecosystem if mom and dad keep fighting like this?

I don’t know. That’s a big picture question that I’m not sure I know the answer to. I guess tensions are kind of high. I think they always are a little raised. That actually might be the function of a good, healthy relationship. I just know as it relates to the members of the preserve of the Preserve Viewer Coalition, that they all support the local broadcasting business in total. And then obviously we have members that own a lot of stations. So, we are really vested in that business as a group and want to see it succeed despite current tensions.

Well, isn’t it in the networks’ longer-term interests to enable their affiliates to do everything that they can to maximize revenue, to keep making those ever-rising reverse comp payments? I mean, otherwise it could be likened to a landlord hampering the tenants’ ability to pay the rent.

I mean, I guess we think that they have that ability today. Again, they license their content all over the place. And it’s fantastic for viewers, hundreds of different channels on different platforms. So, I guess that’s a system that we think already exists. And they’re able to do that in quite a good way today.

All right. Well, we will leave it there for now, but I’m certain we are going to be hearing a lot more about this issue ahead, if not necessarily from the stoic FCC on this. Bryce Harlow, thank you very much for speaking with me today about the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition.

Thanks for having us, Michael. I appreciate it.

Thank you. And you can watch past episodes of Talking TV, including my conversation with the Coalition for Local News, at TVNewsCheck.com, and on our YouTube channel. We also have an audio version of this podcast available almost everywhere where you get your podcasts. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one. See you next time.

Editor’s note: In response to Bryce Harlow’s characterization of Nexstar statements about vMVPD versus MVPD rates in this interview, the company responded with the following statement:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Harlow has taken a statement made last year by Nexstar’s COO completely out of context. Mr. Harlow is comparing apples and oranges. It is inaccurate to say that Nexstar’s MVPD and vMVPD rates are similar — they are not even close. Nexstar’s COO was speaking about total net distribution revenue, not rates.” 

The post Talking TV: The Networks Strike Back On vMVPD Issue With Coalition Of Their Own appeared first on TV News Check.

Tired of having a passive role and without the NAB to take up their cause, a group representing over 600 stations has formed the Coalition for Local News to more vociferously advocate for themselves. Tanya Vea, president and COO of Bonneville International (owner of Salt Lake City’s KSL), is one of the group’s spokespeople.

In this Talking TV conversation, Vea explains why the time has come for TV stations to stand up for their rights to negotiate with vMVPDs and how the ability to do so will have a direct impact on local news operations. She voices the industry’s deep frustrations with the FCC’s long inaction on regulation reform, and she explains where direct lobbying may or may not play a role for the coalition.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The Coalition for Local News is a newly formed advocacy group representing over 600 local TV stations across the U.S. Its goal is reforming regulations it feels needs to be modernized, namely, the current FCC rule that requires cable and satellite providers, but not streaming services to negotiate directly with local stations for carriage.

Basically, local TV stations and groups can’t negotiate directly with the vMVPDs, and they argue this is hampering their ability to sustain their investments in local news. The FCC has been supposedly reviewing this issue since it solicited public comment back in 2014, but it has been crickets from the commission since.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Tanya Vea, the president and COO of Bonneville International, parent company of Salt Lake City’s KSL. She’s one of the spokespeople for the Coalition for Local News. We’ll talk about the group’s objectives, its headwinds and its chances for getting what it wants.

Welcome, Tanya Vea, to Talking TV.

Tanya Vea: Thank you, Michael. How are you?

I’m well, thank you. Tanya, why was it necessary to form this coalition for local news right now? Is there an urgency here?

I think the urgency is what we’re all facing. It’s no secret that broadcasters, both large and small, are facing significant headwinds in a very rapidly changing media landscape. So, as we look at that, that’s putting pressure downward on our newsroom and our ability to serve our local communities, which is our highest priority. And it’s there’s a real threat for local news across the country.

Well, from the coalition’s name alone, it seems that you’re framing this need to negotiate directly with the vMVPDs as almost existential to maintaining local TV news operations. Do I have that right?

I think it’s very important if you look at the business of being able to just sustain local news, it’s critically important that we’re able to negotiate fairly on our own behalf and to use our content. If you think about how we do content distribution, there are stations all across the country that are delivering newscasts, whether that’s a 6 a.m. or a 6 p.m. in the exact same format, just through different distribution models, through linear television or streaming television. Our content is the same, but we’re not able to negotiate in the same ways.

Now, normally the NAB would have your back as the industry’s lobbyist organization, but they can’t do that here, can they? Do you want to explain why?

I certainly cannot speak on behalf of the NAB, and don’t speak on behalf of the NAB. I’m a brand-new board member, but I haven’t even been to a single board meeting. So, I’m not here in that capacity in any way. The NAB is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations and certainly carries the water for broadcasters across the country. So, we’re not at odds with the NAB in this. They’ve come out publicly in support of refreshing the record. And I think this is just we’re advocating on behalf of a specific issue and really specifically on local news. How do we how do we protect our investments as local broadcasters and our ability to produce the highest quality of local news day in and day out?

The coalition represents more than 600 U.S. TV stations. Are any of those stations owned and operated by the networks?

No. These are represented by the four affiliate associations.

The press release announcing the coalition said that it will be “involved in an array of advocacy efforts.” Can you spell out more specifically what those will be?

The advocacy is really for right now focused on the vMVPD and MVPD. That doesn’t mean that it will remain as that as the only issue. What this new coalition is, is really focused on is how do you protect local news interests? And you’re seeing the four affiliate associations come together in that in that effort.

So, who’s in charge of this? Do you have a point person on lobbying?

It’s an advocacy effort. We’re looking at this more for advocacy and awareness, really building awareness for our own interests and what’s in the best interest for local broadcasters on the affiliate side.

Are you going to hire a lobbyist, though? Is that in the works?

That’s certainly beyond my scope of how I’m involved in this and no, as far as I’m aware. I don’t have awareness of that.

For being an awareness/advocacy group, how does that translate into what sort of concrete things you’d be doing to that end?

I think that you’ve seen there’s a new website that’s been launched. You’re seeing interviews. This one right now that I’m doing. There are several other people who are making themselves available to talk about the importance of this issue across our industry.

Do you have any other immediate goals other than getting the green light to negotiate directly with the vMVPDs?

I think our first and foremost goal is being able to strengthen our ability to produce high-quality local news in our markets. But to do that, again, this is a business. We’re all in the business of business. And each of us have different ways of going about that. But what we’re asking for is really fairness in how we’re able to negotiate really a substantial part of our revenues. These are these are critical parts of our business. This is not an insignificant part of our business.

Again, as I mentioned at the top, the FCC has been dead silent on this issue since 2014. And, you know, recently it put the kibosh on the Tegna/Standard General deal, and it does not, in its current incarnation, seem to be especially leaned into broadcasters’ entreaties. How do you change that dynamic with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel?

It’s part of what this effort is, really being able to speak, speak with a louder voice and maybe a more unified voice on behalf of stations all across the country who every single day are putting our best foot forward. And you know, what I would say is we’ve been under enormous pressure as businesses. You’ve just done this in the last couple of weeks, a survey on news burnout. So, it’s a very real issue. You’re facing the aftermath of a pandemic social unrest. You’re in newsrooms that are under pressure financially. All of those things that we’re dealing with in our local markets on a day-to-day basis, we’re evolving our businesses and day in and day out, we’re working to evolve our businesses to keep up with the speed at which technology is moving. All we’re asking is the FCC to do the same thing they were just looking at. How do you evolve? How do regulations evolve in the same way that we’re being forced to evolve our business?

Are you hoping to get a meeting with the chairwoman as the coalition?

I think we’re hoping that they will just take up the issue. What we would really hope is that they would be open to refreshing the record. And I don’t think that that’s a big ask.

To that end, do you have any champions at the FCC or on the Hill who can help push this rock along?

I think Sen. [Maria] Cantwell [D-Wash.] has already sent a letter asking for this. Sen. [Chuck] Grassley [R-Iowa] has also been an advocate for asking for support for local stations. So, yes, I think there’s definitely people who are hearing the message that’s being sent.

Are you hoping to pick up more vocal support along the way on those lines?

Yes, of course.

What are the next immediate steps for the coalition?

Right now, it’s just awareness. It’s really just raising awareness of the issues that are facing our newsrooms, the issues that are facing our business, asking for an even playing field, some fairness in the rules. It really shouldn’t be as complicated as it as it feels.

And really, I’d rather be focused on how are we driving the best content for our market and what are we doing as far as building and investing in new technologies as opposed to looking at roadblocks being put up by the FCC or by Congress that are just based on outdated rules. I’m not arguing that there isn’t a need for some regulation, but they are not keeping up with the pace that things are changing in our in our industry.

And not sharing your sense of urgency. It would seem so far by the track record of this particular FCC. Well, this is obviously something that the industry has been asking for a while and not getting an answer. So, let’s see how this works out. Tanya Vea, thank you for being here to talk about the Coalition for Local News. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. You can also listen in most places where you get your podcasts, and you can check in again next Friday for a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Coalition For Local News Raises Its Hand For A Rule Change 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.

The post Talking TV: Tectonic Changes Afoot In ‘Making The Media’ appeared first on TV News Check.

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.

The post Talking TV: Today’s Dylan Dreyer On Climate Change And The Joys Of A Nature Show 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.

Heyward, a research professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication — and a past president of CBS News — is author of a new report, with colleague Len Downie Jr., called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms. In all, some 75 experts across the news worlds of television, newspapers and digital pureplays were consulted, and the results frame up the status-quo reenforcing problems with objectivity and urge for greater diversity and open newsroom dialogue to push towards less misleading and more trustworthy ends.

In this Talking TV conversation, Heyward parses the problems with objectivity, the complications of social media interweaving with journalism and how station groups have been wrestling with evolving towards post-objectivity goals.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: For decades, objectivity has been the gold standard for most newsrooms. But many newsroom reformers today say it’s a deeply problematic, fundamentally flawed idea. What’s more, it’s an unattainable and misleading goal. Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, now a research professor at the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University, is the co-author, along with Leonard Downie Jr., of a new report that confronts head on the cracks in objectivity’s facade. That report is called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’ll be talking about the problems with objectivity and the qualities that this study posits newsrooms should be oriented towards instead. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Andrew, to Talking TV.

Andrew Heyward: Thanks so much for having me, Michael.

Well, this is long overdue. I’m very happy to have you on today and to be talking about this report which has just come out, a report which begins with the premises that objectivity is outmoded and problematic. Why?

Well, your introduction began with the same premise, I think, as you said, a lot of people have come to that conclusion. By the way, it’s important to state that fairness and accuracy are more important than ever. What the report argues is that it’s the standard of objectivity as a proxy for those that’s become problematic. And that’s because increasingly people are seeing it as a the too-narrow lens with which to approach journalism, as though there’s only one way to look at the world.

And for many decades that was the way of the establishment that ran journalistic organizations and an increasingly diverse newsroom serving an increasingly aware and diverse population that one way of looking at the world no longer seems credible.

We may think that we’re doing a great job being objective, but the public obviously doesn’t agree. Given that trust in journalism has been declining, what we try to do in the report is lay out some contemporary, credible standards that achieve trustworthiness without relying on a word that we think is no longer believed either in the newsroom or on the street.

You argue that our common notion of objectivity that we’ve had just reinforces the status quo, which, as you said, largely skews to the vantage point of older, straight white males. How is that working?

How did that work? You mean?

Can you explain that dynamic?

I think, certainly in the newsrooms where I was trained, you had a very hierarchical, top-down structure where the editor, who was usually, to your point, a white male, really determined what was news and what wasn’t, what the tone of the news was, what we covered and how we covered it, and everybody hewed to that model.

There were some attempts to diversify the newsroom, but when people who were different were recruited, they were then, in my view, sanded down to fit the preconceived notion of what the culture demanded, kind of an ironic consequence of attempting diversity, but failing because it’s not diverse. If everybody’s the same, even if they are of different genders, races, sexual orientations, and so on.

And so, you posit that newsroom diversification across multiple criteria — gender, race, sexuality, religion, educational, background, regionalism — all of that figures as very important towards transcending objectivity and replacing it with something more relevant and important. So, what exactly is that thing?

First of all, you made a great point in your question, which I don’t think we emphasize as strongly as we should have in the report, which is we’re defining diversity broadly exactly as you say, not just race, gender, but religious background, educational background, income, geography. And you’re starting to see our newsrooms adopt that same approach.

And the reason it’s important is it creates a conversation in the newsroom, assuming that the culture is a healthy one, that allows for these conversations that really reflect the population you’re trying to serve and allows you to connect with a more diverse set of consumers.

One of the most interesting problems that we have in the news business is all the people who aren’t watching or aren’t reading. Well, there’s a reason for that. And I think a better community connection fostered by a newsroom that’s more aware of the diverse needs of the community is one way to attract the people who aren’t attracted now.

None of that is to say, and we’re not arguing for subjective journalism or advocacy journalism. The idea is that you have this robust conversation in the newsroom that helps inform story selection, how stories are done. But at the same time, when you go out the door, you’re still committed to accuracy, context and fairness.

So those are the key things: accuracy, context, fairness? That’s what’s replacing objectivity?

Yeah. And what we’re replacing, I think, we hope to replace is the word to the extent that to your point, the word has come to represent a kind of monochromatic, single narrow lens through which the world is seen. We’re not replacing the idea that you owe your news consumers fair, accurate, responsive, contextual reporting. We just believe that a different kind of newsroom culture is the way to achieve it.

You also raised the word empathy in the report. Is that one of the goals as well?

Yes. We interviewed more than 75 experts for the report. I did use that word. We were struck by it at first, but I started thinking about it more to the degree that it means identifying with the people you cover. I think there’s value. I don’t want to overstate it because it could slip over into pandering or into a kind of, you know, bias. But empathy in the sense that you are seeking multiple perspectives in your reporting and understanding multiple points of view, which doesn’t mean that you have to reflect all of them in the final product.

There’s still going to be journalistic judgment and editors that end up honing a report to what you believe is to use the Bernstein/Woodward formulation, that best available version of the truth. So, empathy is just one tool. I like the word responsiveness. Responsive to a multiplicity of sources, as opposed to going out with a preconceived point of view and reinforcing the status quo in your reporting.

Yeah, because empathy struck me as a troubling kind of … I mean, it’s a great human characteristic, but it does kind of immediately start going down subjective pathways.

And I think you have to be careful about that. I agree that empathy, you know, might not be the right word and should certainly be used sparingly. I think it was used in the report by Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The New York Times. So, again, I’d like to make a distinction between the conversations in the newsroom, which traditionally in the newsrooms that I’ve worked in don’t happen very much, and the reporting process and the editing process.

Now, to be fair, you can’t have a debating society around every story. You still have to go out the door and bring stories back, fill the newscast, or whatever your medium might be. So, we don’t want to create a kind of, you know, Montessori school where everybody’s weighing in on every story. But the notion of a newsroom where people can speak truth to power, including the power within the newsroom, as well as speaking truth to power when you’re holding the powerful accountable, we think it’s a healthy change.

Just to come back to something you said a couple of minutes ago, I’m glad you brought this up. I think you said about 75 different experts were consulted for this report. It really is well-sourced. I mean, you did a number of interviews, I think, of people we’ve interviewed in this publication before many times. And you’ve got a great diversity of people who are weighing in on this subject as part of that report, which is very important.

I wonder, how do you thread the needle of bringing your lived experiences, your subjective identity, to a story and maintaining fairness? I mean, I guess what I’m asking here is about the idea of bringing one’s full self to reporting, which comes up explicitly several times in the report, while tempering the biases or the predispositions that we all have?

It’s certainly a needle that one has to thread. I don’t think we have to stick a camel through the needles eye, but it is something that newsroom leaders have to be aware of. In the report, a couple of news leaders have commented on this very well. Scott Livingston of Sinclair or Sean McLaughlin of Scripps both made the point that it’s tricky. In Scott’s case, he wants a very, very lively conversation in the newsroom, where people do bring their identity, their full selves to that discussion. And the way he put it is you leave your bias at the door when you leave to go out on the street.

In the case of Sean, he acknowledged that there is an intellectual and creative tension there, that we want people to bring their expertise, the expertise that’s informed by their own lives and their own backgrounds to the journalistic process, but not result in bias. That’s why I don’t think editors are going to go out of business any time soon. I think the awareness that this is both a power but also a potential problem if it bleeds over into advocacy reporting, is something that newsrooms have to confront.

Well, it seems like having internal committees, councils and affinity groups is an essential part of building the apparatus for a post-objectivity-oriented newsroom. But, you know, as you said, that can kind of devolve into a Montessori, distributed approach. And it might just be it might impair you on the day-to-day needs of a newsroom. How in the process of compiling this report did you see that applied to best effect?

I think it’s early, Michael, to say how it’s applied, and I agree that’s a potential problem, although if you think about it, most newsrooms do have institutional moments when people can talk about the news and how they’re going to cover it. Even though what I’ve written about, you know, the morning meeting at a TV station, not necessarily as being something that might to some degree need to be modified. There still are editorial sessions.

And to the degree that you give you a reporters and other journalists, a voice in the newsroom without creating chaos or, you know, such an emphasis on consensus that you end up not being able to produce a newspaper or a digital news site or a TV show, this will fail.

I think there’s a burden on leadership here, and I think we are going to need either a new kind of news leader or a news leader who embraces these ideas and sets a tone where it’s appropriate to say what’s on your mind. It’s appropriate to bring your full self to the office. But at the same time, there’s a shared mission that we have to get a fair, accurate, contextual, responsive news product produced.

Wendy McMahon, who’s the co-president of CBS News Stations, talked about creating a safe space in the newsroom. I like that idea. And she speaks in the report about people who actually have to wrestle with these ideas. And I think we sent mixed signals because we do say, you know, bring yourselves to work. And then we say, but whatever you do, don’t give the viewer or listener reader the impression that we’re biased. I think embracing these contradictions and tensions is an important part of leadership.

Without necessarily reconciling them, because it’s sort of a scrum that’s always going on in inches.

I think they have to be reconciled to the degree that you have to have a product at the end of the day. And I also think, there’s breaking news. There are critical issues in the community that need to be covered. I think it would be a shame. And you didn’t ask this directly, so forgive me if I’m wandering from the track.

I think it would be a tragedy if a new rigid orthodoxy replaced the old rigid orthodoxy, or suddenly this became, you know, an excuse for only a new way of seeing the news, but only that one new way. You know, there’s a danger that people will say, oh, well, here they go. They say news has to be woke. Or, you know, the only way to define diversity is by more people of color, LGBTQ+ and so on.

As I said before, a broad definition of diversity is what makes diversity a superpower. And we don’t recommend — we even have a line in the report about this substituting what we thought was a rigid orthodoxy of yesterday for a new orthodoxy of tomorrow.

Right. You just mentioned a few different groups: Sinclair, E.W., Scripps, CBS News and Stations. Are there any other standouts that you have identified so far that are wrestling with particular rigor with this and maybe making some significant inroads around more inclusive reporting and editing?

I actually I think every group is doing it. I don’t mean to give a mealy-mouthed answer to a perfect question but having been a reporter on local TV news for several years as part of the Cronkite News Lab, I’ve gotten to know all the groups, and I don’t think there’s anybody who isn’t wrestling with these issues.

We also have interviews from Tegna. We have interviews from NBC on the network side. We try to represent a broad array of television and newspaper editors. Len Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post, the co-writer of this, interviewed many of the most prominent newspaper editors, and we interviewed heads of digital news sites as well.

I think everyone is wrestling with it. What we tried to do at the end of the report is codify these findings into a set of really brief, simple recommendations, which we hope taken in concert will help newsrooms move in the direction that we’re recommending.

Yeah, let’s touch on that in a second. But first, social media has complicated everything, and many newsrooms have struggled to develop and maintain effective policies with regards to journalists in their expression of personal beliefs. So, there’s obviously a spectrum here, but it’s very complex and fluid. What are you finding as some of the best practices there, and what are your own recommendations around expression of the individual, of the full self of the journalist on social?

Well, complex and fluid are two perfect adjectives for this, and you’ll see multiple news leaders in the report saying pretty much the same thing. We certainly do not have a firm point of view on what social media policy ought to be. Len and I are conservatives — small C — on this issue. And we say so in the report. We are in agreement with some of the news leaders we spoke to who believe that social media is not a place where journalists should be allowed to express their personal opinions and that there’s no separation between their personal accounts and their news accounts. They still represent the organization and that can impair the ability of the news organization to seem fair to its consumers.

So, that said, there are other news organizations, especially some of the digital startups now, and nonprofits that actually were organized around particular missions or particular areas of focus. And if they choose to reflect those missions and areas of focus in their social media policy, we leave that up to the individual newsroom.

But I think the trap is to be murky about it or to be hypocritical, except to say to journalists, we want people to get to know you and know all about you, and then, oh, be careful. Make sure they don’t have any idea how you feel about things.

Acknowledging the complexity of that and working with your individual journalists in the newsroom to work your way through that rather than having really strict rules is probably where we need to end up. But I do think there’s a danger that unfettered opinion-making on social media is not going to be good for creating trustworthy news. That seems almost obvious to me.

The related issue is identity. We certainly don’t believe that people should be precluded from covering stories because their background might somehow overlap with the sources or characters in the story, but obviously it’s between them and the editor to make sure that that doesn’t translate into bias. So again, they may be even more qualified to understand a particular story because of their background. That doesn’t give them the right to be biased or to express an opinion about it.

It seems like you can have a whole separate report just drilling into this issue.

If the world clamors for a sequel, we’ll see what we can do.

Well, you end the report, as you mentioned, with a six-point playbook for trustworthy news. One of the points is transparency. So how can and should TV reporters pragmatically and responsibly show their work?

You’re starting to see newsrooms experiment with this. And this is where I think digital media is a huge opportunity, not just a website, but, you know, TikTok, YouTube. There’s a way for the reporter to share what she’s doing and explain what it takes to get a story. You can bring some of that into your on-air product and you sometimes see that.

But reporting is hard and it’s often frustrating. And for too many years we actually did the opposite, Michael. Television was made to seem like magic. It just kind of appears. And we’ve conditioned the viewers to believe that the extraordinary technology that allows for us to be live anywhere, for example, is now taken for granted. And yes, it’s a lot easier than it used to be. But the I think transparency about where a story came from, what the difficulties were in getting it, why a certain person might not have it, might not have been interviewed or might not have agreed to be interviewed.

I think we’ll just increase trustworthiness and we’ll let the viewers, users, listeners understand more about the process. And it’s kind of it’s the opposite of The Wizard of Oz. It’s do pay attention to the man behind the curtain because I think the process itself sheds light on why news stories come out the way they do. And it’s healthy to have that light shine in the newsroom.

Just to just to drill a little bit further into that. I mean, if you do that on the air, you’re going to have to crack open the length of a story. It doesn’t seem like there’s any other way around that. And then what would that look like, you know, on air and then on the other side, online. I suppose maybe you could have like an annotated version of the story. I mean, what would be pragmatically some of the ways that that might look like? I’m thinking of Tegna’s Verify as an on-air example of how this is going on now. But do you have other thoughts?

Well, Verify is an excellent example. And as you know, that’s been an expanding franchise for Tegna, a very successful one. So, I think everything you suggested is a good idea. I think on the air we’ll come back to cracking open the story, which I’d love to see. But as I said a minute ago, you know, digital media is much more forgiving in terms of the length of time. You can have not just an annotated version of a story, you could publish when appropriate interview transcripts. You could also use, as I said, YouTube or TikTok to for the reporter to speak directly to people who are interested about how the story was done.

You could very simply and with very simple production values, have explainers about the genesis of a particular piece. I think cracking open stories would be great. I don’t see why everything has to be a minute 15 or minute 30. We’re starting to see some change there. But as we know from the television world, stations are being asked to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources, more and more newscasts. I think the viewers would stay for longer stories if they’re interesting and shedding light on how the story was done. Again, not in a narcissistic, self-absorbed way, but in a way that actually helps explain the journalism involved could be very compelling if done properly.

What I would suggest to, you know, my friends in the different station groups is try some experiments. You know, try some. You can certainly experiment like crazy on the digital side but try some on your broadcasts and see what happens. And you’re starting to see this a little bit around the country. And I think you’re going to see more.

It does seem, when I talk to people all the way up to the C-suite and news management at station levels, there’s a greater tolerance for the idea that you’re not hemmed into a minute 30 anymore and that if the story warrants that there is some wiggle room there. So, perhaps we will see more of that. 

You know one of our points, one of our recommendations, which may seem sort of obvious, is I remember a New Yorker cartoon where the catcher goes out to the pitcher and says, strike him out. So, maybe this is in that same category. But one of the recommendations is to do more original and enterprise reporting. So much of television news is focused, in my view, on immediacy rather than importance, recency rather than relevance.

I think the stories again, in all these recommendations are meant to tie together into a holistic plan for a newsroom. And in this case, going out and exploiting the community connection that a more diverse newsroom allows exploiting in the good sense of the word, having more contextual reporting, more responsive reporting, making sure that you at least are aware of multiple perspectives, even though, as I said earlier, they’re not all going to be reflected in the given report.

Then having some transparency about the reporting that you did and how you made the decisions that you made for the final story, I think could all be very compelling and to the degree that we get away from. Wendy McMahon says there are fewer stories from the police scanner and more from the street.

I think that’s a very good way to think about it, and it’s kind of more of a bottom up rather than a top down, rather than the editor saying, Oh, I heard that on the scanner. Go. It’s the reporter comes in off the street and says, here’s what’s really going on in that neighborhood. And the beat system, which again, some stations are starting to bring back, is another key ingredient of this.

Most stations don’t have the resources to have full time beats across multiple areas. So, I’m advocating hybrid beats where you’re a beat reporter, you’re a general assignment with a specialty and beat reporting leads to more enterprise reporting and all the other things we’re talking about.

You just mentioned CBS a couple of times. Wendy McMahon. I know they do that community-based reporting at a number of their stations and Detroit, which just launched, is heavily community-based.

Yes. And ABC also has been really a pioneer in community-based reporting, including young community-based reporters who are based in neighborhoods, just the way people might have been, you know, based at the Pentagon.

Right. Well, the report is called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Andrew Heyward is one of its authors. Thanks for talking with me today.

Great pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

And you can find a link to the report with this post. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We are back most Fridays with the new episode. See you next time.

The post Best Of Talking TV: Welcoming The End Of News Objectivity 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.

Alyson Fouse, creator and showrunner of Bounce’s new sitcom Act Your Age, discusses the enduring value of classic sitcom tropes and why diginets are a great place to debut new comedies. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Michael Depp

Act Your Age, a new half-hour original comedy from diginet Bounce, saw a record debut for the network last month with 2.14 million viewers tuning in for its debut episodes. Given how streaming consumes most of the oxygen in every programming room, it’s a debut worth noting.

Alyson Fouse, the show’s creator and showrunner, takes heart from what its debut largely signifies — that people will still discover a new show through the serendipity of just flipping around, in this case on over-the-air TV.

In this Talking TV conversation, Fouse discusses the show’s premise of three 50-something Black women discovering what life has next in store for them, the ongoing value of classic sitcom conventions for audiences and her aspirations for the show.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Act Your Age, a new show on diginet Bounce, debuted on March 4 as the most-watched series launch in that network’s history. The half-hour comedy features Kym Whitley, Tisha Campbell and Yvette Nicole Brown as a trio of successful Washington, D.C. area women who are in their fifties and each at a personal crossroads. Alyson Fouse is the creator, showrunner and producer of the 16-episode series, which runs Saturdays at 8 p.m. on Bounce.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and today Alyson Fouse joins me to discuss why Act Your Age had such a strong early start and the viability of diginets like Bounce for original series. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Alyson Fouse, to Talking TV.

Alyson Fouse: Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.

And congratulations on your show.

Thank you again. I’m really excited about it.

Well, Alyson, you’ve previously worked on Big Shot, which is, I believe, on Disney+, Everybody Hates Chris and The Wanda Sykes Show. But this is your first experience, as I understand it, as a showrunner. Is that right?

Well, I had some experience as a showrunner, but it wasn’t a show I created. It was for Born Again Virgin, which was created by my co-EP now, Renata Shepherd. I like to call her my work wife. We’ve been through the trenches together.

How did Act Your Age originate?

Well, it’s been living with me for a while, but I’ll say the time came when Brad Gardner from MGM, I had a meeting with him, and told me that Bounce and Scripps had an idea for a show, and they’d like to talk to me about it. And then we had a call with David Hudson from Bounce and Scripps. And they told me that they wanted a show with women who were my age, in their 50s, well-off in this certain area. And that’s basically all they gave me. And I just took that and ran. You know, it’s something I can really relate to, especially as far as being a woman of a certain age.

I’ve read that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the show Golden Girls for Black women. Is that what you had in mind?

You know, I love classic sitcoms, and Golden Girls is one of my favorites. And the idea that I hadn’t seen Black women like this, of this age, I mean, of course, you take from the greats. You steal from the greats as far as their chemistry and the rhythm and everything, it is just classic funny. If they’re comparing it to Golden Girls, I think that’s a really good compliment.

I’d take it. A lot of new shows now are very edgy and conceptual, including comedies. This show is very traditional. It sort of harkens back … I definitely had a feel of sitcoms from the ’70s or even the ’80s. What about those kinds of conventions appealed to you when you were putting the show together?

Well, you know, the idea of people sitting in front of the TV with the family while watching shows and laughing, and even the next generation who watch these kind of shows as reruns later, you know, it’s that good feeling of these are people I can return to every week and just feel good about it. You know, when I was a kid, it was Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, and then as I got older, was all of Norman Lear’s stuff. And I like the idea of revisiting anything that feels like a family, whether you’re with one or not. I think people love to laugh. They love a happy ending. They love to feel good. And that’s not to say that we won’t cover certain issues and we keep the show current, but the main feeling we want is that people have a good time. Just a little joy in your life for 22 minutes.

I was going to ask you about your influences. You said Norman Lear and Happy Days. Anything else kind of formative for you in the sitcom world going into this?

Well, my first sitcom was My Wife and Kids, and Don Rio was the showrunner. And it was funny, before I was even in the business, I loved everything he did. So, I was sort of a fan also of those sort of darker comedies, too. But just I love anybody who’s who has good rhythm and storytelling. You know, I enjoy Abbott Elementary now. I enjoyed Modern Family when it was on, you know, they had a great way of keeping everyone active. And I just love good story and characters.

As I mentioned, you had this strong performing show right out of the box for Bounce. What do you think has been the draw for viewers so far? Is there something just sort of comfortable about the sitcom that draws them in?

Yeah, because there aren’t big surprises in sitcoms. It really comes down to the stories and the characters. But I think we presented a show that not only looks good, our cast is phenomenal and familiar, and they’re women you loved and love to see now, you know, returning to them. Tisha Campbell, I mean, she’s done so much work and her fan base is huge as well as Kym Whitley and Yvette Nicole Brown, whose fan base is very broad. So, the fact that we could put them all together and lot of the feedback has been, you know, I love seeing these women again. I love seeing them together. You know, and the family aspect of it, the friendship.

Did the casting come together very quickly?

No, we were writing the show before we knew who would star in it. But then when they asked me who I want it, I was like, there’s a list in my head of women I’ve always wanted to work with. You know, to me, Yvette was always Angela. I had to have her as Angela, and I knew that Tisha would bring so much more to Keisha than how she was written on page or how people perceived her on the page, what I wanted her to be. And then with Kym, we had another actor who fell out that the network was really excited about, but unfortunately, we couldn’t make it work. And so, I was like, Kym is perfect for that. And I love that they all came together and the fact that they’re real friends.

You have to have that that off-screen chemistry, I suppose, as well to have it on screen. As I mentioned at the top, this is airing Saturday nights on Bounce. Is it available on streaming as well?

Well, Bounce does have a Brown Sugar app that you can watch the reruns the next day and you can watch all the episodes, as a matter of fact. That’s as far as I know. I’m encouraging people to record it. And I guess it would also depend on what your cable services are, Dish Network or whatever all that stuff is. But it’s free on the airwaves with an HD antenna.

As most of the viewers are finding you, there’s that sort of serendipity, they’re flipping around and there it is, let me leave this on.

Well, you know, it’s funny because a lot of people had Bounce but didn’t know it. You know, they were watching it and weren’t aware that it was Bounce because they show a lot of classic movies and things like that. So yeah, I tell people, go ask your grandmother or mother, they’re probably already watching it.

Right. Well, the thing is that most people don’t even know what a diginet is. I mean, that’s sort of an industry term. When we think about diginets, often it’s sort of reruns of classic shows, you know, thematically organized by different genres. So, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was because your show’s an original, and there are originals on other diginets, too, but it’s not been loaded with originals. I wonder, with so many people having to cut the cord to cable doing that and streaming getting also very expensive to pay for in an a la carte kind of way, do you think that gives an advantage to being on a network like Bounce and to a show like yours? There might be more discoverability of it now than even just a year or two ago?

Oh, absolutely. Because I think we’re at a point where if you make a good show, people will find it. And the bonus of this is that it’s free works in our favor. And I love the idea of people not only discovering us but discovering the whole Bounce network as just another alternative for something to watch. Because, you know, and not to pooh-pooh the streamers and everything, but those costs start to add up. You know, if you’re paying for different networks, Bounce and being free is really a bonus for us. I’m excited about it.

Once we got a good show and a good cast, I didn’t care where they showed it. You know, Bounce is great, and they’ve been fantastic with us. But it was just I like the idea of people discovering our show, you know, and that that means they made an effort to go watch it. So, I think this is great.

What’s your hope for the show, Alyson? What are your ambitions ultimately for it?

To open this world up even more to get to know these women and that at their age, life isn’t over. You know, when you’re 20 and you think about somebody in their 50s, you think, ancient. And honestly, we’re still learning. Life is still going. So, I want to open up these characters, show people, get them familiar with this kind of space.

You know, again, like I said, we don’t have a cast on TV that I’m aware of that looks like this, that’s enjoying life. And it’s comedic. And we have our two younger characters, Mariah Robinson and Nathan Anderson. And as their world opens up, it gives us a whole new universe to play with. I just love the fact it let these people join me in the shower every day, because that’s where I get all my thoughts. You know, I get all these ideas. I could do this forever. You know, I could easily see this show going seven seasons. But I can also see the spin-off of it again from that Norman Lear generation where we watch. You set up a whole universe of families and different backgrounds and ever everything, and I’m excited about it.

OK, well, “these people are with me every day in the shower,” I think has risen to the headline of this. Well, thank you so much, Alyson Fouse, for joining me today to discuss your new show, Act Your Age. I really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching and listening to this one and see you next time.

The post Best Of Talking TV: Bounce’s ‘Act Your Age’ Sets A Debut Record 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.

Kate O’Brian, Scripps News’ president, says the ramp-up to 16 all-live hours is ahead of schedule and was spurred by sizeable viewer upticks in the network’s current live hours versus recorded programming.

In this Talking TV conversation, O’Brian explains the shift and the reorganization within parent company E.W. Scripps that has enabled it. She also addresses how Scripps News is managing a complex web of contributors across all facets of the company, including its local stations and sister network Court TV.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Beginning May 1, Scripps News, formerly known as Newsy, will begin to produce all of its weekday news live between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. It’s the culmination of an extraordinary ramp-up of original news on the network, which began as a digital, primarily streaming, outlet and became available over the air in October 2021.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News, to talk about the network’s expansion of live news hours and the complex web of collaborations across the entire E.W. Scripps Company that has enabled it. We’ll be right back with that conversation. 

Welcome, Kate O’Brian to Talking TV.

Kate O’Brian: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Six hours of live news programing a day starting next week. To put that in perspective, how much of what viewers are seeing now has been previously recorded?

Only about four hours a day has been previously recorded. We started with the plan to repeat some of our primetime programing during the day, and that was our right-out-of-the-gate plan for a couple of reasons. One, we still had to ramp up in terms of size and operations. And two, we love our primetime programing, and we thought people during the day might enjoy looking at it as well. As it turned out, now that we are able to really get a better sense of viewership, our viewers really want live. And so, we are responding to the viewers and starting at 6 in the morning and going until 10 p.m. will be live all day and all evening.

This shift was always in the cards, but you are a bit ahead of schedule here, no?

Yeah, I mean, I from the get-go, our plan has been to be live, frankly, seven days a week, all day long, not so much in the overnight hours. I think that that’s there’s not as much return on investment to being live in the overnight hours. But the plan still is at some point when we have the resources to be live seven days a week all day and into the evenings on the weekends.

Right now, we do live depending on the day, Saturday, a couple of times a day, and then cut-ins throughout the day and Sunday. We have original programing again, live a couple of times a day, and then original long-form programing in the evenings.

Are those weekend cut-ins ad hoc or are they hourly?

They’re hourly. Yeah. It’s the beginning of every hour that we try to let people know what’s going on in the world.

You mentioned that viewers are asking for this. Why was it important to go live as soon as you were able?

Well, I mean, for a lot of reasons. We’re a news organization and providing our viewers with the information that they need throughout the day to know what’s going on in the world is here. That is our reason for being. And we were responding to what we saw with the viewership numbers. And when we had repeats during the day, the viewership numbers slid a little bit and then came right back up when we went back on live. So, in response to that, but it was always it was always our plan. I mean, this is what a 24/7 news operation does.

Right. Scripps has been in the midst of a considerable reorganization. That’s partly happening, I think, to foster the growth of its national networks, which you oversee. How has that helped to clarify the lines of contribution to Scripps News from across the company? In other words, how has it better laid the foundation for this collaborative network?

Well, Scripps as a company is a very collaborative company. And we have always had what was originally Newsy, and now Scripps News, work very happily and openly and fruitfully with our partners in local media and certainly with Court TV or other national news products. What is happening now is partially as a result of the change of name from Newsy to Scripps News. It makes our collaboration with the stations even easier and much more robust because Scripps News, you know, Scripps is the owner of the stations. So, it’s sort of logical that the stations are working with Scripps News and we’re going in much earlier in the process.

What we’ve been doing thus far very, very well is both Scripps News using content that the local stations have produced and the local stations using content that Scripps News has produced, you know, to beef up their content throughout the day. But now we’re really trying to go in from the beginning of a story.

So, for example, when there was a train derailment a few months back in East Palestine, Ohio, right away, teams were sent, obviously, from the stations in Ohio, but also from Scripps News. And on the ground, our teams worked together to create sort of a streamlined, seamless partnership of, OK, today, you’re going to go cover that part of the story. Today you’re going to go cover that part of the story. We’re going to share our information and our in our reporting.

But at the end of the day, things like that or Scripps News and WMAR in Baltimore created a sort of a town hall show about the reports from the Archdiocese of Baltimore about the priest sexual abuse of minors. From the beginning, Scripps News and WMAR executives got together and said, how are we going to do this story? Let’s both share everything we can in terms of reporting and produced a really emotional hour together.

So, it’s that. And then add to that when either group can do something extra, like with the East Palestine story, the Scripps News investigative team push that story forward with reporting on executive compensation tied to some of the issues that led to the train derailment. So, there are there are multiple ways that we can be working together from the ground up that I think create a stronger product for the news.

When you have that kind of ground-up collaboration, do you end up using all that you produce across all of the different … will the local station carry some things that were created by Scripps News reporters and vice versa, do you use everything you make everywhere or is it siloed by venue?

I’m a strong believer in not letting any parts fall onto the floor of the butcher shop. We use everything. I can’t tell you specifically about how much each station might use, but it is all available for the stations to use and at Scripps News. You know, again, we now have 16 hours of live programing. We can use everything we can get.

I want to come back to the collaboration in just a second, but before that, it’s been a key value proposition for Scripps News that your journalists are actually out in the field. They’re fanned out across the country, and they’re not locked in studios on the coasts. Can you explain how you can cover such a wide swath of the country via the bureau structure and the Scripps local stations?

Absolutely. So, Scripps News, well, starting when we were Newsy, we had multiple bureaus, our biggest ones in Atlanta, Washington, Chicago, Denver. But we had smaller bureaus all over the country, including in places where I guess news organizations wouldn’t normally have people.

I don’t know what normal is, but wouldn’t necessarily normally have sent people like Missoula, Tulsa, Nashville, Houston and Dallas, Phoenix. What we were trying to do at Scripps News was to cover as much of the country as we possibly could and hire reporters who were from those areas. So, they were bringing the expertise, the geographical expertise, with them.

Now we have the unbelievable advantage of adding to that reporting the local stations in 41 markets and using the reporters. Whether we’re using their packages, whether they’re coming on live, when that’s a breaking news story, whether we’re working with them to create that all together, I think we’re at 52 or 53, if you want to call them bureaus, locations around the country to get firsthand reporting from all of those cities, towns, parts of the country. It’s extraordinary.

When it’s a station reporter but they’re on Scripps News, they’ll identify as so and so from Scripps News, Cincinnati, or whichever market they’re in?

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Just to come back to collaboration, and we talked about this a bit recently during TVNewsCheck’s Programing Everywhere event in Las Vegas, but I’d like to elaborate a little bit more on how you’re able to orchestrate the contributions that are coming in from a wide array of sources. How do you have transparency across the key pieces here — Scripps News journalists themselves, the D.C. bureau, the Scripps national news hub in Denver and Court TV — so that you have a continuously updated handle on all of the content that’s actually coming through your system. How do you see everything?

It’s an understandable challenge, but we have managed to meet the challenge in a couple of different ways. First, it means communication is incredibly important. So, the human beings at all of those different locations that you mentioned need to know each other, need to be able to pick up the phone and call each other. And we have multiple meetings a day where that can happen.

In addition, the systems have to be built and maintained to be the foundation of that communication. We use software that was developed at Scripps called News Desk that producers at one entity can look in and see what the rundown is for another entity. That is getting developed even more and more as we are expanding the collaboration. There are multiple ways in which we want producers, EPs, segment producers, line producers, etc. all across the country to be able to peek in, see, oh, there’s a great story. Maybe we want a live shot from that reporter. What’s happening in Sudan? Maybe we need to have someone from Scripps News to help explain that to our audience and through the software backed up by the actual communication between people, we can make that happen.

In addition, we have an entire team that has been called the partnership team, and they — collectively and individually — are connecting with stations every day, all day long. They start early in the morning, they go late at night, and they are finding out directly from the news desks of each station what’s happening there and also sharing what Scripps News is doing in case there’s something particular of the station wants to cover.

And what we’re talking about here are things that are in the pipeline, things that are in the works. But what about when you want to propose a collaboration? How does that start where you’re like, you know, I’ve got an idea and I think this could work with our partner X or Y, somewhere else in the organization? How do they advance a proposal and move that through?

At this point, there are many ways to connect. I’ll take it from the Scripps News perspective. Scripps News can connect through the partnership team to the station. Our head of Scripps News can reach out to Sean McLaughlin or Dean Littleton, who are experts in local media. Our EPs can reach out to news directors, and as we are building these operational communications systems, we’re trying to create frameworks that make that easier.

But there’s nothing wrong with picking up a phone and saying, hey, I have this great idea. And that has happened a couple of times. Certainly, at I think it’s CVI in Idaho and Court TV, [they] are working very closely together on the murders of those college students. And in fact, even, you know, building promos together and reporting together. That’s a function of, I think, the news director calling up the person who ran Court TV or the person who’s in charge of the desk and saying, hey, you know, what can we do together?

It seems like the metaphor here is like neural networks or neural pathways where you have new ones continuously being formed in this elaborate network.

That’s a good metaphor. That’s what it seems like from my point of view.

On the human side of this, in order for people to be successful collaborators, they have to know each other. They have to get to meet their counterparts or colleagues at other stations, other parts of the organization. So, are you able to affect that well on Zoom or do you have retreats in the pipeline as well? How do you forge those connections between colleagues?

Well, certainly Zoom is, you know, the currency these days. Here we are on Zoom. And through the pandemic, we’ve become very effective on Zoom. And I think definitely foundational to what we’re trying to do.

There are occasional meetings. The Scripps News director meeting last year, 2022, was held in Atlanta, where Scripps News is biggest bureau and studios live. And so, there was a really lovely way to connect with the news directors in person there, and that’s always helpful. Scripps has other meetings where people are able to talk to each other throughout the year there.

Listen, if I could wave a magic wand and create a system where, you know, Scripps news people could fly out to every news organization location, then I would make that happen. But I don’t have that. I don’t have that magic wand right now.

Now this move happens just as Nexstar’s NewsNation is ramping up to 24 hours of programing. Do you see them as your most direct competitor?

In a way, it’s so interesting. Michael. I don’t actually look at anybody else as a competitor per se, because I think every news organization is trying to do something unique. And there are a number of news organizations that are working with their stations to create content together. So, in a broad sense, you can say we are all competitors, but each one is doing it in a slightly different way. So, it’s never really apples to apples.

I wish everybody well. Speaking just for Scripps, what we are able to achieve with our really fabulous stations, on their own each one is an award winner and, you know, creates unbelievable content. It is very important to have the sort of unified plan that I think we are approaching. But, you know, the ability to use every part of your organization is not unique to Scripps.

How different will Scripps News look to viewers going ahead from May 1?

I don’t think it’s going to look that different. There are very few people, I think, other than myself, maybe a handful of others who watch Scripps News all day long from 6 in the morning till 10 at night. So, I think for most viewers, whenever they turn it on, they will see the Scripps News, the news that they want live breaking, but also deep dive contextual reporting that is really the hallmark of the content that that we produce. I don’t know that they’re going to see something that looks very, very different.

And I understand there’s going to be a marketing ramp-up along with this shift as well. How are we going to see that?

I’m very excited for that. Again, at the beginning of May, there’s a big marketing push. There will be billboards and radio spots and TV spots and ads in newspapers, and I hope more people will be getting a sense of what Scripps News is and what Scripps News stands for and how informative, but also engaging and compelling our content is from multiple touchpoints.

OK, well, we are looking forward to seeing more live news now from Scripps News. Thanks for talking about it with me, Kate.

Thank you, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on YouTube. We’re back most Fridays with the new show. Thanks for watching this one. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Scripps News Ramps Up Live Newscasts appeared first on TV News Check.

In addition to anchoring, LiveNOW’s hosts serve as their own producer and director, teeing up the next story while they’re still reporting the first one, steadily operating a tricaster just below the camera’s eye like a musician all the while.

In this Talking TV conversation, Andrew Craft, a senior digital journalist with LiveNOW out of its Phoenix hub at Fox’s KSAZ, explains how he’s honed his news DJing skills over the past two years. He shares how he’s become hooked on the rush of live news multitasking and the skills he’s found necessary to pull it off.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: LiveNOW is Fox Television Stations’ 24/7 digital streaming news channel run out of Fox’s newsrooms in Phoenix and Orlando. It essentially DJs news content from across the group continuously with over 100 hours of live programing a week.

In just a few years, LiveNOW has picked up a long and growing list of FAST distribution partners including Tubi, Samsung TV+, Roku Channel, Amazon News, Freevee, Vizio, Sumo, Fubo, YouTube and Fox Nation. Fox is not hiding this channel from viewers, lord knows.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. My guest today is Andrew Craft, a senior digital journalist with LiveNOW out of Phoenix. Andrew’s job is to anchor, produce and direct many of these LiveNOW weekly hours. Coming up, we’ll talk about how just one person can do all of these things simultaneously and effectively, especially when you factor in big events like the recent midterm elections where Andrew led the channel’s recent coverage. We’ll be right back with that.

Welcome, Andrew Craft to Talking TV.

Andrew Craft: Michael, Thanks so much for having me.

Andrew, for those who aren’t familiar with it, tell us what viewers encounter when they watch this on streaming or the web. What does LiveNOW look like with news coming in from so many different directions?

So, essentially as the digital journalist in the hot seat, I operate kind of as the captain. Really the decision-making process is up to me about what the viewer gets to see. We have so many live pictures, live feeds coming into us from all over the country, all over the world, a lot on social media as well. And so, we get to decide which stories we want to tell, what we think is top of mind, what we think is most important.

I really love that autonomy about LiveNOW. Obviously, if it’s a huge story, like, for example, yesterday, the Arizona governor’s race was called and one of LiveNOW’s bases is in Phoenix. And so, we were really on top of that story. We essentially brought live to the viewers the Maricopa County press update on, you know, ballot counting and all of that.

The beauty also of LiveNOW is you have so much time to fill that you can show the viewers these press conferences in their entirety, no matter if they’re 30 or 40 minutes. Something I like to do is if it’s a big event, for example, like today when we’re recording, former President Trump is going to make this announcement at Mar-a-Lago about potential 2024 aspirations, we’ll bring a guest on ahead of that to kind of ramp up coverage and then get the guest’s reaction as a recap once it’s over. We use Zoom as well a lot for our guests.

And given that this is produced in such a minimalist fashion and the source material comes in from across the group of Fox stations, how do you give it a distinct brand identity, and how would you describe that identity so that LiveNOW feels like its own autonomous news presence in some way?

We have kind of a slogan here: Live, raw and unfiltered. So, for the viewer watching at home, you know, it does kind of look essentially like we’re not, you know, the broadcast networks, we’re not as flashy as some might think because we are doing it basically alone.

There is a lot on us, especially the technical aspect of it, you know, getting the audio correct, choosing the video. We type out all of the graphics that the viewers see on the screen, and we also control the guests’ audio as well. We have at our disposal so many of the Fox O&O reporters, the Fox News Channel correspondents who are, wherever they are on a big story, we can ask them if they want to come on.

And we’ve gotten a lot of feedback that unlike cable broadcast, there has to be like a minute 30 or two minutes. That reporter or correspondent could come on LiveNOW and can essentially tell their story a little longer, for example. So, five, six, seven minutes. We are kind of constrained by commercials. We try to get four in an hour, but sometimes if it’s really a major breaking story, we let the correspondent and the hosts kind of just go back and forth on how important the story is.

So, they’ll do their hit for local and then maybe you’ll have them and interview them longer or there will be a longer version of the piece versioned? How does that play out?

Yeah, for example we’re speaking to a Fox 26 Houston reporter. They’re done with their hit for Houston and they kind of hop on, maybe right after their hit is over, we roll their package, but we also kind of get to do an extended Q&A on the back end, diving a little deeper into the story, letting the reporter show us their reporting a little bit more.

Do you draw from sources beyond the Fox-owned stations? And if so, who else?

Yeah, essentially, since I’ve been here for two years, we rely mostly on the Fox owned and the Fox News Channel correspondents. But a lot of times, if I have to fill a gap of, say, you know, one of those reporters isn’t available, I look elsewhere. So, a lot of print outlets, radio outlets, local journalism, just because, you know, those people know the story just as well, if not better than some of our Fox reporters. And so, we try to rely on that to fill those gaps if someone’s not available.

A lot of times I DM reporters on Twitter, I DM experts on Twitter, cold email, you know, basically source gathering and here at LiveNOW we’ve established a lot of great relationships that way — subject matter experts, policy analysts. I’m essentially my own booking department now.

And you’re doing all this while you’re on the air, right? In many cases?

I mean, before I go on the air. I average four hours a day, nine consecutively, on the air. But that preparation time, I’m calling people who want to come on and talk about it. And I know I kind of keep harping on, you know, length is the beauty of it. And that’s kind of the beauty of LiveNOW is if you’re really into a story, you’re really passionate about a subject area, you know, we do have the time.

For example, since the war in Ukraine broke out in February, we’ve almost had nightly, about 30 minutes every night on updates to the war in Ukraine with national security experts who we really heavily relied on. So obviously LiveNOW did not have someone in Ukraine throughout the duration of this war. But I think our coverage has just been as good.

So, basically, you’re the band and the roadie and the sound engineer and selling the merch and kind of producing the whole thing. I mean, it’s essentially all you? Or do you have anybody backing you up? Is anybody reinforcing you while you’re on a shift?

Yeah, and that’s kind of the novel approach, Michael, to LiveNOW, where that is what makes it so different. I used to be in the field. I used to be a one-man band, MMJ. Now I’m kind of one man banding the show, kind of what you were alluding to. I mean, we do have producers. They are very helpful. They assist us when we’re in the hot seat. They also book. They also hand us scripts, help us formulate questions when we’re talking to the guests. But a lot of the decision-making process is for the DJ up in the chair.

And so, when breaking news happens, yes, they are very, very helpful. But like I said, I kind of have a rundown in my head. There’s no line producer. There’s no typed-out rundown. It’s kind of what I want to go to next. I have a general plan before I go up there about what the biggest stories are, and then I kind of execute it that way with, you know, live reporter hits and expert hits, too. So, it’s very dynamic, but it is very unorthodox.

Yeah, highly. You trained as an MMJ, so you’ve already got multiple skill sets for story production that way. But this is a whole other set of skills. I mean, you’ve got, you know, the control room essentially as well. Then you have to be able to bifurcate your attention or trifurcate your attention to be watching all these other things. So, I guess I’d love for you to paint a picture of while you’re live on the desk, how pragmatically you are able to attend to all the things that you need to do at once in order to pull off this kind of newscast.

It’s definitely a work in progress, and it does take time to kind hone that skill, prioritize your time. You always have to be thinking about what is next. So, say, for example, you know, something ends. It’s 12 minutes long, what am I going to next? Because there’s really no, you know, person saying, OK, we need to hit this right now, next. It’s completely up to me up there.

And so, for example, with breaking news, we are at LiveNOW a lot of times the first people on it because say we’ll just put up a bump shot, or we’ll put up a tweet and we’ll just keep talking. We also have no teleprompter. It’s completely ad lib, which is something I had to really focus on and learn because I had never anchored before this. I was always in the field. And so, you know, no teleprompter is very, very daunting. It’s very, very intimidating. You have to kind of just surrender yourself to the camera. It’s almost like you’re on stage and you’re speaking to that little black box. Obviously, I refer to my notes a lot, but it’s very freewheeling, almost in the sense that you have to prepare so much for the stories, like 10 to 12 stories a day. And if, you know, just a few bullet points on them, you can get by through that. But it is challenging.

No doubt. I mean, a press conference has got to be a great relief to you because you can at least step away. Those go on for 15 minutes, half hour or so and gives you a little time to pull some other things together, right?

Yeah, it does buy us a lot of time. I could prepare for my next guest hits, my expert hits. I can read up on something, I can use the bathroom or go print something that I need. But yeah, when you’re up there, you are in control. There’s no person in your ear telling you what to do. It’s all it’s all on you right now. You probably can’t see it, but I have a board in front of me. It’s called a tricaster. There’s a lot of buttons, there’s a lot of lights. And so, the muscle memory of that goes a long way, but it takes, you know, six to eight months to really master.

And then you can kind of look at it without even needing to, like, reference it down here. But I mean, I think the viewer, a lot of times, if they’re watching LiveNOW, you know, they’ll see me. They’ll see me look away, look down, not be looking at the camera because I have to focus on all of that.

I wonder about their level of expectations for how polished it could conceivably be given that you have to do so many things at once. It’s got to be a little bit less slick veneer on this than your standard newscast.

That’s definitely true. And I’m very transparent with the viewer about that. I will say that, you know, we’re waiting to get a reporter. I have to check in with them and do a mic check with them. They have just called in. I’ll put them on standby. I’ll throw up maybe a shot of the U.S. Capitol if we’re talking politics, and then I’ll bring them in. So, there are those moments where I think the viewer is a little bit forgiving. If you explain to them that you’re going to get this set up, we’re going to have this story next, that they’re going to wait for it. I do a lot of previewing of what’s to come this hour, who we’ll be speaking with and top headlines like that.

So, they do give you a lot of latitude given they understand you’re doing so much at once. And when it does go sideways, what does that look like? How sideways does it go?

There are backup options that we have, and we have experience where something technical happens and we have to just kind of think on the fly, correct it as quick as possible sometimes. You know, I go to commercial break just to give myself a breather, just to give ourselves [time] to come back from that. But yeah, it does happen. We have to think about that. And thankfully, everyone in the newsroom off the desk is also working to rectify and correct that as well. So that’s why we say, live, raw and unfiltered.

I mean, it happens. It happens frequently where, for example, you’re on something aerially and the Sky Fox chopper flies away or something goes to color bars and you just get off it very quickly. Say, if we get that shot back, we’ll bring you that story. We’ll monitor that. So doing this for two years has really taught me kind of how to get out of those situations. But it does happen.

You seem like a guy who’s pretty unrankleable, so you could probably roll with a lot. Now, I mentioned at the top that you were the main journalist on the desk for coverage of the recent midterms. And I’m told that LiveNOW carried 44 hours straight of live coverage of the midterms. How the hell was that even possible?

We stayed up all night. We have an Orlando kind of East Coast outpost as well. They took it over in the very early morning hours. We did this similarly with Hurricane Ian as well. That was really the first time we tried 24 hours straight. But yeah, it took a lot of planning. I mean, months of planning for the election and just having guests on every hour, reporter hits for our O&O stations and our Fox News Channel correspondents who are at these candidate watch parties, these election night rallies. So yeah, it took a lot of planning.

And then of course, there were so many candidates that we relied a lot on concession speeches, victory speeches and then, you know, polling experts, political strategists. A lot of the booking I did as well for experts. And then we have a managing editor, executive producers who also help with the booking. So, I say it is, you know, a one-man show, essentially, but there is a lot of assistance and a lot of help.

And some of that help now comes from Orlando. This started in Phoenix. Phoenix was carrying the torch alone for this for quite some time now. Orlando has come in the last year or so as a sort of the second desk here. How does that work? I mean, do you sort of pass the baton across the country at a start, like a shift change, or is it continuously going back and forth between Phoenix and Orlando?

Right now, there is just one kind of baton change, if you will. It happens in the early morning hours, I guess, West Coast time. We just kind of transition once say if there’s, you know, breaking news or something. Or they want to keep it a little later because they’re in something. It is flexible like that. There’s talk of maybe transitioning back and forth periodically throughout the day. Right now, it’s just one essentially cut off and then Phoenix takes over and we do the duration of the rest of the day.

And then that allows our Orlando digital journalists to call sources, do prerecorded interviews. A lot of that time is spent creating our own content, and we have the opportunity to sometimes take a station’s coverage for big breaking stories. I know, for example, like Darrell Brooks is being sentenced today. And so, if Fox 6 Milwaukee, for example, was in live coverage of that, we might take their coverage for just a little bit. And so, they kind of add to and circumvent some of our coverage that way if we maybe need a breather or we can kind of supplant our coverage that way.

There was talk awhile back of maybe L.A. as a third desk. Is that still in the cards?

I don’t believe so, no. But yes, there was there was talk of that a little bit early on. But right now, Phenix or Orlando, the two main hubs, really strong owned markets and stations. You know, we’re based in Fox 10 Phoenix’s studio headquarters and Orlando’s at Fox 35 Orlando.

You personally, you’re a young guy with a lot of energy. People might be looking at you as an example of how sustainable is this kind of approach to the work. I mean, MMJ is a lot of roles at once, but this is sort of metastasized beyond that. How sustainable is it for you? And what are the upshots for you personally of working in this way?

For me, I really enjoyed being in the field and I didn’t know something like this was available, so I wanted to try my hand at it. You know, people were like, you should try anchoring. You should see how you like it. And I’ve really fallen in love with the format. So, you know, if I ever in my future career had to go to something a little more traditional, it would be kind of hard to fit back into that box of maybe like a traditional newscast because this is so innovative and novel and different. Obviously, you wouldn’t have as much time as you would in a traditional broadcast. And I’m always talking about LiveNOW to potential candidates, to new hires, telling them, yeah, it is a lot of work, and you have to really diligently work at it.

You have to surrender yourself to the news. You can’t kind of leave here at 5:00 and put your blinders on because you have to get in that hot seat the next day knowing what happened in the interim, because you’ve got to talk about it. I thought and I think that is what’s really the most challenging part is doing your research, doing your preparation, so you can tell the viewer that you know the story even though you’re doing everything else.

So, you always have to be soaking in the news water. You can never dry off.

That’s so true. I think the viewer can tell if you were just thrown in on a story and you were just kind of getting caught up on it, I think in addition to all the tech aspect of it, you would be able to tell a little bit.

You said you’ve been doing this for about two years. What have you learned and what are you still learning about how to do this kind of anchoring and producing well?

I think when I came in, the production aspect of it was the biggest kind of baptism by fire. I am confident in my news judgment but translating that into how I’m going to work my way through these hours and tell the viewer about what all these stories are, I think that took a lot of learning and trial by error about what to do and what not to do.

But yeah, there are still things that I want to work on partially when I get up there in the chair each and every day about keeping it moving, keeping the pace moving. And that’s kind of what I’ve gathered. You know, if I can tell maybe that the viewers aren’t necessarily into something that I’m playing, you know, that’s 40 minutes long. I’ll get out of it, and I’ll say we’ll get back to that a little bit later if there are any more developments, and then I’ll keep it moving with another top story and another top story. Getting that viewer feedback has helped me a little bit do what I do up here and saying, all right, well, this maybe not be working as much as the last story we did.

The other thing that I haven’t mentioned, which I really like about it is, we are limited commentary and limited opinion. So, I get a lot of feedback from viewers essentially saying, oh, wow, LiveNOW is just straight news. You know, it’s not a lot of punditry or a lot of opinion. Obviously, we do bring people on talking about politics last Tuesday night, a week ago, about the election, about real Republicans, Democrats, who’s going to keep it? Who’s going to lose it? But that’s definitely not the focus. And I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from viewers that’s really what they like about it.

So never any panels?

No, we rarely have panels. I think the first panel we did was last week.

It’s one guest at a time, typically, or do you ever bring in a panoply of guests?

We tried it really for the first time last week on election night. We did bring in two guests on Zoom. Weldon Watson, our technical director, made kind of a three-box graphic. And so, we did try that, and it worked. It really worked. I kind of had to play referee a little bit, but that is definitely something I would like to do in the future. But as far as, you know, having six, seven people on panels ad nauseum talking about whatever, no, that’s not really our format.

The world has enough of that to begin with. Well, Andrew, I’m surprised you even had the time to spare for this conversation, so I thank you for it.

No, thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.

That’s our time for today. We will be back soon with all kinds of new, smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. Until then, you can watch past episodes of Talking TV at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. See you next time.

The post Best Of Talking TV: Fox’s LiveNOW And The Art Of DJing News appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Brian Lawlor, a veteran Scripps executive and new head of the division, explains the company’s plan to lure sports franchises with the prospect of 100% local reach via broadcast versus the dwindling audience RSNs face with cord cutting and audience belt-tightening.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Last month, the E.W. Scripps Company announced it’s launching a new sports division. The aim is that Scripps will look to leverage its local market depth and national broadcast reach for partnerships with sports leagues, conferences and teams.

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, that conversation is with Brian Lawlor, a veteran Scripps executive who’s now president of the new Scripps Sports division. We’ll be discussing just what this is going to look like and the thinking behind it. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Brian Lawlor, to Talking TV.

Brian Lawlor: Michael, good to see you. Happy holidays.

Happy holidays to you, Brian. I must confess that after reading several stories about the launch of this division, I’m still unclear as to what it’s going to look like for viewers. So, what exactly are you planning to do here? Can you spell out the plan?

Yeah, I think it’s pretty simple. I think, you know, Scripps, is, you know, a long-time broadcaster with a pretty significant portfolio on the local side. We’re on 61 stations in 41 markets. On the network side, we have eight or nine national networks, the largest of which is Ion. And we believe that linear television is the most significant distribution platform for sports, and sports is the most powerful driver of linear viewing. Ninety-five of the top 100 shows on television this year were live sporting events. We see the decline of sports viewing as a result of being on the regional sports networks. And as a result of that, we think bringing sports rights back to linear television broadcast over the air is sort of a savior to teams and leagues.

And so, we’ve been talking to teams and leagues pretty regularly now over the last year. And as many of their rights begin to come up, they’re all assessing their current situation. And, you know, we see an opportunity and a moment in time right now to plant the flag and say, you know, let’s bring some of these sports rights back where 100% of the households in a market can see local sports teams.

So, we’re going to become pretty aggressive in trying to acquire sports rights, either in local markets where we can partner with an NBA team, a major league baseball team, the NHL team, which right now is limited by its reach on the regional sports networks, or we have the national platform of Ion, and we acquired that during the pandemic. It’s the fifth largest broadcast network in America behind ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. Clearly, all of them have significant investment in sports. And, you know, we have the same reach as they do and quite frankly, a unique proposition to localize. And so, I think you’ll see us on a league level focused on trying to acquire rights for Ion and on a local level trying to acquire sports rights for our broadcast stations.

OK, so Ion — let’s just look at that part of it then for a second. Obviously, it’s a very important part of the strategy. So, you’re not going to rebrand these stations as Scripps Sports on air.

We are not.

Just looking to get more sports on the Ion stations across the country.

Yeah, think of like a TBS or a TNT where there’s entertainment or procedural genres, but they also have some live sports, marquee sports on certain nights or on certain times of the year. We think of Ion as similar to that.

What’s the timeline for this? I know you’ve been working on this for, I think, the better part of the last year, correct?

Ever since we acquired Ion during the pandemic, we’ve done sort of a portfolio review of everything we have inside of our company, and we have this unique new massive asset in Ion. And, you know, we’ve done some strategic analysis of how do we think we can grow this and increase its reach and obviously its profitability. One of the areas that we look at are sports.

And so, we have begun having some conversations with leagues about the unique asset of an over the air broadcast network. And, you know, that’s what really makes Ion unique is while it is a national network and it has national distribution on cable and satellite, it’s actually different than many others in that it’s actually local licenses and local towers in every market. We have a 100% reach, 96% reach of the U.S. with Ion fully distributed on cable, on satellite, it’s on FAST and then it’s over the air.

What makes Ion unique and very different than the networks is we own the majority of affiliates and control all of the programing. And so right now, you know, all the programing, all the commercials, everything looks the same across the country. But because of the uniqueness of having local towers and licenses in every market, we can localize Ion, which means, you know, if we were to acquire sports rights for a given league and we said to that league, hey, you know, why don’t you align every Saturday night, we’ll do a Saturday night game of the week on Ion.

And if you could have all your teams playing at 7:30, we could literally localize every market with their home team games. I’m based here in Cincinnati, right, so Cincinnati had a professional team and whatever league it was, every week we could feed them the Cincinnati game, and then Nashville could always get a Nashville game and Kansas City could always get the Kansas City game. And then for places that didn’t have local teams, we could regionalize games or even have a national game.

But obviously you could roll all that up, sell it together, cume it and have a big national audience with sponsors targeted for the market. So, we think we have a really unique asset there. You know, ESPN can’t do what we just described. If they have a game, the entire country sees the same game. And so, the ability for us to have a relationship with a league but be able to localize that in every market really, I think is a unique proposition.

Let’s talk about the conversations that you’re having with the leagues. Are we just talking about the big professional leagues or how much will college play into this potentially?

You know I think college will play into it. With Ion, we’re not going to turn it into a sports network. We know what it is. And so, you know, I think there’ll be two or three franchises that make sense for it. We’ll be very selective about what makes sense and understanding that it’s a national network. Many of the colleges or conferences are more local or regionalized. So, I think we’ll look at opportunities, but we recognize that we do have a strong national network with the ability to localize it. And I think we’ll be really targeted with what are the right franchises for air.

What about more niche sports? I mean, might we see pickleball on Scripps Sports?

I think time will tell. Pickleball is an interesting one because of its growing popularity. But don’t just think that we’re going to be all about niche. When you have a big national network like we do, I expect that we’ll be in conversations with, I don’t know about the NFL, and of course their deals now run out 11 years, but I think some of the other significant leagues. I think we can be a pretty material solution for them.

Are you also planning concurrently to develop some centralized programing? I mean, might we see some things in the vein of ESPN Sportscenter, for instance?

I think down the road, that could be something we consider, Michael. I think first and foremost, what we’re interested in is using the immense reach that we have to really, you know, distribute a sports league or team, you know, across the country or fully through a market. And I think that’s our top priority. And then as we acquire rights and begin to distribute those, you know, I think we’d figure out what complementary programing would make sense alongside that.

As you know, Sinclair has had a rocky road with its RSNs, so did that sort of give you any pause or maybe, conversely, encouragement to make this tactical shift to go in this direction?

Yeah, look, I think that’s our opportunity. Their business model is cable and satellite distribution. And so, when many of the current teams that have deals with them signed their last contract five, seven, eight years ago in many markets they might have had 70% or 80% distribution through cable and satellite. The reality is in most markets today, that number is less than 50%.

And so, I sit here in Cincinnati. Fox Sports Ohio in Cincinnati is distributed to 46% of the households in Cincinnati. That means that for the Cincinnati Reds, more than half of their potential customers can’t see any of their games. That’s not a good business model if you’re a baseball team trying to build audience, build fan loyalty, sell the excitement of young players.

There are leagues and teams around the country that cable and satellite and the distribution of the regional sports networks and their local market is 30%. And so, again, you know, it’s really hard to get people excited about your team if 70% of your audience where your team is based can’t even see your games. There’s no searchability. You’re not flipping channels and you suddenly stumble on to them.

You know, there’s very little visibility for showcasing players and think about all the businesses. If your sponsors and partners can only showcase to 30% of the people, it’s going to have an impact on ticket sales, suite sales, merchandise, sports betting. All of those subcategories benefit from a team bringing their rights to broadcast over the air where they can reach 100% of the audience.

Well, how are there conversations that you’re having with the leagues and the teams going so far? They’re showing receptivity to this?

On a local level where the teams have their relationships with the RSNs, I think they’re very concerned about the future. And, you know, as teams in the next year or two years, their rights start to come up, they see what has happened over the last several years. They see the projections for what’s going to happen to cable or satellite in the next couple of years. And I think the conversations we’re having is they’re very concerned about that being their primary distribution platform.

And I would say the leagues are as well, and at the highest levels. We talked to some of these leagues, you know, being exclusively distributed on cable and satellite is limiting the visibility of those leagues. And they’re very concerned about what’s happening in the local levels where their teams are only viewed by 30 or 40% of all the households in a market.

Well, the Scripps faith in OTA is bottomless. Brian, I know that you’re a very big sports fan and a fellow Islanders fan, I must say. And so, this must be something of a dream job for you personally, isn’t it?

Yeah. Look, this was not how I thought I was going to end my career. As you know, Michael, I had been with Scripps almost 30 years. I’ve been running the local TV division for 14 years. As we wind down 2022, when I took over running the division, we had 10 stations in nine markets, and as I hand off 61 stations in 41 markets, I’m incredibly passionate about the power of local broadcasting. I’m proud of the local journalism we do, the way we serve communities.

And so, I guess I thought I would take that to the end. But I also recognize there’s a unique moment in time right now with sports. And as the company at the highest level was reviewing its portfolio and taking a look at its assets and identifying Ion as an opportunity.

On the local side, we acquire and negotiate a lot of local sports rights. Obviously, we have a lot of sports from ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox and our affiliates. But we also negotiate rights for Monday Night Football with Disney, with Amazon. We were able to do a big deal with Amazon for the local markets on Thursday nights there.

This year we were able to acquire the Big Sky Conference, which is a huge conference out West for us. We’ve got a big footprint in Montana and Idaho, and we were able to take that away from the regional sports network there. And so, you know, and then, you know, my prior history, I was the chairman of the NBC affiliate board at one point my career, the president of the ABC affiliate board.

And so, you know, I worked with the networks at the highest level as they were negotiating Olympic rights and NFL rights. And when Jimmy Pitaro became the president of ESPN a couple of weeks later, I was in there talking to him about starting to bring more rights back to ABC, which at that point there weren’t a ton. And then we were able to get the NFL draft over and we moved the ESPYs over to ABC and then we got more stars out of Saturday night’s NBA and now we’ve got a bunch of NFL games and now they’re in the rotation for the Super Bowl.

So, I’ve spent a lot of time talking sports and trying to help influence sports. And so, as this opportunity presented itself, it just sort of came together. It wasn’t something I ever pitched, but there came a point where I so actively involved in the development of our strategy and sharing that strategy with the board that [Scripps CEO] Adam [Symson] said, Look, we’re going to go all in on this. It seems like you’re the right guy to lead this. And I spent a couple weeks thinking about that and said, you know, I’m passionate about over-the-air broadcast and the power of reach and what we can do with it. And sports would be sort of fun. And I still get to do it with a company I love and I’m proud to work for. So, this is going to be fun.

Just make sure you get a good bit of hockey into that mix.

Absolutely.

All right. Well, Brian Lawlor, you’ve got a lot of work cut out for you. We will be following developments with at Scripps Sports with great interest. Thanks for talking to me today.

Good to see you, Michael. Thanks.

Thank you. Remember a new Talking TV episode comes out most Fridays. You can watch past episodes on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.

The post Best Of Talking TV: Scripps Sports Looks To Edge Out RSNs For Rights appeared first on TV News Check.

Alyson Fouse, the show’s creator and showrunner, takes heart from what its debut largely signifies — that people will still discover a new show through the serendipity of just flipping around, in this case on over-the-air TV.

In this Talking TV conversation, Fouse discusses the show’s premise of three 50-something Black women discovering what life has next in store for them, the ongoing value of classic sitcom conventions for audiences and her aspirations for the show.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Act Your Age, a new show on diginet Bounce, debuted on March 4 as the most-watched series launch in that network’s history. The half-hour comedy features Kym Whitley, Tisha Campbell and Yvette Nicole Brown as a trio of successful Washington, D.C. area women who are in their fifties and each at a personal crossroads. Alyson Fouse is the creator, showrunner and producer of the 16-episode series, which runs Saturdays at 8 p.m. on Bounce.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and today Alyson Fouse joins me to discuss why Act Your Age had such a strong early start and the viability of diginets like Bounce for original series. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Alyson Fouse, to Talking TV.

Alyson Fouse: Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.

And congratulations on your show.

Thank you again. I’m really excited about it.

Well, Alyson, you’ve previously worked on Big Shot, which is, I believe, on Disney+, Everybody Hates Chris and The Wanda Sykes Show. But this is your first experience, as I understand it, as a showrunner. Is that right?

Well, I had some experience as a showrunner, but it wasn’t a show I created. It was for Born Again Virgin, which was created by my co-EP now, Renata Shepherd. I like to call her my work wife. We’ve been through the trenches together.

How did Act Your Age originate?

Well, it’s been living with me for a while, but I’ll say the time came when Brad Gardner from MGM, I had a meeting with him, and told me that Bounce and Scripps had an idea for a show, and they’d like to talk to me about it. And then we had a call with David Hudson from Bounce and Scripps. And they told me that they wanted a show with women who were my age, in their 50s, well-off in this certain area. And that’s basically all they gave me. And I just took that and ran. You know, it’s something I can really relate to, especially as far as being a woman of a certain age.

I’ve read that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the show Golden Girls for Black women. Is that what you had in mind?

You know, I love classic sitcoms, and Golden Girls is one of my favorites. And the idea that I hadn’t seen Black women like this, of this age, I mean, of course, you take from the greats. You steal from the greats as far as their chemistry and the rhythm and everything, it is just classic funny. If they’re comparing it to Golden Girls, I think that’s a really good compliment.

I’d take it. A lot of new shows now are very edgy and conceptual, including comedies. This show is very traditional. It sort of harkens back … I definitely had a feel of sitcoms from the ’70s or even the ’80s. What about those kinds of conventions appealed to you when you were putting the show together?

Well, you know, the idea of people sitting in front of the TV with the family while watching shows and laughing, and even the next generation who watch these kind of shows as reruns later, you know, it’s that good feeling of these are people I can return to every week and just feel good about it. You know, when I was a kid, it was Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, and then as I got older, was all of Norman Lear’s stuff. And I like the idea of revisiting anything that feels like a family, whether you’re with one or not. I think people love to laugh. They love a happy ending. They love to feel good. And that’s not to say that we won’t cover certain issues and we keep the show current, but the main feeling we want is that people have a good time. Just a little joy in your life for 22 minutes.

I was going to ask you about your influences. You said Norman Lear and Happy Days. Anything else kind of formative for you in the sitcom world going into this?

Well, my first sitcom was My Wife and Kids, and Don Rio was the showrunner. And it was funny, before I was even in the business, I loved everything he did. So, I was sort of a fan also of those sort of darker comedies, too. But just I love anybody who’s who has good rhythm and storytelling. You know, I enjoy Abbott Elementary now. I enjoyed Modern Family when it was on, you know, they had a great way of keeping everyone active. And I just love good story and characters.

As I mentioned, you had this strong performing show right out of the box for Bounce. What do you think has been the draw for viewers so far? Is there something just sort of comfortable about the sitcom that draws them in?

Yeah, because there aren’t big surprises in sitcoms. It really comes down to the stories and the characters. But I think we presented a show that not only looks good, our cast is phenomenal and familiar, and they’re women you loved and love to see now, you know, returning to them. Tisha Campbell, I mean, she’s done so much work and her fan base is huge as well as Kym Whitley and Yvette Nicole Brown, whose fan base is very broad. So, the fact that we could put them all together and lot of the feedback has been, you know, I love seeing these women again. I love seeing them together. You know, and the family aspect of it, the friendship.

Did the casting come together very quickly?

No, we were writing the show before we knew who would star in it. But then when they asked me who I want it, I was like, there’s a list in my head of women I’ve always wanted to work with. You know, to me, Yvette was always Angela. I had to have her as Angela, and I knew that Tisha would bring so much more to Keisha than how she was written on page or how people perceived her on the page, what I wanted her to be. And then with Kym, we had another actor who fell out that the network was really excited about, but unfortunately, we couldn’t make it work. And so, I was like, Kym is perfect for that. And I love that they all came together and the fact that they’re real friends.

You have to have that that off-screen chemistry, I suppose, as well to have it on screen. As I mentioned at the top, this is airing Saturday nights on Bounce. Is it available on streaming as well?

Well, Bounce does have a Brown Sugar app that you can watch the reruns the next day and you can watch all the episodes, as a matter of fact. That’s as far as I know. I’m encouraging people to record it. And I guess it would also depend on what your cable services are, Dish Network or whatever all that stuff is. But it’s free on the airwaves with an HD antenna.

As most of the viewers are finding you, there’s that sort of serendipity, they’re flipping around and there it is, let me leave this on.

Well, you know, it’s funny because a lot of people had Bounce but didn’t know it. You know, they were watching it and weren’t aware that it was Bounce because they show a lot of classic movies and things like that. So yeah, I tell people, go ask your grandmother or mother, they’re probably already watching it.

Right. Well, the thing is that most people don’t even know what a diginet is. I mean, that’s sort of an industry term. When we think about diginets, often it’s sort of reruns of classic shows, you know, thematically organized by different genres. So, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was because your show’s an original, and there are originals on other diginets, too, but it’s not been loaded with originals. I wonder, with so many people having to cut the cord to cable doing that and streaming getting also very expensive to pay for in an a la carte kind of way, do you think that gives an advantage to being on a network like Bounce and to a show like yours? There might be more discoverability of it now than even just a year or two ago?

Oh, absolutely. Because I think we’re at a point where if you make a good show, people will find it. And the bonus of this is that it’s free works in our favor. And I love the idea of people not only discovering us but discovering the whole Bounce network as just another alternative for something to watch. Because, you know, and not to pooh-pooh the streamers and everything, but those costs start to add up. You know, if you’re paying for different networks, Bounce and being free is really a bonus for us. I’m excited about it.

Once we got a good show and a good cast, I didn’t care where they showed it. You know, Bounce is great, and they’ve been fantastic with us. But it was just I like the idea of people discovering our show, you know, and that that means they made an effort to go watch it. So, I think this is great.

What’s your hope for the show, Alyson? What are your ambitions ultimately for it?

To open this world up even more to get to know these women and that at their age, life isn’t over. You know, when you’re 20 and you think about somebody in their 50s, you think, ancient. And honestly, we’re still learning. Life is still going. So, I want to open up these characters, show people, get them familiar with this kind of space.

You know, again, like I said, we don’t have a cast on TV that I’m aware of that looks like this, that’s enjoying life. And it’s comedic. And we have our two younger characters, Mariah Robinson and Nathan Anderson. And as their world opens up, it gives us a whole new universe to play with. I just love the fact it let these people join me in the shower every day, because that’s where I get all my thoughts. You know, I get all these ideas. I could do this forever. You know, I could easily see this show going seven seasons. But I can also see the spin-off of it again from that Norman Lear generation where we watch. You set up a whole universe of families and different backgrounds and ever everything, and I’m excited about it.

OK, well, “these people are with me every day in the shower,” I think has risen to the headline of this. Well, thank you so much, Alyson Fouse, for joining me today to discuss your new show, Act Your Age. I really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching and listening to this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Bounce’s ‘Act Your Age’ Sets A Debut Record appeared first on TV News Check.

If Blake Sabatinelli has his way, it’s the TV, though he knows it will take something other than a muted broadcast to hold your eyes on it.

Sabatinelli is the newly made CEO of Atmosphere TV, a company that produces a network of over 50 FAST channels designed to run with the sound off and grab your attention in an ambient fashion. Atmosphere recalibrates news, sports and myriad other content types into sound-free iterations, monetizing exclusively with ads that do the same thing.

In this Talking TV conversation, Sabatinelli explains what makes for good ambient TV, how his business model works and how the company justifies its $1 billion valuation in a current funding round.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Atmosphere TV is an interesting startup in the world of streaming TV. It’s a streaming service that functions as a kind of ambient TV, something you might see in the background, in a bar or restaurant at the game’s not on, for instance. In all, it has over 60 original and partner channels.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Blake Sabatinelli, the newly minted CEO of Atmosphere TV. Atmosphere is in the midst of a $65 million series D funding round, and we’ll talk about that, its business model and how the service works, along with what makes for good background TV. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Blake Sabatinelli, to Talking TV.

Blake Sabatinelli: Thanks for having me, Michael.

It’s good to see you again.

Likewise.

Blake, why does Atmosphere TV exist? Why can’t a business just flip on a local station and turn off the sound, if background TV ambiance is all that they’re looking for?

If you’ve ever been to a bar or restaurant, doctor’s office or anywhere else that’s doing exactly what you’re saying, you’ve probably noticed the same thing that our founders noticed in 2016: that it’s a terrible, terrible viewing experience because the content that they’re delivering or a cable provider to an establishment is meant for someone sitting on their couch with the volume on. So, if you’re sitting, you know, at your favorite bar having a beer and you’re watching a television that’s 20 feet away and it’s on, in many instances, you get something like Judge Judy on mute with captions. And that’s probably the least engaging content experience of all time.

So, our founders, as they were sitting at a bar in 2016 and saw Judge Judy on mute, Stephen Smith on mute and CNN on mute, they said, we have to be able to do something better. And that’s how Atmosphere was born, to create content that’s fun and engaging to watch with your eyes instead of relying on the crutch of your ear. So, it’s a little bit different than our traditional TV model, but we’re really just here trying to make television that’s exciting for people no matter where they are.

So, what distinguishes good ambient background television and what are its hallmarks?

The thing that’s actually really fun about our business is we’ve taken the best of what you have on here. We’ve curated everything that you already do enjoy in a sound-off capacity, and we’ve brought that to the big screen instead of relying on, you know, your traditional talk tracks or local news or local programing that has, you know, a heavy audio component.

We’re taking things that are big and bold and bright and exciting. So, people jumping out of airplanes, people doing amazing tricks, you know, amazing and funny videos that you’re probably watching on TikTok or YouTube or Instagram already and reprograming those with our team of 75 people to get people to look up from their phones and look away from this endless, you know, information trap that people have all day long so that the programing that we create is it’s highly visual, highly impactful. It has absolutely no need for sound. So, it’s a little different. That’s a little bit distinct, but we think it works really well.

But it does have sound. You have a sound option, right?

We do have a sound option, but it’s really just a backing track. What we’re really doing is creating content that’s 100% focused on what you can consume with your eyes, instead of with your ears and listening.

So, this really is about getting people to put the phone down, right? Because that’s what we do in situations where if we’re waiting for a friend at the bar, for instance, or we’re in a doctor’s waiting room, we do have that phone in our hands most of the time, don’t we?

One hundred percent, and it really is about creating that communal experience. And I can’t tell you how many times I walk into an establishment that has Atmosphere and I see exactly what I want to see. Someone tapping their body on the shoulder, pointing up at the screen groups and families, looking up at the television together, sharing a fun, communal experience instead of doing what my 14-year-old son would prefer to do — look down and watch TikTok all day long.

All right, so you have more than 60 different FAST channels as part of the service. What are some of those channels? What sort of categories and content types are we seeing?

You’ll find interesting and humorous channels like Chive TV, which is the foundation of our business, how we got started. Superhuman TV, people doing amazing things. I saw people jumping out of airplanes earlier a lot out there. We also have news and information channels. So, when I came on board two years ago, my first task was to spin up a channel called Atmosphere News, which is a news programing channel, something that’s a little bit different flipped on its head from the traditional model and Atmosphere Sports.

Atmosphere Sports is our sound-off SportsCenter because I was saying earlier, you have Stephen Smith screaming at a cloud. He’s on mute. We really wanted to get back to the basics and bring programing that was fun and exciting. So, it’s the best shots, the best highlights, scores, betting lines all brought into that sound-off capacity and delivering to people in real time.

Let me just jump into one of those — the news example, for instance. How do you do soundless news without barraging people with text?

There is a lot of text. I’m not going to tell you there’s not a lot of text. But one thing that we did start off with was hire someone who really understood how to tell stories in that nontraditional text format. We brought in a gentleman named Micah Grimes. He was an executive overseeing all social at NBC News and asked him, how would you create a news channel all over again, focusing significantly on automation, but the output has to be done with no sound. So, we can’t have the crutch of someone reading a V.O. over some B-roll. We have to make sure people understand the story in 45 seconds or less. And it can only be done with video and text. So, there’s definitely a text component to it, but a lot of visuals, a lot of graphics and a lot of strong use of video.

You really want to distill that text down to like a haiku, absolute minimal distillation, right?

That’s right. We want to be able to have an audience member stop, look at the screen and from 30 feet away, be able to understand what’s happened, why it happened and what they’re, you know, what the outcomes are, what the impact of the story is going to be. And that really, really short, distilled time frame. So, yeah, it’s all about ultra-dense, ultra-condensed news.

How does a business sign on to this? If you’re a restaurant, a bar, an office, what do you do?

You can go to Atmosphere.TV or you’re probably going to hear from one of our sales associate members. We have a large outbound sales team here based in Austin, one in Chicago, one in L.A., one in New York as well. And they’re dialing and getting ahold of business owners and explaining the value of this free service, why it matters, how it can help increase their net promoter score.

So, the business, if you’re a bar restaurant, how can get someone to stay longer, order another drink, increase that check size, and then we ship those devices out. We have a warehouse facility here about 26,000 square feet, and we get those devices sent out second day. So, you can always have that inbound traffic. But we have a huge sales team and that’s how we drive a lot of the now 52,000 sign ups and businesses that we have on board with us.

And how do those businesses break down? Is it mostly bars and restaurants or what’s represented there?

It’s about 50% bars and restaurants. And then the rest of it is kind of a smorgasbord of categories, but we see significant penetration in gyms and in aftermarket auto facilities. So, you think you know your Jiffy Lube, where people have that captive wait time, in doctors’ offices and bowling alleys. Honestly, if it’s a place that you can think of that has a television, we most likely have several hundred screens in those locations. And that growth has really been all driven by the fact that it’s now cheaper to hang a TV on the walls than a piece of art. So, you know, every place you walk into today has a TV. We want to make sure that Atmosphere content is playing there.

That depends on the art, Blake. It depends on the art.

About any good art, any good art these days.

Your most recent press release says that this company has $1 billion valuation. Now, I’ve got to be honest with you, that really sort of smacks of tech company overconfidence there. Why do you think the company has that sort of value?

Because we’re a multitude of different things, Michael. We’re a tech company. Sure. And we have probably some of the best tech on the market. We’re also an infrastructure business. I mean, we own the devices, we own the output, we own the delivery. So, in the 52,000 locations that we do have, we control what happens there. And our investors definitely see the value in that.

We’re also a media company. You know, you said we have over 60 channels, either we power or are powered by our partners and that reaches more than 100 million people a month. So, if you look at the power of our aggregate network and the size of our audience, especially audiences between 18 and 49, now we’re up there in size and scale with networks like Snapchat, TikTok, who has, you know, 150 million users here domestically. It’s a big audience. It’s a big network.

We own the infrastructure, we’re a distributed platform. And so, we’ve been able to command a pretty significant valuation and did that in the midst of a very challenging environment for fundraising. So, it’s a huge valuation, big growth, but we did it at a time when it’s hard to raise money and we think we can justify the valuation.

I think you just said 100 million reach. How do you come to that figure? How do you count that?

Yeah, so we work with a company called the People Platform, and the People Platform was just acquired by a company called Stag World, but People Platform is actually composed of the former Nielsen out-of-home team. So, Nielsen used to have an out-of-home measurement platform and when they sunsetted that, a large majority of these people went over to this company, Epicenter.

And what they do for us is create a ratings book that looks very similar to what you would see from a Nielsen diary. So, we geofence every single one of our locations and then we retarget those audience members who are in a location and ask them a series of questions answered. You know, where were they sitting, how many people were in the way? Did they notice our screens? You know, what was the sentiment around the screens?

And we use that in an extrapolation of foot traffic data from that third-party provider to create our ratings book and then report that ratings data and the Nielsen media impacts so that our advertising partners can best understand the impact of our advertising, the impact of using our platform. And if they wanted to shift 5% of our budget, what that additional reach is going to be.

Speaking of geofencing and localization, are you moving towards having regional or city-based versions of channels into this ecosystem?

It’s definitely on the roadmap. It’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time. I think you’ll see it from us within the next 24 months. But first and foremost, we really believe in trying to get that broad penetration and growth across the country and then start to circle back around on ensuring that we have perfect product market fit in every single major metro. So, it’s on the roadmap as we’ve built, as we brought all of our delivery infrastructure in-house, it’s become closer and closer to being a reality. I would expect to hear something about it shortly.

And on that local site, would you have local partners like a TV news station in a market, for instance? Where would that content originate from?

If the local TV partners could actually understand the format. One of the biggest challenges that we’ve had is we’ve talked to content partners over the past couple of years is they simply don’t understand the concept of delivering content with no audio, especially in local television, which is so driven by, you know, by audio and B-roll, How can we create something that’s compelling, that’s visually driven, that doesn’t require audio and do it on a limited budget? It’s going to be a challenge. So, I would expect early channels from us are probably going to be powered by our own journalists, and that will maybe expand a little bit further out.

With your outside partners, is the content that they’re creating for you bespoke for Atmosphere or is that repurposed from some other original iteration?

Almost all of its bespoke for us. We do work with partners. I trust the media brands who have channels like Fail Army, which is on our platform now, but that content already fits well within the format that we operate in. So, every piece of content, every channel that we look at is really focused on that eye, not ear, and we’re really always making the judgment of whether or not this is going to work for us.

So other channels, like we just launched a channel with the Guinness Book of World Records, it’s actually their first channel ever, that’s completely bespoke for our platform. And it’s absolutely incredible.

This is monetized as 100% by ad revenue or are the businesses paying something for the equipment?

It’s 100% ad supported. Our goal is to give people a platform that’s both compelling for the viewers and exciting for the people who are sitting in their location, but also a valuable tool for the business owner. So, that means free digital signage, which digital signage, if you know anything about that business, is usually very fast driven business and comes with high fees. We give away that for free. Our ad managers, our ad creators, all of the different tools that we have in our tool kit, we give it all away for free because our sales team is doing a great job of monetizing on the other side.

Are the ads sold programmatically, direct sold or is it a combination?

It’s a mixture of both and probably a typical mixture to what you would see in any other TV sector. So, no significant amount of work on the direct IO side of the business, but also a lot of programmatic deals, a lot of P&Ps and PG deals and then some open exchange as well.

This is basically it’s 100% streaming-based advertising right now. The CPMs there are not great, obviously, relative to television news, local and local TV news. But have you figured something out there? If a company got this kind of valuation, you’re doing this fundraising, I mean, streaming is not working out as a huge revenue-driver for media companies right now. What different for you?

Scale. Scale is what really matters. So, if you look at the streaming ecosystem today and Netflix, for instance, today came out and said they have one million ad-supported subscribers, that’s not going to make up a big difference in the erosion of linear TV ratings. And even the biggest platforms in the free, ad-supported space are 30 to 50 million unique viewers.

We’re at 100 million unique viewers today. We do see strong CPMs. They are not as strong as traditional linear broadcast, but what we do deliver is scale. And if you’re a TV buyer today and you want to reach a large swath of the U.S. population with television advertising, you’re either going to have to piece together 70 different platforms to get 50% of the audience that you used to or you can come buy from a platform like ours that reaches, I believe, 44% of 18-to-34 year-olds in the entire country. So, I think that’s a big differentiator for us and a key driver for why we’re seeing success.

But the challenge for the advertisers is the same challenge that the content creators have, which is soundless, and so is that whole new creative each time that they have to bring to bear?

We keep our creative team very busy. There is a significant, you know, bespoke, creative angle that we have to deal with. But there’s also a kind of creative that exists that works really well in our environment. So, if you’re an advertiser and you come to our platform and your ad works well in our format, or if you’ve worked in a format that doesn’t require sound like traditional out of home, we can use that creative. Or if you’re an advertiser, that doesn’t have something like that, the whole host of creative is sitting out in front of my office right now. We’ll make you something spectacular.

And do they often start with elements, preexisting elements, from other ads, or are they beginning whole cloth with a new ad for the platform?

In most instances, it’s taking assets and elements that are from other ads and then bringing them to a format, whether it’s an L bar format that we operate or a trivia format or something like that and bringing an ad and creating something new for the platform.

So, you’re not working with traditional ad servers here? You’ve got your own entirely proprietary system?

We do have our own mediation layer because we have to talk between two different ecosystems that connect the TV ecosystem that we sit in and the digital out-of-home ecosystem that we also sit in. And so, we’ve built a mediation layer to handle all that. And then on either side of that mediation layer, we work with an ad server and another ad server in Springserve to help deliver the demand that we have and work and facilitate the sales with all of our partners.

You and I have talked many times in the past about ad technology, and I’ve always kind of gotten the temperature on how things are developing with you in terms of progress because it’s such a frustrating user experience so often to be on the receiving end of ad tech and streaming. What’s your general assessment right now about how ad tech is performing? Is it significant leaps and bounds in the last year or so that that are demonstrable finally?

I believe so. So, you know, we partner with Springserve because of their ability to do creative separation, deduplication. And if you’re a publisher and you actually want to have a good user experience, the tools are available now, but you have to want to make that experience available and you have to there’s a revenue impact associated with it. And I think a lot of what you’re seeing is publishers not taking that revenue impact, especially as we’re in a challenged environment and instead taking the money off the table and making that UX significantly more challenging.

You mentioned localization sometime maybe in the next 12 or so months, seeing some local iterations of this. What else is in the roadmap for Atmosphere?

Just continued growth for us. I mean, our goal is to reach two thirds of the U.S. population here within the next 12 to 18 months, and you’re going to see continued product innovation from us, everything from, you know, interactive, you know, multi-platform trivia all the way through. Just continuing our tech innovations and, you know, enhancements in performance. We’ll also be deploying a piece of custom hardware to the market, which will give us more capabilities as well. So, excited to talk about that when we start rolling that out as well.

1. Well, any clue about what that hardware might be?

It’s going to be a custom piece of Android hardware that will now give us significantly more insights and control in the environments that we operate in. So, you know, everything from better understanding, you know, who is in a location or how many people are in a location all the way through, you know, more granular TV control.

All right. Well, I have seen it myself in a bar or two in the past, so I can certainly attest anecdotally to the fact that it is disseminating out there. Well, Blake, it’s good talking with you. Always good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming today. I appreciate it.

Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV on TV NewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. And either way, you better leave the sound on because we do not pass muster for atmospheric TV. Thanks, and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Ambient TV Comes To FAST appeared first on TV News Check.

The show, recently renewed through 2024, marks its 50^th anniversary on March 26 and still commands more than 3.6 million daily viewers.

Peter Bergman has been on the show since 1989 as one of its central characters, entrepreneur Jack Abbott. Susan Walters, who plays Abbott’s fiancée and reformed villain Diane Jenkins, had her first stint on the show in 2001 and returned full-time to the cast last year. The two have navigated their way through loves, divorces, court cases, faked deaths, doppelgangers and all the other hurdles that the soap universe is apt to throw at its characters.

In this Talking TV conversation, they reflect on how the show has changed in their respective tenures, the qualities that keep its most ardent viewers returning for their daily fix of Genoa City drama and the rigor of soap’s production schedule. They also share their optimism for Y&R’s continued longevity.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The Young and the Restless celebrates its 50th broadcast anniversary on March 26. It has been the highest-rated daytime drama on television for the past 35 years and gets about 3.67 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen. It has won 11 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama series along the way.

Peter Bergman and Susan Walters are two actors with long running connections to the show. Bergman joined in 1989 as entrepreneur Jack Abbott. Walters came on board as Diane Jenkins, initially from 2001 to 2004, came back for a couple of episodes in 2010 and returned once more as a regular cast member and is now, as I understand it, a reformed baddie. Their two characters are, in the way of soap operas, an on again, off again couple who are, as I’ve learned from recent episodes, about to tie the knot.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with Bergman and Walters about The Young and the Restless, its longevity, its evolution and its future. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Peter Bergman and Susan Walters, to Talking TV.

Peter Bergman: Thank you, Mike.

Susan Walters: Thanks for having us.

Well, first of all, congratulations on 50 years of The Young and the Restless. That’s remarkable.

Peter Bergman: It’s amazing, isn’t it?

It is. I mean, 50 years makes it as much of an institution as it is a show. And it’s one of only four surviving soaps, which makes the anniversary all the more remarkable. What has made The Young and the Restless so enduring?

Susan Walters: Him!

Peter Bergman: No.

Susan Walters: He’s been on a long time.

Peter Bergman: You know, we wondered the same thing, but I’ll throw out a couple of theories. I think when you tune in to Y&R, unlike many shows with a revolving cast of characters, you pretty much know who you’re going to see. You can pretty well be guaranteed to see, you know, six of your principal actors, many of whom have been here for more than 30 years. So, these are characters you grew up with, you grew up around. And I think that’s the draw. I think we’ve all grown up together in everyone’s living room.

Susan Walters: And I think along that same vein is that as the maybe the core audience has gotten older, the stories for the actors that have grown up on the show and have aged on the show have stayed relevant. So, it’s not a new cast of characters because, you know, people our age in real life have lives, you know, and have a lot going on. And the show continues to show that.

Perhaps their lives are not as interesting as yours.

Susan Walters: Thank God. Thank God.

I think you’re right about that. I read at one point in the late ’60s, early ’70s, there were 19 soaps in the market.

Peter Bergman: When this show started in ’73, there were 13 other network soaps.

Wow.

Peter Bergman: Yeah. Just to give it context, I love sharing a couple of factoids that I found out: Richard Nixon was president. There were 13 other soap operas. And the big ratings challenge that first summer for The Young and the Restless was competing with the Watergate trials.

Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. So, Peter, you’re technically in your fourth decade on this show,

Paul Bergman: Am technically in in the middle of my third decade.

OK, sorry.

Peter Bergman: My third decade on the show and my fourth decade in daytime television. So, yeah.

In all that time, how has the show itself evolved in that tenure? 

Peter Bergman: There’s lots of changes. We used to have just hand-over-fist money to build any set we wanted to, as big as we wanted to. They loved the scale and everything. And that has changed. We have more sets up. They are smaller. We can get more story told with more sets. So, that that has been an evolution. There used to be a town trollop. There used to be a guy who was a little too easy with the ladies. Post AIDS, that’s almost offensive. So, we’re a little more careful with people who sleep around. What else? Those are two of the changes I’ve seen. The writing is very much the same. You know, obviously, telling a more, you know, antique story was easier to do before this. The audience is a bit more sophisticated now. We can’t do the Grand Guignol anymore.

And Susan, you’ve had sort of an on-again/off-again relationship with this show. As I mentioned at the top, you were in it before you came back briefly and then have now come back again about a year ago. What’s been your own experience with how the show has changed from rejoining it at these intervals?

Peter Bergman: Yeah, what changes?

Susan Walters: You know, it’s a very good question because I really noticed it from being on the show. You know, I left in 2004. Back then, I think it’s kind of what Peter was talking to, how there’s not as much survival in daytime anymore. And so, they’ve had to do things to keep it going. We used to go slower, filming used to go slower. We used to do maybe two or three takes of a scene and we did five shows a week as opposed to five shows in four days, which is what we do now. So, like today, Peter’s doing three shows.

Peter Bergman: Three shows, yup.

Susan Walters: That’s a lot of material, you know, And I remember being busy before and doing a lot of homework before, but I don’t think it’s just my age. I do a lot more homework now to remember everything. I think also having the bigger sets, like Peter said, you know. We moved around a lot more, which sometimes takes up time. But it’s interesting. I do love the pace. I when I left, I, you know, I’ve done nighttime and movies and … we did scenes today that were pretty emotional. And for me, I have a hard time holding on to that all day over the course of 12 hours to do three pages where we did five pages in a half an hour.

It seems like it’s a grueling production schedule and this is an assembly line.

Susan Walters: It’s helpful that way.

Peter Bergman: On a nighttime show if we got five pages done in a day, it’d be a pretty good day. Pretty good day. So, we did five pages in half an hour.

Susan Walters: What I was also reminded of coming back to the show after 20 years was how professional everybody is on this show. I mean, obviously the crew and the writing and the whole show itself from a production standpoint is so well-oiled. But the actors, they come in, they know their lines. There’s no messing around, you know, And it was intimidating, but it’s also really fun to have that bar.

Peter Bergman: It is.

Susan Walters: He sets it.

Peter Bergman: We have a lot of actors who come to work ready to play.

Susan Walters: Yeah, it’s really fun.

Well, you both are invested, it seems, with these characters and you play them for so long and at these intervals. What is it like? What is the experience like being that character for so long, having that relationship for so long? What goes on in your mind with regards to what you bring to the performance there?

Peter Bergman: It’s kind of a two-tiered one. You want to protect your character’s integrity and honesty and basic intelligence, and you are protective of that kind of thing. But you also want to think that your character has grown, that your character has changed. I would be terribly disappointed if Susan came back, and Jack Abbott hadn’t changed at all. He was the exact same guy.

He’s been through tons of life experience and like we all do, we change as life knocks us around a little bit. That’s true of the character I play, and I always want to be aware of that change, you know. There were certainly periods where Jack was quite the cad, and it was fun to play and everything, but Jack’s had too much life experience for that. Jack learned empathy somewhere along the way, and I don’t fight that. I like that character to change and grow. But yeah, you can hear the way I talk about him. I’m very protective of him.

Sure. And, Susan, this is not your first soap, you’ve been doing them since your teens, right?

Susan Walters: Yes, I did my first soap when I was 19.

I wonder in terms of the acting aesthetics that you bring to soaps versus the other kinds of shows or movies that you’ve done. Is it different? Is there a different acting style that you bring to it or that audiences expect from it?

Susan Walters: You know, I don’t necessarily think there should be. I mean, obviously there’s a difference between doing a sitcom and that kind of reaching the audience, you know, on a sitcom as opposed to a film or whatever. But as far as you know, the old idea of soap acting, I don’t I mean, we certainly don’t have that.

I think what’s really challenging and interesting for me is to take the material that we get every single day — and it’s a lot — and to make it as real as possible and have the connection with the other person. You know, obviously we’re having to say a lot of dialogue that explains to the audience that might not have turned in the day before what happened the day before, and that you just have to allow for, you know, you can’t expect everybody to watch every minute of every day. So, you allow for that. But then also to just have connections with another person in the scene is I mean, that’s just acting no matter what medium you’re in.

And speaking of connections, do you both have any connections with the writers? Do you sort of help draw where the character’s arc is going to go next?

Peter Bergman: Our writers live all over the country. They’re never in the same room. It’s funny, the head writer is here in the building, and we have a relationship with him because he’s also the executive producer of the show. And we see him on the studio floor in the morning. And as much as anything, I talk to him about his life and his two daughters and what his travels are and things like that as much as I do about Jack Abbott. But yeah, I have no connection with what writers are going to write, how they are going to write. And I’m one who doesn’t really like to know what’s going to happen next. So, when I get a new script, I can’t open it fast enough.

Susan Walters: I get the email and I’ll start reading it. I’ll sit in the car and read it on the way home. Yeah, yeah. Not driving, but you know.

You can get some curveballs from the writers that you don’t see coming.

Susan Walters: Oh yeah. And as far as communicating with the writers, they’re doing so much, you know, on a daily basis. In the big picture, I look at how they handled Diane’s rebirth, you know, an explanation of faking her death and how they brought the whole thing back. And I’m like, wow, they couldn’t have done it better for me. They would all have written to the stuff that worked for Susan, you know, and then also work for the audience. So, I’m like, well, I think I’m in pretty good hands. So, you know, I just like to I like to read it when I get it.

I want to ask you both about the fans. It’s my understanding of soap fans that they’re particularly ardent. They develop very close relationships with the characters, and hell, I’m developing close relationships, and I have no context, the last couple of days watching this. What do you know about your fans? What do they tell you about themselves when you meet them or when they write to you?

Peter Bergman: So, I always call them viewers. There’s something about the word fans that always kind of rubs me wrong, but just for our conversation … I always love meeting people who watch the show. We work in a vacuum. We have no audience. We have no idea what works and what doesn’t work. If somebody is going to say hello and tell me you got to stay away from Diane, she is trouble, I have some sense of what someone feels about what they’re watching.

We obviously owe a great deal to people who faithfully tune in the show every day and keep it going. That’s but it’s definitely more distant than that. We live in Los Angeles, where people don’t come up to you as often. They just saw Mick Jagger around the corner. They’re not going to make a giant thing of their soap opera person.

But once you make contact, I always say that I can have a half-hour conversation with an absolute stranger. And we will never mention Jack Abbott’s name. We can talk about the show. You know, they they’ve been watching for years and years. They know all kinds of things about the show, about you, about life. Yes. It’s yeah, it’s an amazing kind of familiarity. Now, what are you going to say to Robert Redford if you run into him on the street? I love The Natural. You have nothing to say.

Susan Walters: And opinions about it. And things have changed, obviously, since Loving when there certainly wasn’t social media. I think what happens also with viewers is people on daytime are in their home every day. They’re in their home while they’re doing stuff in the house. Right. So, you become a lot more familiar to them than someone that we used to only see on a big screen or a nighttime show once a week. Things have kind of changed now with streaming and everything. You have people much more accessible in your home. You know, actors of all genres. But I think with daytime they really felt that they knew you because you were in the house so often.

Well, from what I’ve heard, most of your consumption, that the three something million people watching, are watching on linear still. I mean, it’s available on streaming.

Peter Bergman: That’s great. So, I don’t I don’t fully know or embrace the streaming thing and I know that’s a very, very fast-growing audience, but I’m thrilled that people are watching it when it airs.

Susan Walters: Oh, yeah.

You mentioned social a moment ago. Has that changed anything about the show, about the way you interact with people responding to the show or how the show has grown or changed in any way?

Peter Bergman: I’m not involved in social media, and to CBS and Sony’s great chagrin, I’m probably not the person to talk to about this. I’ll tell you, the flip side of it is dealing with young actors who are concerned that their audience doesn’t want to see them in this particular situation. And I think what? That is framing your choices that you make as an actor, what the audience is going to say about your character?

Susan Walters: And it’s only a very small portion of the audience, which I have to remind myself. I mean, to be perfectly honest, you know, there wasn’t Twitter when I was on the show before, so I made the mistake, you know, going on Twitter after I came back to the show. And I’m thinking, you know, Diane’s gotten older, and Susan’s gotten older, and it’ll be very empowering for these people to see that I age.

Peter Bergman: And what did they say?

Susan Walters: It wasn’t pretty at all. And actually, it was, you know, not that I think I look great, but I was really blown away by how nasty people were about the way me, Susan, looked, you know, And now that the character of Diane has taken off and they they’ve been reintroduced to Diane, now, comments would be about Diane if I was still looking at Twitter, which of course, I never do. Yeah, it’s not it’s not healthy for me, is it?

Not very well moderated these days.

Susan Walters: No, it’s not. You know, our job as an actor is to not think of ourselves as actors doing this thing and the result of somebody else seeing it. My job today was that my character is in a situation and his character’s talking to me about it, right? And we are those people. So, to constantly be worrying about the result, which is written about on social media, doesn’t serve me as an actor at all, if that makes any sense. And especially if people are discussing maybe negative things about the way they think you look. That really doesn’t do me any good. But it’s fun that people who really love this show get on and have such, you know, passion.

Peter Bergman: Oh yeah, I think I’m grateful that there’s a world of people talking about the show.

Susan Walters: And they really get into it

Peter Bergman: I just have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

Well, the show’s been renewed through 2024, which is about as good of an assurance as you can get for a soap these days. What’s your sense about how much runway is still in front of The Young and the Restless?

Peter Bergman: Five years ago, I was making plans for the end of daytime television and financial plans, talking with my wife about what the next step is, because we’ve got to stay ahead of this thing because they’re going to pull the rug out. I think I did that 10 years ago and five years ago. And today I say no, it actually has better legs than I realized. It’s going to be around for a while. It’s going to be around. There is an audience for this kind of entertainment that is crystal clear. And I think you said 3.7 millionish people every day. There are hundreds of shows in television that don’t get anywhere near those numbers.

Susan Walters: No way. If you had that on some cable shows, you would have a giant hit.

Peter Bergman: You’d have a hit in your hands. Yes.

Susan Walters: I think also it shows that the show has survived. You know, I remember before there was such an influx of daytime talk shows, you know, and repeats of nighttime shows during the day and everything. And obviously, the show has survived that. You know, so I think there’s still more story to tell. I think it has legs.

And you have viewers, I’m sure, some who have followed you for the entire 50 years of the show and through the decades. Is it more challenging to pick up younger viewers who are just not habituated to linear TV at all, let alone to soaps?

Peter Bergman: It is the challenge. Yeah. They did not grow up waiting to see what was on television at what time.

Susan Walters: Right. We had to plan things out that way. There’s a lot of nighttime cable shows that have huge audiences after the fact when they can stream, and they don’t even watch it when it’s first out.

In terms of the surviving soaps and the three others, and I’m glad to know you have confidence in some longevity that you maybe didn’t have a couple of years ago. What do you think that your show needs to do to keep holding on? Is it kind of hewing to those core formulas of storylines, certain types of storylines that the show has or the sort of archetypal characters that have served it so far? Or is it a question of continuously adapting?

Peter Bergman: I think B, I think continuously adapting. I think, as Susan said earlier, relevance is everything and something that the audience identifies with now. At the same time, I’m saying there are formulaic aspects to this kind of entertainment, that there are things we do incredibly well. Power, money, family, romance, betrayal. We have the time to tell a long story that other shows don’t have. They’ve got to tell one episode and we get to tell it over time. A good long story arc.

A little less Grand Guignol, though, as you said earlier.

Peter Bergman: Yes, less so. The audience more and more wants to see you being real. Yeah.

Well, Peter Bergman, Susan Walters, you’ve been very kind to wend through this broader analysis of soaps with me, so thank you so much. And congratulations to you both for very exceptional achievement. 50 years.

Peter Bergman: Thank you, Michael, for having us. And thank you for the research on your part. Yeah, absolutely.

Susan Walters: Enjoy the show.

It’s been the highlight of my week watching. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and our YouTube channel, though not quite 50 years’ worth and with far fewer plot twists. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: ‘Young & Restless’ Stars Peter Bergman And Susan Walters On Show’s 50th appeared first on TV News Check.

To which John Hane says pshaw.

Hane, president and CEO of the BitPath NextGen consortium between Nexstar and Sinclair, says data leasing revenue could start rolling in within select markets or regions inside of the next year. He sees that the mountain NextGen TV has yet to scale is massive, but argues the progress made so far in lighting up new ATSC 3.0 markets is also considerable.

In this Talking TV conversation, Hane takes the measure of that progress, lays out the challenges still in front of the technology’s implementation, and ventures a guess as to when it will finally become a significant percentage of broadcasters’ bottom line.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: BitPath is a spectrum consortium between Nexstar and Sinclair built on ATSC 3 architecture to deliver data and create new revenue streams for TV broadcasters. So, how is that whole new revenue stream thing going?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. My guest today is John Hane, president and CEO of BitPath. We’ll be doing a check in with how far along BitPath has come in building its network, the challenges it continues to face in its growth and the biggest question of all: When, if ever, is ATSC 3 going to become a viable revenue stream for broadcasters? We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, John Hane, to Talking TV.

John Hane: Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Good to see you. John, I wanted to talk about ATSC 3 and revenue right now because we’re coming up on the NAB Show in Las Vegas next month and checking in with NextGen TV is always an important part of the narrative at the show. I’m also supposed to be moderating a panel on NextGen revenue with a trio of station group leaders during the show, so there’s a good chance for me to do a little prep in advance. So, let’s check in with the situation. First of all, how many markets is Next-Gen lit up in now?

John Hane: In terms of number of markets, I don’t know. It’s well over 60% depending on how you count. People count differently, but 60% of the population in terms of markets, we have, I think as of the end of this month. We’re launching a top 10 market this month. We’ll have, I think, seven of the top 10. Something like 20 or 21 of the top 25 and 43 or 44 of the top 50. So, we’re filling in the gaps. I mean, there’s been a lot of activity. A lot of markets have launched. We’re still waiting for some big ones to pop, including one that we’re launching this month. But we’re continuing to roll out markets. We have markets on the rollout plan for every quarter of the year.

So, are you on schedule? Ahead? Behind?

We didn’t have a formal schedule for getting everything done because there’s no central management of this process. We’ve led the significant majority of BitPath, our team has led … and when I say led, I mean the people doing the work are the station groups. We’re just sort of nudging and providing some coordination services and helping figure out the hosting plans. But we’ve been involved in the great majority of the rollouts. Pearl has done a number of rollouts, including some of the big markets and others have sort of rolled out on their own without any sort of participation in either of BitPath or Pearl.

The industry is moving along. You know, I guess you can call it organically. We didn’t have a hard schedule. What I liked and, you know, I guess a good phrase is ‘how are we doing?’ Better than I expected, but not as good as I could have hoped for. I think we’re in a good place. We need to fill in these holes and the top 50, top 25 and especially in the top 10.

You know, as you get into the remaining large markets, they have various complicated issues that have to be worked through and they take time. And not everything is within all the players’ control. So, I’m highly confident that they’re going to be work out. I wish they were worked out, you know, now. But everybody in those markets that is planning to transition to 3.0 is working very hard on it.

You touched on a key issue there. There’s no central management of all this. So, that’s kind of one of the things that makes this very tough, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

All right. Your consortium believes that data leasing is going to be ATSC 3’s real revenue superpower, right?

I think it is a real revenue superpower. So, you know, I did I was involved in retransmission negotiations for the first 10 or 12 years of that and since some of the major and groundbreaking ones. So, I’m very aware of the changes and the profile of advertising versus subscription revenue. And I think with 3.0, the television side is extremely relevant to that. I won’t go down that rabbit hole now, but I think it’s super, super important. And people who discount the importance of 3.0 to revenue on the core television side, I think are selling it short.

You have to look at two factors: what are the growth opportunities and what are the opportunities of 3.0 to sort of mitigate some of the headwinds that are in the existing business in particular as they affect the revenue streams. So yes, I do think on a bit-for-bit basis, there is no question that much higher revenue can be delivered per bit through data services, through non-traditional television data services. But I’m not discounting at all, you know, the revenue opportunity inside the core business.

Well, let’s stick to the one rabbit hole, though, OK? For the uninitiated, very briefly, can you explain how that works?

The way that we evaluate it is in order to provide wireless data services, you need a tremendous amount of infrastructure. You need management systems, you need devices, you need control systems. You need all of those things. Well, the highest cost items really are the RF infrastructure, the spectrum licenses, the towers. That is far and away the highest capital cost associated with providing wireless data services.

We have that in place. So, the way that we view it is we need to provision these participating stations to be able to provide ATSC 3 data, and that’s once you’ve switched over, it’s really fairly uncomplicated and we’re sort of building a playbook of how we do that in an effective way. Then you’re able to transmit, then you’re able to put data in.

You have to have devices, right? You have to have receiver devices in addition to the regular television sets. So, we’re working on that part, too, and we’ve developed a few core businesses that we intend to launch first that we think are compatible with where we are in the transition.

And we’re working on optimizing the way we get that data into the television stations. We have a plan operating now, and also how we sort of get the market for user devices going so that we can have customers for those services.

OK, but in order to capitalize on data leasing, you have to have these important things that fall into place. First, you need a national footprint of NextGen stations to light up and then they have to join your network, right?

You don’t need a national network for everything. You need a national network for some services. And ultimately the full realization of that potential is when you have a national network. But the services that we’re launching initially are services that don’t require the national network or national coverage. They’re services that are sort of more market-oriented to individual markets.

And those would be, if you think about one of our first target verticals is energy distribution. Those tend to be clustered in specific geographic regions. And they’re heavy users of certain kind of data and in particular certain kinds of data services. So, we can provision those. If you think about, I mean, here in the Washington, D.C., metro, Pepco, which will make electric power, is the big electricity provider. Our coverage in D.C. already covers substantially all of Cape Coast footprint in the region.

But to get the full potential and to have the national network in place, about how far along are you from realizing that?

Well, we have over 60% of the country covered.

I mean timewise. Are we talking a couple of years?

I think we’re clearly over halfway. I mean, if you’re talking about the long tail and getting down to market 200, you know, some of those are very difficult because many of them have only one or two stations. If it’s one station, you have to flash cut it. But to have a substantially complete nationwide network, you know, I think if we could get some regulatory certainty from the FCC, I could see it being done in two years.

And the biggest markets you mentioned before, they’re the toughest to launch, right? The most complicated?

Well, they have a sort of a unique set of complications. There are some things that are more difficult. Some of them have not been that difficult. Some of them are proving exceptionally difficult and they’ve just taken a lot more work.

And the second dynamic required to monetize data leasing, as I understand, is the companies that want to lease the data transfer services from you need to build these compatible receivers on their ends as sort of destinations for the data that they send.

Right.

How hard of an ask is that to make of those companies?

You know, I think it’s a hard ask today because the full coverage and the full network is not in place and that’s why we’re not waiting for that. We’re building our own receiver devices and the first services we launch will be our own branded services that we will provide directly. And we’re building and working on acquiring compatible devices for that service. So, we’re not going to wait for third parties.

And I think there’s a lot to be said for this approach. If we wait for others to come build devices to buy our services, I think we’re going to be waiting until everything is built. You have to prove that it works, and we know that it works. We’re proving it in the field. We’re building the devices. We’re showing very high value on some particular verticals. Are the devices optimal today? No, they’re not.

But we’re working very hard on getting better form factors, lower power requirements, moving closer to where we ultimately want to be for a really widespread consumer B2C and B2B set of customers throughout the economy, including end user retail economists, customers. We’re building the devices depending on how well that goes. You know, we could have paying customers early next year.

I hear what you’re saying about this incremental kind of market-based or regional-based implementation of this right now as a lead up to more national services. But all in all, there are some pretty complicated things that need to fall into place here for the cash register to start really ringing for broadcasters. What do you say to the critics or the skeptics who say this is all just too complicated and it’s never going to happen?

People that say this is too complicated are people who have not launched, you know, wireless data services and they’re sort of not familiar with the processes. The project steps, the way you finance these things, it’s an unknown. So, if I took somebody from satellite or mobile wireless and drop them at the NAB and some of them work in some of the sessions that seem very important and topical to everybody who listens to and watches this podcast, you know, they wouldn’t know what we were talking about, and it would seem all very difficult and arcane. But, you know, our staff is built of people who do this.

Our contractors and providers are people who do this. I’ve done this in the past. You know, these are known steps, right? It’s just a matter of us taking them out, execution and success in the marketplace. You know, those depend on a lot of factors. But knowing how to get from point A to point B, how to build a network, how to start before the network is fully built, how to sort of step into it methodically, those are known things.

OK, you are a true believer. Obviously, you are John the Baptist here. So, given that, when do you think the broadcasters are really going to see an ROI on this technology? When are we going to see it as a business line in the earnings reports?

On the on the data side, only separating that from the core business you asked me to do, I think so. When you say an ROI, I would say if you’re talking about the incremental cost of propagating data, for our initial services it’s very, very low. So, I think the ROI will be really good as soon as it starts, and I think it could start next year. We’re not going to burden the full cost of the transition in the first year or two on the first data services that we launch. But if you look at them on a on a bit-for-bit basis for the capital cost of setting those services up and for the operating cost of provisioning them and for the capacity overhead that we’re taking away from television, which by the way, for everything we’re planning for the next four years is trivial. You don’t have to stop any television service at all in order to accommodate this.

Now, BIA sort of famously projected that by 2030, revenue from NextGen datacasting could run between $6.5 and $15 billion for the industry. How many millions are you personally willing to bet on the accuracy of that prediction?

Well, I didn’t make the predictions, so I don’t want to bet on the accuracy. But I definitely believe the business falls somewhere in there.

Does the timeline sound right to you as well?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, so here are the things that we don’t have within our control. When we set up these transition rules with the FCC, they were not the rules that we wanted. They were a negotiated set of rules that had a lot of input from cable competitors, and we didn’t get everything we wanted. And even if we had gotten everything we wanted, it was impossible to know back then exactly how this would play out. Right. So, we’re sort of at the midpoint or better and we need some adjustments.

So, you’re asking for that FCC task force?

Well, we need a task force, and we need some relief on the hosting rules. The hosting rules have some fairly perverse consequences, given the way that things are rolled out, particularly with the growth of diginets. So, you know, we’ve we’re working with the [FCC] Media Bureau and with the commission. I’m not sure that they fully appreciate the urgency of this. The rule changes can’t or are not a sufficient condition to wrap this up quickly, but they’re clearly a necessary condition. They’re absolutely a necessary condition.

And I’ll give you an example. In the largest market, and we’re not managing that market, but in the largest market, there’s a particularly difficult problem. And the parties have come up with different solutions. And one of the solutions would require what, to my mind, would be a very inconsequential modification or waiver of the hosting roles. And I think the commission is very concerned about it and overthinking it. But that’s my perspective.

So, I think relief from the FCC could definitely ease things and speed them up. It’s not going to solve it. We have a lot of commercial business and technical and other issues that we have to tackle. But, you know, we’re way along the way when you have, you know, 21, 22 of the top 25, you have most of the top 50. We have a lot more going up, the 75 and even 100. You know, there’s been a lot of metal bends. I mean, we’re bending metal, right? This is happening.

Well, you may get a chance to buttonhole FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel next month, if you’re lucky.

I hope so.

Well, John Hane, it’s been good to check in with you and see you at the NAB show in April.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. You can catch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.

The post Talking TV: When Is NextGen TV Revenue Coming? appeared first on TV News Check.

There, the group is taking on universal addressability, reconciliation, and interoperability for TV advertising across streaming AVOD/FAST services, addressable linear and traditional linear TV. It’s prioritizing watermark technology to address all of those issues and any more that may arise, for as CEO Tony Katsur says, “It’s like building a bridge to cross a river that you can then take with you to cross the next river.”

In this Talking TV conversation, Katsur lays out the advanced TV road before him as well as other fronts — cross-jurisdictional privacy, post-cookie addressability and the programmatic supply chain among them — on which the lab hopes to make headway this year.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The IAB Tech Lab has a lot on its plate. Earlier this year, it unveiled a five-part plan for its 2023 priorities, encompassing advanced television, consumer privacy, addressability, the ad supply chain and cross measurement.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today I’m with Tony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, to talk about the organization’s ambitious roadmap for the year, particularly the advanced TV Initiative. We’ll talk about how he’s trying to get everybody to get along to foster the interoperability that everything hinges on and how privacy and sustainability will factor into it all. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Tony Katsur, to Talking TV.

Tony Katsur: Thanks, Michael. How are you?

I’m well, thanks. Good to see you. It’s been a while.

Yes.

So, Tony, for those who aren’t familiar with the IAB tech lab, what’s your remit?

The IAB Tech Lab was spun out of the IAB almost nine years ago, March of 2014. Our remit is we are the global trade body that sets technical standards for digital advertising across the internet. We differ from the IAB in the sense that the IAB is, as most know it, their remit is the technical standards-setting body. We are akin to think of us as the advertising version of the W3C or the IETF. So, we set the technical standards and steward technical protocols like the RTV Protocol.

We work closely with IAB Europe on things like the TCF, which is the transparency and consent framework to comply with GDPR. That’s our that’s our remit. We are focused entirely on setting technical standards, technical best practices, providing, in some cases, software to the industry to support things like the ability for open measurement SDK. That’s our focus. That’s our remit globally.

And are you an accrediting institution?

We do certification against people coming into compliance with some of our technical frameworks like the open measurement SDK. So, we will certify organizations that are using the open measurement SDK that they’re in compliance with how it’s deployed. Our data transparency standard … we also do we also do certify compliance with our data transparency standards as well. So, there is there is some compliance and certification work that we do around our technical frameworks that we support for the industry.

OK, so there are five key areas of focus for your organization this year, and we will try to touch on most of them, but most compelling to our TVNewsCheck readers and viewers will be the advanced TV Initiative. Tell me about that.

Sure. I started at IAB Tech Lab in August of ’21. Shortly after I started, there was a lot of conversation around what is Tech Lab going to do regarding interoperability within CTV. The conversation really started around all things all television delivered over the IP protocol and, you know, the challenges that exists in the areas of audience. Interoperability is a real challenge. You can have two different audience vendors on either side of the equation — buy sides using one audience vendor, the sell side using a different audience vendor. How do you reconcile those two things?

As I started down that path, and working in the TV industry prior during my tenure at Nexstar, it became very apparent to me quickly that there are interoperability issues not just within the CTV ecosystem, but also in legacy linear television. You know, there’s reconciliation challenges across broadcast, cable, satellite addressable, linear and CTV, you run into reconciliation issues, you run into audit challenges.

So, what started as a CTV-focused initiative blossomed into something that we thought could transcend all television environments. That’s what led us to our advanced television initiative. And our charter there is delivering some technical framework, a set of best practices, to solve for universal reconciliation, universal audit, audience interoperability, creating strong anti-fraud mechanisms in CTV, because with linear television, you know, the good news is that it’s fraud-free. The bad news is that it’s always been a closed ecosystem, which is why it’s fraud-free.

The new world of streaming television, or CTV, is delivered over the internet. And, you know, there are issues with fraud and digital advertising. And if you if you follow fraud, fraud follows the richest economics and the biggest budgets, it’s television. Also, the fourth pillar of our charter was something that could also combat fraud as more TV moves to a streaming environment.

And then fifth was solving for frame-accurate replacement as the television industry moved to an impression-based ad market, which we were already seeing the early days of that occur even in linear.

So, how can we support something that was free and accurate from an ad replacement perspective? And also, it better supports the ability to do impression-based buys if you’ve got frame-accurate spot insertion and replacement. And what we settled on, I guess you could say what’s old is new. We ended up settling on the A/335 video watermark, which in the U.S. is governed by the ATSC. You know it came out of broadcasters’ labs. And as I as I delved into it further, it just seemed like the Swiss army knife that addresses those five needs of both, you know, legacy linear television as well as streaming environments. And what I really like about it is that this is something that could be applicable across all TV environments.

As more television moves to streaming over the next decade, it’s something that can go with this transition to the world of streaming. It’s like building a bridge to cross a river that you can then take with you to cross the next river. The video watermark concept is not something that would go extinct as more and more television streams.

From the outside, all of this looks like a giant Gordian knot to untangle.

Yes.

Good luck with that. Well, you’re also wading into the murky and turbulent waters of cross-platform measurement. This is obviously an especially fraught area. According to many people I talk to, we’re a decade away from a viable common currency in that space. What do you hope to achieve there?

I think that’s probably accurate. I would say we’re five to 10 years away from some sort of common currency across formats, display video and then across environments, the multiple television environments I just mentioned — mobile web, mobile app, desktop, connected devices in the home.

Now, there are initiatives that are currently in motion. There’s the cross-media measurement initiative that the WFA and A and 4As are focused on, and we’re hoping we can support them from a technical standards perspective and maybe even some technical frameworks in order achieve that. That’s going to be a multi-year initiative. And this concept of our advanced TV initiative is one of our first steps into solving for cross television environments, which may be able to translate into cross-digital environments and cross-media formats. But, you know, this is at least a five-year plan.

And post-cookie address ability and privacy is another priority for the IAB Tech Lab. What are you focusing on there?

We’re focused on really three areas. You can’t talk about privacy without talking about identity or addressability. So, first and foremost, we’re focused on compliance frameworks. The first one that we worked on in partnership with IAB Europe was the transparency and consent framework, better known as the TCF, and that supports GDPR compliance within Europe.

What we recently released last October was what we call the Global Privacy Platform, or the GPP for short. As many of your readers and viewers may or may not be aware, there are now five states in the U.S. that have stood up privacy laws. CCPA here in California has evolved to CPRA. The states of Utah, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia all have privacy laws requiring various forms of notice and consent in their jurisdictions. Some of those have already gone live as of January. Others are going live mid-year. I think Utah’s the last one where their law is active. I believe it’s in December of this year.

The GPP is designed to allow companies to come into compliance with those laws across jurisdictions. So, an example would be if I live in the state of California and I’m visiting family in Connecticut, I need to be compliant from a consent perspective, both in the state of California as well as Connecticut simultaneously. The GPP is a protocol that will support that throughout the digital advertising supply chain.

The same is true if I take that same example, and I’m a resident of the state of Connecticut and I’m on vacation in Europe and, you know, I’m watching CNN or reading CNN on my on my phone, sipping an espresso in Italy. I need to be simultaneously compliant with the laws of Connecticut, as well as GDPR. The global privacy platform is designed to support that level of compliance.

And then what we’re going to be releasing next month is what we call the accountability platform, which creates a standard and normalized form of data exhaust around privacy compliance to ensure that consent flags are being honored and supported throughout the digital supply chain. I think any compliance framework without any sort of technical audit capability that can be used by regulators, that can be used by privacy advocates, that can be used for self-audit, I think is a paper tiger. So, we really need to have some form of audit, some form of standardized audit function deployed across the digital advertising ecosystem.

So, those are some of the key things we’re working on from a compliance perspective. Then when we start talking about things like identity, so that’s privacy compliant and then we move into things like identity and addressability. How do we continue to support an addressable digital advertising economy which is powered by the ability to have an addressable advertising ecosystem? And we do that.

We’re working on things like cleaner ad standards. We’re working on things like privacy-enhancing technologies, and those are designed in order to maintain an addressable advertising ecosystem while maintaining consumer privacy. So, things like our privacy-enhancing technologies working group is focused on things like multi-party compute and differential privacy and on-device compute concepts under the lens of advertising use cases.

Our recently announced Seller Defined Audiences, well, it’s been in-market for about a year now. That’s designed to maintain some form of addressable advertising solution that’s also very privacy-centric. It allows publishers to create their own audience cohorts that adhere to a data transparency standard without actually having to leverage sensitive personal information. That’s another means by which we can maintain an addressable ecosystem while preserving consumer privacy and mitigating data security issues.

Those are the other things we’re working on from an identity and addressability [standpoint]. It’s compliance. It is how do we maintain addressability capabilities through our privacy. And technology working groups are solidifying audience initiatives that we launched last year, data clean room standards. We just announced our data clean room standards two weeks ago. How do we balance privacy, compliance with addressability and digital advertising?

And amid all of this, there’s still more work you’re doing on the ad supply chain and the programmatic market. Is that right?

Yeah, correct. The Tech Lab has never done its own fraud research. We’ve worked with other organizations, other companies. We’ve read the studies that many in the industry have read as well. I want Tech Lab to do its first-ever fraud research, too, for two reasons. One, I’d like to see the data myself. Depending on who you read, fraud is either at 3% or it’s 90%, while it’s somewhere between those numbers. And I’d like to actually do the research ourselves for us to come to our own conclusions. We want to understand how good or bad the fraud issues are by channel. It’s going to vary. Display fraud will be different than video fraud versus CTV fraud.

So, that’s one reason we want to do the research. The other is we also want to do the research to enhance our own standards. What kind of fraud continues to slip through there? How do we enhance our existing standards? What are new anti-fraud frameworks or standards we need to create for the industry to combat fraud? That’s one area of the supply chain that we’re working on now.

And then most recently we announced our sustainability initiatives in terms of how do we measure the carbon footprint of digital advertising throughout the digital supply chain in order to create a greener digital advertising ecosystem. Those are two areas that we’re working on.

On that last point, how valuable is that measuring that carbon footprint and demonstrably doing something that’s significant on that front? Is that even possible?

It absolutely is possible. There are best practices from an ad operations perspective that can lead to a greener advertising footprint. So, for example, this concept known as lazy load, where an ad shouldn’t even be called — every time an ad is called or every time an ad is processed, that requires CPU usage bandwidth. There are servers involved. All that requires power and cooling that all that all generates carbon.

And so, you know, simple concepts like this concept of lazy load, don’t even call the ad call until I scroll to the part of my web page where, you know, the ad could be rendered, right? That cuts down on ad calls, which cuts down on carbon.

Another big issue is supply path optimization. In our ecosystem, if you analyze the supply chain of digital advertising, one could easily discover that an ad impression can be processed one, two, three, five, a dozen times for the same app, for the same ad opportunity. Creating more efficient supply paths is another way to cut down on carbon. Because again, every time that ad is touched for an auction or every time that ad is rendered for possible impressions opportunity that costs carbon. There’s definitely efficiencies to be found in the supply chain where we can materially cut down on the carbon footprint of digital advertising.

You have laid out a lot here in terms of what you’re prioritizing. There’s a lot of priorities. What to you amid all of this is the most daunting?

That’s a great question. There are two that stand out to me. Our sustainability initiative and delivering a greener advertising supply chain is daunting because of the impact it could have on the globe. You know, we have a carbon problem on this planet. I think the impact it could have on our sons and daughters, our nieces and nephews … It’s daunting in the sense that there’s real weight to this. There’s material benefit to the planet. This is something that’s bigger than the digital advertising ecosystem. This is something that’s good for the planet.

The other thing that’s daunting is the advanced TV initiative. You know, we’ve got a pretty comprehensive road map. I think we’ve got a really good handle on how to address cross environment, reconciliation, audit, data, interoperability. Everything I just mentioned is part of the charter.

I think it’s less a technical challenge and more of a business challenge. How do we bring in a somewhat fragmented television ecosystem? Everyone from the buyers and the sellers to the distributors to the supply chain vendors and everyone in between — the television OEMs, the broadcasters, the networks. How do we herd all these cats and get everyone aligned to this vision of having some universal reconciliation or signaling framework across TV environments? That is a daunting task.

Well, calling it somewhat fragmented is a very diplomatic way of putting it. And perhaps diplomacy, that’s part of the job.

Yeah. So, I’d say advanced TV and our sustainability issues are the two most daunting things that we’re going to work on. And we know both of those are multi-year initiatives.

Well, Tony Katsur of the IAB Tech Lab, you’ve got a lot to do, so I’m going to let you get back to it. Thanks so much for being here today.

Michael, as always, a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thank you. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode, and we will see you next time. Thanks for watching.

The post Talking TV: Tackling Advanced TV At The IAB Tech Lab appeared first on TV News Check.

The Journalism Journey Initiative at the E.W. Scripps Co. was launched earlier this year to bridge that chasm. Sponsored by Google, the initiative accepted an initial cohort of six former print reporters for a two-year program that offers on-the-job training at Scripps stations across the country.

Angelika Albaladejo and Jessica DeLeon are two of the program’s initial class, and in this Talking TV conversation they share their early reflections on what drew them to the program and how they’re managing the transition so far. Their individual stories may illuminate the path for other journalists considering the change rather than quitting the news business altogether. And for stations still struggling with unfilled positions, they offer a glimpse at how widening the search for new journalists may bring advantages of experience and fresh eyes that younger hires might not necessarily offer.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Earlier this year, the E.W. Scripps Co. launched the Journalism Journey Initiative, a program that looks to retrain professional journalists from the print world in the industry by redeploying their skills for video driven reporting platforms, notably TV. The program is being funded by Google. The first cohort of six journalists are currently going through the two-year program, all working in local and national Scripps newsrooms.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, a conversation with two of those journalists, Angelika Albaladejo and Jessica DeLeon. We’ll talk about what drew them to the Journalism Journey initiative, the challenges of transitioning from text to video-based reporting, and whether they may herald many more following in their paths as newspapers continue to sputter out and news deserts widen. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Angelika Albaladejo and Jessica DeLeon, to Talking TV.

Angelika Albaladejo: Thanks for having us.

Jessica DeLeon: Thank you, Michael.

I want to touch on your stories of how you came to this program one at a time, starting with you, Angelika. Your work has been in The Guardian, USA Today and Mother Jones, but you’ve also done some reporting for Univision and CNN, among other places. What was the career trajectory that brought you to this program?

Angelika Albaladejo: Well, I’ve had a very untraditional path into journalism in general. I actually studied to work in the foreign policy space. I was doing work related to Latin America and U.S. relations with Latin America. And I started freelancing. I was a photojournalist for a while at the beginning of my career. And I wrote for a U.S. audience about issues taking place in Colombia.

Then I came back to the United States, and I started in some fellowships and developed skills as an investigative reporter. And that’s when I really started writing primarily for digital. So, I wrote for Univision and CNN for their digital websites at a certain point. And I really never thought about TV news. To be quite honest, it seemed unattainable for me, given that I hadn’t pursued studying that. But this program came along and just seemed like such a great opportunity to learn and grow.

I have kind of zigged zagged a lot in my career, and I’ve been open to those new experiences. So, this seemed like another great opportunity for me to learn and bring the skills that I already had as an investigative reporter into a new platform.

And so now you are at KMGH, which is Scripps’ affiliate in Denver, correct?

Angelika Albaladejo: That’s right. Denver 7 News.

All right. Now, Jessica, you’ve been covering law enforcement, crime, the courts and breaking news at the Bradenton Herald in Florida for nearly a decade where you also helped to unionize the newsroom. I’m sure they appreciated that in management. What was your own career trajectory that brought you to the Journalism Journey Initiative?

Jessica DeLeon: I started off with the traditional, during my time at FIU, internships, at the Sun Sentinel and the Miami Herald. And then ultimately, that’s how I got my first job at the Herald. It is the sister paper of the Miami Herald. And during my time there, I loved my beat. I didn’t initially start in the cops beat or law enforcement, but quickly made that transition. And that’s really where I stayed throughout my time.

I developed my skills as an investigative reporter and started doing more in-depth investigative-type pieces, less of the daily breaking news, but still doing some of that because, of course, it’s in a small newsroom and everyone has to pitch in. But kind of helping, bringing in that deeper knowledge, even in those situations.

Really, I’ve just been covering the community of Manatee County, which is on the south side of the Tampa Bay area [WTFS]. Technically, we are in the TV market of Tampa, which is where I’m at now at ABC Action News. So, when this opportunity presented itself for me personally, I was at a time in my life what was the perfect time for personal transition.

You mentioned our union. We had just successfully finished negotiating our first collective bargaining agreement. So, I felt confident that I had accomplished something wonderful and left the place better than it was and was ready to move on to my next adventure. I’ve always seen myself eventually going into television, but always knew that it was going to be a hard road, or I thought it would be because traditionally, to go from print to TV, you’ve always had to kind of just work your way in the back door.

And here was a program that presented itself and they came out after me or they reached out to me. Willing to give us all the tools and resources to learn and do exactly what it is I wanted to do—investigative reporting. But on the television side, it really just was an amazing, like almost a dream come true.

The newspaper industry’s overall implosion — I think it’s safe to call it that — has dumped a lot of good journalists into the market. In your experience so far, how successfully do you think the skills that you picked up in that world be ported over into television or video-based reporting?

Jessica DeLeon: Well, I mean, I think at the core, the reporting of it, the investigating of it, that’s the same. That doesn’t change how we present it. But at the core, getting that story and wanting to present a story in a fashion that makes people care or it tells them why they should care, that’s the same. Also, newspapers, at least I can’t speak for Angelica’s journey, but on the newspaper side of it, video has become a very important component of our digital presentation.

So, video was a big part of the daily beat getting video to accompany our stories. That had already become part of the mindset. Now it’s just switching to a video mindset first. Obviously, the digital side of it, that’s identical. There’s nothing different to how we present information online, whether we be a newspaper or at the television station. And we actually bring the unique skills of being able to go deeper and writing a digital story quicker, probably because of the vast experience. So, I think that will only help our stations with their digital presence.

Now I’m coming into this conversation with you in the early days, relatively speaking of this. You’re at the beginning of this two-year process. So, have either of you been on camera yet doing any reporting that way?

Angelika Albaladejo: I just had my first shoot last week and I’m working on the script for that story. I still haven’t gone through the editing process yet, but this first month of the program has been fantastic in terms of learning opportunities. There’s been a ton of workshops for us on all the things that we need to get up to speed on in the broadcast world. So, like Jessica mentioned, our skill sets as reporters translate almost directly into our new job. It’s thinking about how to present those stories for a TV audience that is requiring us to make a little bit of a mind shift here. And Scripps has been providing us with a ton of training to get us there.

Angelika, tell me a little bit more about that mind shift just in terms of how you are working through that. What’s a difference from the previous career to now that is particularly notable for you?

Angelika Albaladejo: Well, for me personally, I work on a lot of longform investigations for digital, so I had a lot of words to tell my stories in. Now I’m working with a much shorter time frame in which I have to get that story out to an audience. And, you know, if someone’s reading a story I wrote, they have time to go back and reread something if they didn’t quite get it. We can get into things that are maybe a little bit more complex and more detailed, but I’m learning that with telling a story for TV, it’s really about characters and visuals and sound in a way that we just don’t have available to us when we’re writing for text.

So, there’s a lot that you can do there to really tell the story in a shorter period of time. But in terms of the writing, it’s a lot more conversational. It’s a lot more concise. And so those are adjustments that that we’re having to make now.

Are you able to take your work and have a longer-form version of it than that appears online?

Angelika Albaladejo: Absolutely.

So, you get to flex that long-form muscle still.

Angelika Albaladejo: Yes. We do have a website for Denver 7. And many of Scripps local stations have this as well. And our digital stories are definitely longer, more detailed than what we’re able to tell on TV. So, we absolutely direct our audiences to not only watch our broadcast but go to our website for more information if they’re really interested in digging deeper into a story.

Jessica DeLeon: Or download our app, you can absolutely read us there.

In a way — in many ways — both of you are coming into this industry with fresh eyes, and I wonder how do you think your respective backgrounds maybe give you an advantage coming into TV news that you’re seeing things that your colleagues might not, that they’ve been trained or habituated differently to see?

Jessica DeLeon: Well, for me personally, given that I’m still in the same market I was and have been fortunate that I actually will be still covering that same area for our station, there’s that institutional knowledge, knowing the community where I live and am a homeowner myself and have lived for the last 10 years and have worked and told stories for the last 10 years. That’s just invaluable information that allows you to provide context, even in a breaking news situation when something’s happening, to give it that bigger picture and just have that knowledge to be able to do so.

Angelika Albaladejo: Now Michael, I found that I approach stories in a very different way from some of my colleagues, and that’s been really beneficial for us all. I came in and was able to shadow a reporter early on in joining the station and had some ideas about how we could further that coverage and go deeper. My investigative background really makes me see certain angles that maybe some of my colleagues weren’t noticing. And so that back and forth and sharing of knowledge and experience has been really useful so far.

I wonder how you look at a lot of the station groups right now, including Scripps, maybe even especially Scripps, who are taking a hard look at the conventions of their newscasts. They’re reassessing what they do, reevaluating how they need to be relevant and how they need to present themselves to younger audiences if those audiences are going to become habitual viewers. And so, everything’s on the table for reexamination. To the point of your fresh eyes in this business, I wonder as you’re coming into television, and you look at some of the conventions that are commonplace in newscasts. Are there any of them that you’re thinking — I don’t want to get you in trouble here, but go ahead and be frank if you can — generally are there any things, anything that you see that you think, we don’t need this, we can claw back this time or get rid of this superfluous gesture and devote more of that to direct storytelling?

Jessica DeLeon: Well, I can tell you one thing I’m very happy about, and we spent some time talking about already as a group: the entire DEI takeover. And it’s conversations that have been happening in my very station is moving away from this TV anchor voice and hair has to look a certain way and we are really being told to bring our authentic selves to the table, to the camera. And to me, that’s very exciting, because let’s be frank, you know, that TV anchors study voice where you change your voice. It’s been made jokes out of for years. We all know this, and that’s often the joke between the differences on both sides.

Scripps is moving away from that, and I’m so glad to be part of a company that sees that and sees how people want to see someone who looks like them, who they see at the grocery store or walking in the same park and have a conversation with them.

It sounds the same when I’m talking to you through this camera and coming into your television to give you whatever the important news is of the day. I’m talking to you the same and you can trust me because I’m real, I’m part of your community.

So, no snapping into rigidity once the camera turns on then.

Jessica DeLeon: No, and it’s certainly a work in progress. While Scripps is pushing this really hard, it’s hard for some folks that have been in the business a long time. And I’m hoping that we can help continue to foster that change and just really bring the diversity, inclusion and our authentic selves to our broadcasts.

And speaking of hard, are there any parts of this so far that have struck either of you as particularly hard points in the transition to make?

Angelika Albaladejo: I think I would say that for me, just approaching stories in a different new way from conception is something that’s been a little bit of a challenge at the start, thinking about, you know, what can be an interesting character to tell the story. How can we visually represent something? I’ve done a lot of work with public records and trying to think now about how can I take some of this vigorous reporting that I know how to do and actually translate it into something that people want to watch. And so that’s been a bit of a challenge. But thankfully, that’s what my newsroom is brilliant at doing. And so, I’ve been able to learn from them and vice versa. It’s helping me to kind of move past that. But I think at this early stage of the process, that’s been the most challenging thing for me.

Jessica DeLeon: I would say it’s probably the writing as we’ve already both touched upon. And you know, the writing style is very different. Not only is it conversational, it’s concise, and, you know, it’s really hard not to want to explain everything in a story but realizing that while that’s a challenge at the same time, us coming to the television side is giving us opportunities to have a larger audience and tell the same important stories that we’ve been telling to a bigger audience. That’s important.

A lot of the people who might be watching this could be print journalists considering making this transition or people who are working in TV newsrooms elsewhere where this sort of program isn’t going on. I wonder if either or both of you could just briefly kind of paint a picture of how a workday looks. That is, I mean, you’re doing your learning on the job, so you’re in the job and you’re also getting trained at the same time. How does your workday deviate from a typical reporter at your respective stations?

Angelika Albaladejo: Well, I would say that in this initial stage there has been a lot of training involved. A typical workday has looked a lot like having training sessions, shadowing reporters and photographers. They’re working on their stories so that we can get an idea of what that looks like. Getting onboarded on to all the different systems and processes that are different for broadcast versus print.

And I think every day has looked differently, honestly, in this process. And now I’m starting to transition into working on my own stories. And at that point, my day-to-day will change, and I’ll be focusing more so on reporting, going out and shooting stories, writing scripts, tracking them, recording the voiceover and editing with my photographer.

So, it is a different process from working in digital, but it’s been a lot of fun, too, to have this new platform available to us. And like Jessica said, to be reaching a new and larger audience and to know that we have the support from Scripps to really take the time to learn at the outset how to do all of this is making me feel a lot more secure in this kind of period of time where we have a different day to day every day.

Jessica DeLeon: Yeah. I’ll echo a lot of what Angelica said. We’re obviously in a large transition right now, and that’s been hard, you know, for some of us in our group. And this is something we’ve had very in-depth conversations about and supported each other. And we’ve gotten support, you know, from our trainers and folks in our companies. It’s time for us to learn. We’re so used to every day, go, go, go, go, being out there, telling stories, that it’s very difficult to just take a step back. It’s like, OK, I need to learn all these new things. I need to change and learn how I approach stories, and that takes time.

And to do it well, you really need to sit back and say, OK, I’m going to step back from the newsgathering to some extent and just focus on learning. So, that’s been difficult and refreshing all at the same time.

I’d say it is truly refreshing and wonderful that Scripps is not throwing us to the wolves, but rather holding our hands through this process and teaching us. And I have to say, the training just, you know, our trainer — amazing. Just teaching us in different ways and not necessarily your conventional teaching. Like we’re walking, we’re having walking meetings outside, inside, like just really making sure we’re comfortable and learning the knowledge and that it’s being retained, and we’re not overwhelmed. It just goes such a long way in this process to making it a smoother transition, I believe.

I wonder, just lastly, what would each of you hope to take from this experience as your career goes further. Is it a longevity in television reporting? Do you see this as kind of a next step in the evolution of your career overall and being able to work in yet another medium? How do you see this fitting in personally to your career trajectories?

Angelika Albaladejo: Well, I think that the journalism industry is in flux, as it has been for years, and the instability that a lot of reporters are feeling in getting pushed out of the industry, quite frankly, and ending up in jobs in PR and just completely outside of journalism.

This seems like a great opportunity to broaden our skill set to different mediums. We won’t lose what we already knew working in the digital and print space. We’re just going to add on to that. And for my career trajectory, I think, you know, things are still pretty wide open for me. I’ve been pretty open minded throughout my career path so far to kind of take some different turns. And so, I’m open to whatever this leads to for me.

I think that one of the things I’ve been very attracted to is the idea of working on documentary films, and this seems like a great way into that, but maybe I’ll fall in love with TV and just want to stay here forever. I guess we’ll find out.

Jessica DeLeon: For me, since I always envisioned myself in TV, this seems like a good place to be right now, and I could see myself staying in television and moving towards maybe not documentaries like Angelika, but certainly longer form on TV is highly of interest to me.

But at the same time, what this program and what this current time in our industry is really teaching me is that we really need to just be flexible with how we present the news and being willing to go with those changes. Just like I was talking about earlier, you know for so many years or decades TV anchors and TV broadcast reporters have presented news in a certain fashion that is just not appealing to people, especially not anymore. And people just don’t trust that.

Who’s to say what, 20 years from now, people expect or want the news to look like? And we as reporters, as journalists, we need to be flexible. We need to deliver the news in the form that the people watch it, because if not, they’re not getting the information they need.

And we certainly know what problems misinformation in our country is bringing right now. So, we need to be flexible and stop getting in this mindset that we have to deliver the news in a certain way. That’s part of the problem. It’s not so much how it’s delivered, it’s what we’re delivering. And as long as we’re delivering, you know, the stories of our community, the good, bad and ugly of what people need to know to live their lives daily, then we’re doing our jobs.

And me personally, I don’t see myself ever leaving journalism. I’m a journalist. That is such a large part of who I am. I’m very passionate about it. I love to dig and tell stories and hold people accountable. And it makes me sad to see, you know, a lot of people I’ve seen come and go through this industry and, you know, go on to PR jobs or, you know, public spokespersons.

And part of what the job program is looking to do is to stop that, to harness some of that talent. And it makes me happy to see that, you know, they’ve chosen the six of us and they’re looking to keep harnessing this talent, so it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t leave the industry because if not, you know, without journalism, our democracy’s in trouble.

That it is. Do you think this program is scalable? You have six people now. Do you think more print journalists can follow in and we might do this at some serious scale?

Angelika Albaladejo: Yeah, definitely.

All right. Well, it certainly would help the widening news desert problem that we have if it does. Well, Angelika, Jessica, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you both for sharing your experiences and good luck to you as you continue to move through this program.

Jessica DeLeon: Thanks, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com, as well as on our YouTube channel, which I encourage you to subscribe to and to like. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Reporters Making The Journey From Print To TV appeared first on TV News Check.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has entered that space with CBC News Explore, a FAST channel launched late in 2022 that veers noticeably out of its broadcast product lane. Among the channel’s original offerings is About That, a half-hour weekday explainer series hosted by Andrew Chang, who was until recently a host of the network’s flagship nightly newscast The National.

About That is a major shift for both Chang and the CBC itself. Each episode generally devotes itself to a single topic. Chang has traded in his anchor’s rigidity, suit and tie for a fashionable hoodie and more palpable ease in his own skin. He rolls up his sleeves and gets elbow deep into stories that demand more unpacking than a minute-thirty will allow. And it’s the way that he — and the show — let those stories unfold that shows the real power of About That.

In this Talking TV conversation, Chang explains how the show is bringing its own take to the explainer format and looking to engender greater viewer trust in the process. He shares how About That manages broadcast-quality production values while working far more leanly than his on-air peers. And he frames out how the show is, in its own way, trying to chart a path for the future of news at CBC overall.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: CBC News Explore is a FAST channel launched by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation late last year. The channel looks to take a deeper dive into news stories, drawing on news, video and longform reporting from across the organization, including some original news shows.

About That is the new channel’s flagship program, a weekday half hour that delves into stories with a markedly different tone than a typical newscast. While the show’s production values are high and its veneer is polished, its tone is unhurried, conversational, inquisitive. About That takes its time to consider subjects, and it follows a very transparent track in the newsgathering that it does along the way.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’m with Andrew Chang, the host of About That. Immediately prior to this job, Andrew was one of the hosts of The National, CBC’s flagship nightly newscast. He’s an award-winning journalist based in Toronto who has worked out of Montreal and Vancouver, and he’s just as comfortable holding a camera over his shoulder as a multimedia journalist or video journalist, as they’re called in Canada, as he is at the anchor desk.

Today, a conversation with Andrew Chang about what he’s aiming for with About That and how even in its early days, the show is engaging many of the characteristics U.S. video news organizations are pivoting towards: authenticity, transparency, context and relatability. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome Andrew, to Talking TV.

Andrew Chang: Hey, Michael, really nice to be here with you. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. It’s a great pleasure to have you. Andrew, what are you trying to do with About That? What’s its function?

That’s a great question. That’s a big question, too. What are we trying to do? I mean, at the heart of it, when I think of About That, I think we’re essentially an explainer show, right? So, you know, we’ll look at the media landscape and we’ll look at what people are talking about, and we’ll try to listen and zero in on topics that, in our estimation, are either difficult to follow or have become convoluted because of the sort of ever-changing nature of the story or any story that just sort of seems easy to misunderstand because of its complexity.

We try to take those stories and not just break them down, and I don’t think of ourselves as an investigative show, but in some way we are because we take not just the news nugget of the most recent thing to happen in a story but try to try our best to assemble as much context around it. And sometimes that can mean going back a few weeks, going back a few months, or even going back a few years to try to approach a new understanding of that story.

I can give you an example. So, an episode that we did very recently was about a company called Medicago, a Quebec-based Canadian biopharmaceutical company that was making COVID vaccines. All of a sudden, late in the week, the news dropped that it was shutting down, that its parent company had decided to wrap up operations. Now, if we were covering that story in a sort of a pretty conventional sense, just for a newscast, we might look at that announcement and we might ask the parent company, why are you shutting it down? And, you know, it turns out that, in their words, that the vaccine market had changed substantially, and that the business was no longer viable. And you might look at who’s affected by the shutdown. Right. There are hundreds of people who work there, and that’s a legitimate story.

But, you know, I remember from years of covering the pandemic that this was a company that was really on the cutting edge of vaccine production in the sense that it approached it by making vaccines from plants. It was a really novel idea and unique in the world. And I also remember that the government had invested almost $200 million to get this company really going to give its R&D a kickstart to help build its Quebec-based manufacturing facility.

And so, we took that news nugget but built out the whole story of Medicago with the intention of answering the question, how is it that the federal government could invest $173 million into a company that just shut down? And that was the foundation for the episode.

So, I mean, that gives you a sense of what we’re trying to do — take the stories that everyone is sort of talking about out there and place it in its proper context to give people a different understanding of it.

I saw that episode. It was very conversational. There’s a lot of context there, a lot of history around that. And then you brought in a colleague to take the story a little bit forward. As I mentioned at the top, you were previously one of the anchors of The National, CBC’s flagship newscast. There’s a pretty big tonal shift between your role there on the desk and the version of yourself that we encounter now in About That. How are you approaching your role differently on the new show?

The approach is different because the show is different and because the platform is different and because the audience is different. When we were first talking about a streaming channel and a streaming program and living in that universe, the very first question that we had to ask ourselves is who is watching? And it doesn’t take long to figure out and to realize that the people who are watching are sort of people like me, right? Sort of, you know, let’s call it, you know, mid-20s to early 40s, that kind of demographic, where in a lot of cases they don’t just get their news from one source. Increasingly they’re getting it from a variety of sources.

In a lot of cases, they are content creators themselves. So, they can see through the artifice, if that makes sense. They can see through kind of the act, they can see through the BS and they’re not really interested in that, but they kind of want something that’s going to be concise, that’s going to be informative, that’s going to help deepen their understanding of the stories that they’re already in tune with because they’re getting the headlines, but they want someone to engage with them like a human being, not talk over them, not talk at them, but talk to them.

And so, we were thinking about how do we approach this? How do we really level with people? This is what came out — sort of an ability not just to tell the story, but to smile and to have some fun while we’re doing it. Because, you know, contrary to the headlines that you often see, the world can be a pretty fun place.

In the persona now that you bring out in this show — I mean, the way you’re dressed, you’ve got the hoodie, albeit a posh hoodie, but you know, you’re not in a suit. There’s not the rigidity. Your body language is more relaxed. Your sleeves can be rolled up and you just seem very at ease in your own skin. It’s going to be a lot more fun in a way, I would think, to anchor this than The National.

Sure, it’s more fun and in a way it’s a lot easier too, because you don’t have to worry about a lot of the artifice that’s just part of the convention of TV that’s sort of been built up over time. But I say it’s easy, not just because I don’t have to, you know, remember how to tie my tie every day, but because there’s a naturalness that that comes with being transparent and that comes with being a little bit rough around the edges.

And when you can discard that a little bit and focus more on the story that you’re telling rather than how you look or how you’re perceived or those sorts of things, everything just kind of comes easily. And I don’t know, I do think the audience appreciates that, again, just kind of transparency. No BS Just tell me the story. And I’m happy with that.

I want to come back to those dynamics in a few minutes. But first, TV newsrooms have had some interesting approaches to doing news on shows that are bespoke for streaming. Generally speaking, they felt freer to experiment, to try out new kinds of formats and narrative approaches. But generally, also, so far, they’ve been pretty shoestring in their budgets, and their production values are not the best. Now your show is very polished. You’ve got high resolution, very cinematic photography. You’re using drones and GoPros. Sometimes there are national broadcast quality graphics, data visualizations, animations that you’re using. And now from what I’m told, you’re putting this show together with a staff of three people. So, how the hell is that possible?

First of all, it’s not quite three people. I would say we have a core team, editorially, a little over half a dozen people. So, you know, we’re talking about me, obviously, our senior producer, our executive producer, a sort of stable of really smart, really resourceful producers who have to be able to do anything and everything at the same time. But the more important thing about the size of the team—because that is still a very small team to pull off all of the things that you just mentioned—the important thing to remember is that none of this would be possible if it were literally just us, if it were just this core team.

We live within an ecosystem of a much larger corporation, right? The CBC. And so, it’s not unusual at all. In fact, it’s quite common for us to kind of pull on different aspects of the corporation to help us out on a case-by-case basis as we build stories.

You raise drones, for example. We don’t have a dedicated drone pilot or team. I wish we did. That would be a lot of fun. But CBC certainly does have a dedicated drone team, which gets deployed in all manner of ways, spread across all manner of shows at different times of day and different days of the week. And so, we can tap into that.

That’s on the story where we most recently used a drone. This was a story that we did about Ontario’s Green Belt, just sort of this vast tract of land in this province that has legally been protected as green space to stave off the ever-encroaching housing developments that that we need more of, honestly. But there was a provincial plan to kind of throw that on the back burner and say, yeah, we’re actually going to build houses there because we need housing. And, you know, getting that that together wasn’t just our team’s dedicated shooter because we do have one of those. But also, we pulled in videographers from the system as well to help shoot that.

We had two drone pilots on the scene. Our producer, Drew Nguyen, was sort of the mastermind architect of the whole thing in terms of sort of pitching the story, envisioning how it would play out, making sure the execution was rock solid. He was doing shooting, too. And, you know, all of those shots in the van that you can see in the story, that is a whole story unto itself, how to get something like that off the ground. And it does take time. It’s not easy to do. It’s not a one-day turnaround, that’s for sure.

It has the appearance of being a day-turn story. It all happens within the course of a day. I’m glad you landed on this this particular episode because I want to delve into that a little bit more closely as an example of how you’re able to pull this off on a streaming news show. I mean, in 24 minutes, you cram in a lot of historical context about this watershed area. There’s a sideline explainer about the complexities of urban development in there. You’re shooting in multiple locations. It’s a daylong road trip with outside reporters there kind of carrying the narrative along. Can you talk in more detail about how that particular thing came together, why you decided to have two outside reporters, for instance, kind of telling you the story in this dialogic kind of way in the van as we’re driving to the site?

Those two reporters, I mean, my hat’s off to them. They were the backbone of the whole story. And our segment that we built on our program was built off the foundation that they had done in their own journalism. For us, it was a no brainer. I mean, they’ve been on this story, following all of the developments of the Green Belt, for years. For us, it was a clear decision. These are the two people who we want on this story.

You point out that the narrative looks like it’s really shot over a day. It actually was shot over one day because that’s just the way it had to unfold. But the whole process from start to finish, I think we started seriously looking at it in mid-November, and it wasn’t until close to two months later that the story aired in its final form.

Now, that’s not to say that the story took two months to do, because the other thing about having a small team is that you can never have any one person only working on one thing. We’re all we’re all juggling at least three things. Just the other day, I was shooting interviews and segments for five different stories in a single day and, you know, had everything to do with, again, vaccines and housing and gun law in Canada and the buyback. There’s just so many things. But that’s all of our lives. We’re all doing that at the same time. From inception to final product is two months.

We always start with a an absolutely crippling amount of research because we know from the get-go what the topic will be. And we might even know what question we want to try to answer. But if you’re ever going to approach a point where you can really concisely and efficiently and effectively explain something as complex as the Ontario greenbelt and all of the history and the legal context around it, if you’re ever going to be able to do that to an audience, you better make damn sure that you know that story inside and out. And so, we start with research.

And on that story in particular, I mean, our first go at it, I remember we were having a big team meeting and there are so many elements that were in place and it had all the makings of a great story. And a few of us just looked at it and said, you know what, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I don’t think we have it all. I think we actually just still need to spend more time figuring it out before we shoot even a single frame. And so that planning process might have took place over the course of one week or two weeks with lots of other things bubbling in the background because we are a daily show.

Then comes the logistical planning. I was talking to my producer, Drew, who again was the architect of all of this, and I was asking him, the shot in the van — how much planning does that kind of a thing take? I knew we had to do something in the van because it literally takes an hour to get out there. So, you want to have some kind of conversation and turn it into a journey.

But he looked at our vehicle stock at CBC, and none of them were really big enough for the kind of rigging that we needed to do to get all of the different camera angles because we’re three people talking in the van. You need a bit of space to have a truly dynamic conversation. So, he had to rent a van. And then and then once you rent the van, you’ve got to figure out, okay, so how do we actually rig these cameras in a way that that makes sense, but also in a way that we can power them properly, like even when the car is off, that they’ll be reliable for hours at a time, essentially for the whole day, because we’re going to be shooting all day. That work alone took half a day to sort of figure out all of those logistics.

And then there’s the drone shots and the location shoots. And, you know, when you take all of the editorial and you take all the research and planning that goes into it, all of the technical planning involved. I won’t lie. It’s it is a big, big job that you can only really pull off when you have exceptionally talented and enthusiastic people, which we’re very lucky to have.

Well, the word daunting keeps ringing in my head. I think we need to show people a clip of this particular piece, so let’s look at that here.

It seems like the way you’re making this tractable is you have multiple stories going on at once at various levels of conception or production. This is not a do one, finish it, move on to the next. It’s not a linear crawl through five days of stories. It’s really forecasting out almost months in advance to get this done. What are the criteria that are starting to emerge for you, for how you select stories to work on? What seems to lend itself best to the kind of approach that you’re developing?

It’s funny, I still remember this old rule that that I learned all the way back when I was in university, as just a fledgling baby journalist. And it’s called the “SIN” rule. And it’s not what it sounds like. It has nothing to do with sin as such. It’s just an abbreviation for: Is the story significant? Is it interesting and is it new? And that’s sort of like basic news judgment, right? And so, we take that. But also, when we’re looking at stories, I guess there are a few other criteria that we consider.

A big one is whether it is national in scope. And it’s funny that we just talked about the Ontario greenbelt because you could argue that well, no, it’s more local, regional. But the implications of that I think are quite national in scope. The idea that a government could protect a parcel of land and then with sort of a swoosh of a pen decide, well, no, actually, we’ve changed our mind. That protection can be compromised.

Well, there are strong intimations in that story that they’re colluding with developers.

There’s certainly a back story there as far as how the provincial government arrived at specific parcels of land and who may or may not have been involved in those discussions about which ones would be up and the sales and transactions that preceded the announcement that housing would be built on the greenbelt. There was a complicated backstory there. But national interest, something that people are actually talking about.

We cover stories all the time, and sometimes I think it feels like we cover them because we simply feel like we ought to cover them because they’re sort of institutionally important. No knock on covering those sorts of stories, but I think we also just try to ask ourselves, especially in a streaming environment where people aren’t necessarily going to watch you just because you’re on.

When I think of television, it is somewhat more of a passive medium, right? Where you turn on the channel, you watch your favorite show and you’re sort of there, right? For the most part, people channel surf, but you’re sort of there. That’s what you sign up for. Streaming is different and any on-demand, digital viewing is different because — and I’m guilty of this myself — if you lose my interest for, you know, even five seconds, hell, if your thumbnail and your title is less than groundbreakingly attractive, then I just might not give you the time of day.

Making a note to myself to have a really good thumbnail choice.

Yeah, get my good side, please, I beg of you. It ties back into what I said at the outset of this interview, which was, you know, when we were thinking about our program and what value we could actually deliver to the audience. Because of my sensibilities and what I’m interested in, it seemed like a really straightforward and no-brainer of an idea to go with an explainer-type show.

We are always looking for those stories that we feel like are being either fundamentally misunderstood or where there is so much rich context just underneath the surface that if only we could just bring that out just a little bit, we could really give people an enhanced understanding of what’s actually at play. And doing that is not easy. I mean, it requires a ton of diligence and a ton of research and rigor. But that’s the goal. That’s what we’re trying to do.

And to that point, to come back to transparency, which we touched on earlier … in the clips, you see other members of your team, including your photographer, on camera. We watch you literally gathering the information as the stories are unfolding. How are you thinking about that deliberately, constantly, as you’re putting these pieces together? How is that something that’s a conscious effort to include?

I think it goes back to this idea that our audience, they don’t just want to be told things, right? They don’t want to be lectured. I mean, who does, right? And so, the idea is to try our best. I’m not going to pretend like I have this all figured out. We are still very much a news show and we still consider ourselves to be in the piloting phase in a manner of speaking. So maybe if you asked me this question tomorrow, I’ll have a different answer for you.

But I think bringing people along for the journey, it helps them understand not just the facts that you’re spitting at them, but how you arrived at that. And that very much fits into what I think is a real sort of failure of the current media and information landscape where it is just so exceedingly hard to get good, credible information.

I think back in the day, it was easier for us as journalists to do the legwork and then to present the story. And people were more likely to take that at face value. I don’t think that’s so much the case anymore. I think for a lot of people, their instinctive reaction is to challenge and to question because whatever information you’re presenting may not fit in with their already established worldview, which is fine.

But it means that for us as journalists, we have to work doubly hard to, again, not just present the information, but to show all of the hoops that we have to jump through so people can judge for themselves whether that information is credible. And then hopefully if we’ve done a good enough job, then they will come to that conclusion.

But, you know, when you talk about our effort to bring in producers onto the program, that that was also a pretty intentional decision because they’re just bloody smart people and they do so much of the legwork on a story. Often, the producer will know more about the story than I ever could. But it was also just a bid to be different to decouple and detach ourselves from what we typically see on a conventional television newscast. And to signal to the audience that you are going to get a different kind of program here where we’re much less concerned with whether everyone is prim and proper and has their makeup and their hair done and more concerned with just having a real conversation.

Because, again, we don’t want to talk at you. We don’t want to talk around you. We want to talk to you.

Well, as you said, it’s early days, but people also like to know what where the mistakes have been. What have been your missteps so far? Where have you had to course correct even from the beginning?

Yeah. So, I mean, I would say a big challenge for not just for us, but for any show sort of this ilk is timeliness and trying to get our stories out in that perfect window where, you know, a big news event happens. We need to take time to research, to contextualize. It’s not like we can just do breaking news. Our purpose is not as explicitly do breaking news, but we need time to build the story. But we have to deliver enough of a product of value that goes deep enough under the surface that people who have already gotten from newscasts and from headlines on Twitter that they feel like there’s sort of real value there. But we’ve got to do it while they’re still interested in the story.

I still remember the slow burn of the Russia invasion in Ukraine. There had been this massing of tension along the border. And the moment the invasion started, it was clear that this was going to be something of world-changing proportions and that there would be so much to unpack. And yet I think it was within days or maybe a week, I felt like I noticed an observable drop off in interest in terms of the type of coverage that that outlets were doing, but also people’s capacity and willingness to stay tuned in to the story. That’s just our world now.

I mean, attention spans aren’t quite what they used to be, but the world moves so much more quickly and it’s hard to keep people’s attention. So, you know, is it enough for us to come back to a story a week later, two weeks later? Sometimes it is because if you freshen up the angle, I’m probably going to click on that story because I still remember the story. But hitting that sweet spot, you know, which I actually think is sort of next day, two days later, three days later at most, is really hard to do again when you are a small team and when you’re trying to add as much value as we are trying to add to stories all the time. That’s one thing that I think has been quite challenging.

Lastly, what are you hearing back from audiences so far? What are they telling you about what they think of the show and how are you measuring success here? What are your metrics?

That’s a great question. Let me answer in three parts. So, what am I hearing from folks? Overwhelmingly positive, which is which is really nice to hear in this media landscape where sometimes nastiness trumps other sentiments. I’ve been hearing a lot about how people like the vibe of the program and the fact that we can do more with a story than just, here’s a minute of set up and context and then here’s an interview that we’ll have. We’ll talk to someone smart about it. We really try to go further than that.

And the breadth of stories, I think, is something that people also appreciate, because, again, we’ve done stories about the pharmaceutical industry. We’ve done stories about cryptocurrency. And the crash of FTX not too long ago. And then we’ve done stories about grocery food prices and about Christmas movies and about nonalcoholic drinks. The range is huge and that’s something that’s actually been quite a joy to tap into, where I think on conventional TV and on a conventional newscast, the range of stories that you might cover might be a little more constrained and a little more limited. But we really do feel like the sky’s the limit. And it feels like audiences are responding.

The second part of your question about how we measure success is a good one. And I would answer that in two ways. The easy way is by numbers. That’s something that, you know, we always have to have at least one eye on, because if people aren’t watching your content, then why are you making it? I wouldn’t be able to give you a target number because I don’t actually know what a good target would be. And there are many people above what I do who give that question a lot of thought.

But look, our very first episode, we had, I think 150,000 views just on YouTube alone. And that doesn’t take into account our other distribution channels, whether it’s on social or online, through our apps or the actual live audience watching the FAST channel on their smart TVs. And we’ve had other episodes that that have performed similarly well. And those are pretty good numbers considering that we haven’t really done much of any promotion of the channel and of the program in a big, bold outdoor way. So, for a new program that’s still kind of finding its feet, we’ve been having a pretty good response.

But the other way I measure success and maybe the way that it’s more important to me personally is by the content that we produce. So, you know, if I compare some of the first episodes that we’ve done compared to some of the most recent episodes that we’ve done, I think there’s a world of difference in terms of the rigor that we apply, the depth to which we go in the stories, but also how much of a sort of experiential journey we try to make those stories so that it’s a watchable, understandable piece of journalism.

The CBC as an organization is in a very big, transformative moment itself, and you’re moving towards a kind of digital-centric future, or to some extent it’s already there in the present. I wonder if your colleagues on the linear side … part of the success, maybe another metric for success here is how much they’re leaning in and watching the way you’re tackling these stories, and that some of these ideas are adaptable to some degree to a linear broadcast.

They all are. Absolutely. And, you know, this was one of the most fundamental premises that was explained to me when I first signed on to this project. I won’t lie, it was a sort of bittersweet decision to leave The National in order to work on this program, a brand-new program that didn’t exist on a channel that barely existed. And, you know, the way it was framed to me and that I’ve come to believe is that this is very much trying to chart a path for the future of all broadcasting and journalism in our space, in this news space. And I have no doubt that that other folks are watching what we’re doing. They hopefully won’t make the same mistakes that we make.

This is very much a learning experience, not just for me, but for everyone watching. No one should be under any illusion that that streaming and digital and social … this is the future. This is very much the future. But the present is very much sort of where we’re at right now in terms of millions of people who still watch television and it is such an important resource and such an important part of our corporation.

So, you know, this is a part of the CBC that continues to thrive. And at the same time, we’re sort of trying to figure out, OK, so what is the future direction that we do need to head in and what are the lessons that we can learn, hopefully that that we all come out of it a little better and the audience having been a little better served because of it.

Well, in the U.S. you can watch About That as a live stream on the CBC News Explore channel on Roku and Tubi. It’s on at the same times in the U.S. as in Canada, Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. Eastern Time, live with repeats at 4 and 7 p.m. Eastern. You can also watch episodes on the CBC News YouTube channel, and I encourage you to do so. Andrew Chang is the show’s host and it’s been a real pleasure talking with you today.

A lot of fun to talk to you, too. Thank you, Michael.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on our YouTube channel as well as a TVNewsCheck.com, your continuously updated news source on the television business. We’re back most Fridays with the new episode. Thanks for watching and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: CBC’s ‘About That’ Elevates Explainer News For Streaming appeared first on TV News Check.

Heyward, a research professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication — and a past president of CBS News — is author of a new report, with colleague Len Downie Jr., called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms. In all, some 75 experts across the news worlds of television, newspapers and digital pureplays were consulted, and the results frame up the status-quo reenforcing problems with objectivity and urge for greater diversity and open newsroom dialogue to push towards less misleading and more trustworthy ends.

In this Talking TV conversation, Heyward parses the problems with objectivity, the complications of social media interweaving with journalism and how station groups have been wrestling with evolving towards post-objectivity goals.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: For decades, objectivity has been the gold standard for most newsrooms. But many newsroom reformers today say it’s a deeply problematic, fundamentally flawed idea. What’s more, it’s an unattainable and misleading goal. Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, now a research professor at the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University, is the co-author, along with Leonard Downie Jr., of a new report that confronts head on the cracks in objectivity’s facade. That report is called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, I’ll be talking about the problems with objectivity and the qualities that this study posits newsrooms should be oriented towards instead. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Andrew, to Talking TV.

Andrew Heyward: Thanks so much for having me, Michael.

Well, this is long overdue. I’m very happy to have you on today and to be talking about this report which has just come out, a report which begins with the premises that objectivity is outmoded and problematic. Why?

Well, your introduction began with the same premise, I think, as you said, a lot of people have come to that conclusion. By the way, it’s important to state that fairness and accuracy are more important than ever. What the report argues is that it’s the standard of objectivity as a proxy for those that’s become problematic. And that’s because increasingly people are seeing it as a the too-narrow lens with which to approach journalism, as though there’s only one way to look at the world.

And for many decades that was the way of the establishment that ran journalistic organizations and an increasingly diverse newsroom serving an increasingly aware and diverse population that one way of looking at the world no longer seems credible.

We may think that we’re doing a great job being objective, but the public obviously doesn’t agree. Given that trust in journalism has been declining, what we try to do in the report is lay out some contemporary, credible standards that achieve trustworthiness without relying on a word that we think is no longer believed either in the newsroom or on the street.

You argue that our common notion of objectivity that we’ve had just reinforces the status quo, which, as you said, largely skews to the vantage point of older, straight white males. How is that working?

How did that work? You mean?

Can you explain that dynamic?

I think, certainly in the newsrooms where I was trained, you had a very hierarchical, top-down structure where the editor, who was usually, to your point, a white male, really determined what was news and what wasn’t, what the tone of the news was, what we covered and how we covered it, and everybody hewed to that model.

There were some attempts to diversify the newsroom, but when people who were different were recruited, they were then, in my view, sanded down to fit the preconceived notion of what the culture demanded, kind of an ironic consequence of attempting diversity, but failing because it’s not diverse. If everybody’s the same, even if they are of different genders, races, sexual orientations, and so on.

And so, you posit that newsroom diversification across multiple criteria — gender, race, sexuality, religion, educational, background, regionalism — all of that figures as very important towards transcending objectivity and replacing it with something more relevant and important. So, what exactly is that thing?

First of all, you made a great point in your question, which I don’t think we emphasize as strongly as we should have in the report, which is we’re defining diversity broadly exactly as you say, not just race, gender, but religious background, educational background, income, geography. And you’re starting to see our newsrooms adopt that same approach.

And the reason it’s important is it creates a conversation in the newsroom, assuming that the culture is a healthy one, that allows for these conversations that really reflect the population you’re trying to serve and allows you to connect with a more diverse set of consumers.

One of the most interesting problems that we have in the news business is all the people who aren’t watching or aren’t reading. Well, there’s a reason for that. And I think a better community connection fostered by a newsroom that’s more aware of the diverse needs of the community is one way to attract the people who aren’t attracted now.

None of that is to say, and we’re not arguing for subjective journalism or advocacy journalism. The idea is that you have this robust conversation in the newsroom that helps inform story selection, how stories are done. But at the same time, when you go out the door, you’re still committed to accuracy, context and fairness.

So those are the key things: accuracy, context, fairness? That’s what’s replacing objectivity?

Yeah. And what we’re replacing, I think, we hope to replace is the word to the extent that to your point, the word has come to represent a kind of monochromatic, single narrow lens through which the world is seen. We’re not replacing the idea that you owe your news consumers fair, accurate, responsive, contextual reporting. We just believe that a different kind of newsroom culture is the way to achieve it.

You also raised the word empathy in the report. Is that one of the goals as well?

Yes. We interviewed more than 75 experts for the report. I did use that word. We were struck by it at first, but I started thinking about it more to the degree that it means identifying with the people you cover. I think there’s value. I don’t want to overstate it because it could slip over into pandering or into a kind of, you know, bias. But empathy in the sense that you are seeking multiple perspectives in your reporting and understanding multiple points of view, which doesn’t mean that you have to reflect all of them in the final product.

There’s still going to be journalistic judgment and editors that end up honing a report to what you believe is to use the Bernstein/Woodward formulation, that best available version of the truth. So, empathy is just one tool. I like the word responsiveness. Responsive to a multiplicity of sources, as opposed to going out with a preconceived point of view and reinforcing the status quo in your reporting.

Yeah, because empathy struck me as a troubling kind of … I mean, it’s a great human characteristic, but it does kind of immediately start going down subjective pathways.

And I think you have to be careful about that. I agree that empathy, you know, might not be the right word and should certainly be used sparingly. I think it was used in the report by Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The New York Times. So, again, I’d like to make a distinction between the conversations in the newsroom, which traditionally in the newsrooms that I’ve worked in don’t happen very much, and the reporting process and the editing process.

Now, to be fair, you can’t have a debating society around every story. You still have to go out the door and bring stories back, fill the newscast, or whatever your medium might be. So, we don’t want to create a kind of, you know, Montessori school where everybody’s weighing in on every story. But the notion of a newsroom where people can speak truth to power, including the power within the newsroom, as well as speaking truth to power when you’re holding the powerful accountable, we think it’s a healthy change.

Just to come back to something you said a couple of minutes ago, I’m glad you brought this up. I think you said about 75 different experts were consulted for this report. It really is well-sourced. I mean, you did a number of interviews, I think, of people we’ve interviewed in this publication before many times. And you’ve got a great diversity of people who are weighing in on this subject as part of that report, which is very important.

I wonder, how do you thread the needle of bringing your lived experiences, your subjective identity, to a story and maintaining fairness? I mean, I guess what I’m asking here is about the idea of bringing one’s full self to reporting, which comes up explicitly several times in the report, while tempering the biases or the predispositions that we all have?

It’s certainly a needle that one has to thread. I don’t think we have to stick a camel through the needles eye, but it is something that newsroom leaders have to be aware of. In the report, a couple of news leaders have commented on this very well. Scott Livingston of Sinclair or Sean McLaughlin of Scripps both made the point that it’s tricky. In Scott’s case, he wants a very, very lively conversation in the newsroom, where people do bring their identity, their full selves to that discussion. And the way he put it is you leave your bias at the door when you leave to go out on the street.

In the case of Sean, he acknowledged that there is an intellectual and creative tension there, that we want people to bring their expertise, the expertise that’s informed by their own lives and their own backgrounds to the journalistic process, but not result in bias. That’s why I don’t think editors are going to go out of business any time soon. I think the awareness that this is both a power but also a potential problem if it bleeds over into advocacy reporting, is something that newsrooms have to confront.

Well, it seems like having internal committees, councils and affinity groups is an essential part of building the apparatus for a post-objectivity-oriented newsroom. But, you know, as you said, that can kind of devolve into a Montessori, distributed approach. And it might just be it might impair you on the day-to-day needs of a newsroom. How in the process of compiling this report did you see that applied to best effect?

I think it’s early, Michael, to say how it’s applied, and I agree that’s a potential problem, although if you think about it, most newsrooms do have institutional moments when people can talk about the news and how they’re going to cover it. Even though what I’ve written about, you know, the morning meeting at a TV station, not necessarily as being something that might to some degree need to be modified. There still are editorial sessions.

And to the degree that you give you a reporters and other journalists, a voice in the newsroom without creating chaos or, you know, such an emphasis on consensus that you end up not being able to produce a newspaper or a digital news site or a TV show, this will fail.

I think there’s a burden on leadership here, and I think we are going to need either a new kind of news leader or a news leader who embraces these ideas and sets a tone where it’s appropriate to say what’s on your mind. It’s appropriate to bring your full self to the office. But at the same time, there’s a shared mission that we have to get a fair, accurate, contextual, responsive news product produced.

Wendy McMahon, who’s the co-president of CBS News Stations, talked about creating a safe space in the newsroom. I like that idea. And she speaks in the report about people who actually have to wrestle with these ideas. And I think we sent mixed signals because we do say, you know, bring yourselves to work. And then we say, but whatever you do, don’t give the viewer or listener reader the impression that we’re biased. I think embracing these contradictions and tensions is an important part of leadership.

Without necessarily reconciling them, because it’s sort of a scrum that’s always going on in inches.

I think they have to be reconciled to the degree that you have to have a product at the end of the day. And I also think, there’s breaking news. There are critical issues in the community that need to be covered. I think it would be a shame. And you didn’t ask this directly, so forgive me if I’m wandering from the track.

I think it would be a tragedy if a new rigid orthodoxy replaced the old rigid orthodoxy, or suddenly this became, you know, an excuse for only a new way of seeing the news, but only that one new way. You know, there’s a danger that people will say, oh, well, here they go. They say news has to be woke. Or, you know, the only way to define diversity is by more people of color, LGBTQ+ and so on.

As I said before, a broad definition of diversity is what makes diversity a superpower. And we don’t recommend — we even have a line in the report about this substituting what we thought was a rigid orthodoxy of yesterday for a new orthodoxy of tomorrow.

Right. You just mentioned a few different groups: Sinclair, E.W., Scripps, CBS News and Stations. Are there any other standouts that you have identified so far that are wrestling with particular rigor with this and maybe making some significant inroads around more inclusive reporting and editing?

I actually I think every group is doing it. I don’t mean to give a mealy-mouthed answer to a perfect question but having been a reporter on local TV news for several years as part of the Cronkite News Lab, I’ve gotten to know all the groups, and I don’t think there’s anybody who isn’t wrestling with these issues.

We also have interviews from Tegna. We have interviews from NBC on the network side. We try to represent a broad array of television and newspaper editors. Len Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post, the co-writer of this, interviewed many of the most prominent newspaper editors, and we interviewed heads of digital news sites as well.

I think everyone is wrestling with it. What we tried to do at the end of the report is codify these findings into a set of really brief, simple recommendations, which we hope taken in concert will help newsrooms move in the direction that we’re recommending.

Yeah, let’s touch on that in a second. But first, social media has complicated everything, and many newsrooms have struggled to develop and maintain effective policies with regards to journalists in their expression of personal beliefs. So, there’s obviously a spectrum here, but it’s very complex and fluid. What are you finding as some of the best practices there, and what are your own recommendations around expression of the individual, of the full self of the journalist on social?

Well, complex and fluid are two perfect adjectives for this, and you’ll see multiple news leaders in the report saying pretty much the same thing. We certainly do not have a firm point of view on what social media policy ought to be. Len and I are conservatives — small C — on this issue. And we say so in the report. We are in agreement with some of the news leaders we spoke to who believe that social media is not a place where journalists should be allowed to express their personal opinions and that there’s no separation between their personal accounts and their news accounts. They still represent the organization and that can impair the ability of the news organization to seem fair to its consumers.

So, that said, there are other news organizations, especially some of the digital startups now, and nonprofits that actually were organized around particular missions or particular areas of focus. And if they choose to reflect those missions and areas of focus in their social media policy, we leave that up to the individual newsroom.

But I think the trap is to be murky about it or to be hypocritical, except to say to journalists, we want people to get to know you and know all about you, and then, oh, be careful. Make sure they don’t have any idea how you feel about things.

Acknowledging the complexity of that and working with your individual journalists in the newsroom to work your way through that rather than having really strict rules is probably where we need to end up. But I do think there’s a danger that unfettered opinion-making on social media is not going to be good for creating trustworthy news. That seems almost obvious to me.

The related issue is identity. We certainly don’t believe that people should be precluded from covering stories because their background might somehow overlap with the sources or characters in the story, but obviously it’s between them and the editor to make sure that that doesn’t translate into bias. So again, they may be even more qualified to understand a particular story because of their background. That doesn’t give them the right to be biased or to express an opinion about it.

It seems like you can have a whole separate report just drilling into this issue.

If the world clamors for a sequel, we’ll see what we can do.

Well, you end the report, as you mentioned, with a six-point playbook for trustworthy news. One of the points is transparency. So how can and should TV reporters pragmatically and responsibly show their work?

You’re starting to see newsrooms experiment with this. And this is where I think digital media is a huge opportunity, not just a website, but, you know, TikTok, YouTube. There’s a way for the reporter to share what she’s doing and explain what it takes to get a story. You can bring some of that into your on-air product and you sometimes see that.

But reporting is hard and it’s often frustrating. And for too many years we actually did the opposite, Michael. Television was made to seem like magic. It just kind of appears. And we’ve conditioned the viewers to believe that the extraordinary technology that allows for us to be live anywhere, for example, is now taken for granted. And yes, it’s a lot easier than it used to be. But the I think transparency about where a story came from, what the difficulties were in getting it, why a certain person might not have it, might not have been interviewed or might not have agreed to be interviewed.

I think we’ll just increase trustworthiness and we’ll let the viewers, users, listeners understand more about the process. And it’s kind of it’s the opposite of The Wizard of Oz. It’s do pay attention to the man behind the curtain because I think the process itself sheds light on why news stories come out the way they do. And it’s healthy to have that light shine in the newsroom.

Just to just to drill a little bit further into that. I mean, if you do that on the air, you’re going to have to crack open the length of a story. It doesn’t seem like there’s any other way around that. And then what would that look like, you know, on air and then on the other side, online. I suppose maybe you could have like an annotated version of the story. I mean, what would be pragmatically some of the ways that that might look like? I’m thinking of Tegna’s Verify as an on-air example of how this is going on now. But do you have other thoughts?

Well, Verify is an excellent example. And as you know, that’s been an expanding franchise for Tegna, a very successful one. So, I think everything you suggested is a good idea. I think on the air we’ll come back to cracking open the story, which I’d love to see. But as I said a minute ago, you know, digital media is much more forgiving in terms of the length of time. You can have not just an annotated version of a story, you could publish when appropriate interview transcripts. You could also use, as I said, YouTube or TikTok to for the reporter to speak directly to people who are interested about how the story was done.

You could very simply and with very simple production values, have explainers about the genesis of a particular piece. I think cracking open stories would be great. I don’t see why everything has to be a minute 15 or minute 30. We’re starting to see some change there. But as we know from the television world, stations are being asked to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources, more and more newscasts. I think the viewers would stay for longer stories if they’re interesting and shedding light on how the story was done. Again, not in a narcissistic, self-absorbed way, but in a way that actually helps explain the journalism involved could be very compelling if done properly.

What I would suggest to, you know, my friends in the different station groups is try some experiments. You know, try some. You can certainly experiment like crazy on the digital side but try some on your broadcasts and see what happens. And you’re starting to see this a little bit around the country. And I think you’re going to see more.

It does seem, when I talk to people all the way up to the C-suite and news management at station levels, there’s a greater tolerance for the idea that you’re not hemmed into a minute 30 anymore and that if the story warrants that there is some wiggle room there. So, perhaps we will see more of that. 

You know one of our points, one of our recommendations, which may seem sort of obvious, is I remember a New Yorker cartoon where the catcher goes out to the pitcher and says, strike him out. So, maybe this is in that same category. But one of the recommendations is to do more original and enterprise reporting. So much of television news is focused, in my view, on immediacy rather than importance, recency rather than relevance.

I think the stories again, in all these recommendations are meant to tie together into a holistic plan for a newsroom. And in this case, going out and exploiting the community connection that a more diverse newsroom allows exploiting in the good sense of the word, having more contextual reporting, more responsive reporting, making sure that you at least are aware of multiple perspectives, even though, as I said earlier, they’re not all going to be reflected in the given report.

Then having some transparency about the reporting that you did and how you made the decisions that you made for the final story, I think could all be very compelling and to the degree that we get away from. Wendy McMahon says there are fewer stories from the police scanner and more from the street.

I think that’s a very good way to think about it, and it’s kind of more of a bottom up rather than a top down, rather than the editor saying, Oh, I heard that on the scanner. Go. It’s the reporter comes in off the street and says, here’s what’s really going on in that neighborhood. And the beat system, which again, some stations are starting to bring back, is another key ingredient of this.

Most stations don’t have the resources to have full time beats across multiple areas. So, I’m advocating hybrid beats where you’re a beat reporter, you’re a general assignment with a specialty and beat reporting leads to more enterprise reporting and all the other things we’re talking about.

You just mentioned CBS a couple of times. Wendy McMahon. I know they do that community-based reporting at a number of their stations and Detroit, which just launched, is heavily community-based.

Yes. And ABC also has been really a pioneer in community-based reporting, including young community-based reporters who are based in neighborhoods, just the way people might have been, you know, based at the Pentagon.

Right. Well, the report is called Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Andrew Heyward is one of its authors. Thanks for talking with me today.

Great pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

And you can find a link to the report with this post. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We are back most Fridays with the new episode. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: Welcoming The End Of News Objectivity appeared first on TV News Check.

St. Hilare, an investigative reporter and news content manager at WITI Milwaukee, says since joining the Fox-owned station, she’s been able to organize her PTO for the best work-life balance she’s known in her career. And in her capacity as a news manager, she has also been empowered to lift her head above the daily fray and help find more sustainable career pathways for her coworkers.

In this Talking TV conversation, St. Hilare describes her own journey to a healthier work life in a deeply stressful industry and how WITI’s use of “development days” for reporters, producers and anchors has fostered productivity and creativity and pushed burnout that much further away.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Young people entering the TV news business are increasingly insisting on a better work-life balance. Their older colleagues have sometimes looked on in amazement as they put up red lines around hours they’re willing to work or extra tasks they’re unwilling to take on.

Burnout is, after all, sending people out of the industry in droves. And many newsrooms are still unable or unwilling to stop fanning the flames. Amanda St. Hilaire is one person who may have found a way out of that trap.

St Hilaire is an investigative reporter and news content manager at WITI, a Fox-owned station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In a recent LinkedIn post, she shared her gratitude for finding the best work life balance she’s yet known in her 11-year career. Partly, it’s down to what she characterizes as generous maternity leave and PTO [paid time off] at her station. And partly it’s about a mindset that both she and her station have adopted around setting up support systems and giving people an opportunity to recharge and get relief.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Coming up, a conversation with Amanda St. Hilaire about how a work-life balance has a direct correlation with newsroom productivity and performance. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Amanda St. Hilaire, to Talking TV.

Amanda St. Hilaire: Thanks for having me.

Amanda, as I mentioned at the top, you’ve been in this business for 11 years as an MMJ, an investigative reporter and now also a news content manager. Can you briefly take us through the trajectory of your career in terms of how burnout was historically a concern for you?

Sure. And I’ll say to start, it wasn’t a concern for me because at 21 years old, when I started in this business, I said, I’ll go anywhere, and I’ll do anything. It was that mindset of this is what I have to do to stay in this business.

I felt like my college professors really prepared me for the realities of working in television news, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the impact of that. So, I worked long hours and kind of ascended the way you usually do. Where I started as an MMJ, I moved into a reporter role. I then made a market jump. I helped found an investigative team, and then I came here to Milwaukee for an investigative reporter role. And in the investigative world, we have kind of the blessing and the curse of more time to work on stories. That lends itself to a little bit more of that work-life balance, or as Jill Geissler calls it in her work, work-life harmony. But I still felt looking around our newsroom like there was more we could do.

To your point, we have people who are leaving the industry. We’re losing good journalists, and we have people who are coming in who are saying, hey, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. So, I kind of came into my content manager role knowing it was going to be a hybrid. I’m still a reporter. I still do my investigative reporting, but my job is to look at our overall systems and how they work for our big picture content.

Our assistant news director jokes I’m our chief development officer, so it means I’m looking at how things work and going, do we need to rethink how we do our live hits? Are we giving our field crews enough time to stop and think about their work and build sources? Are we giving producers enough time to stop and think about their shows and learn new things that can help them showcase but also break out of the daily grind?

I want to come back more to your position and what that involves shortly. But first, I want to lock in on your experience with your own PTO time and experience at WITI as opposed to other stations, which I think is part of what enabled you to find this healthier balance in your own life and career. What was it about the station that was different?

The places I had worked prior — and this isn’t a knock on prior news managers — I think for a lot of us this was the way it was. You have four months of the year where you’re not allowed to take vacation because those are “sweeps” months. It seemed like in the corporate structure of things, I’d hit my limit at two weeks of vacation time. And at the time, you know, when I was 21, I thought, OK, I guess this is just what I have to deal with.

It meant, though, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of giving up family time and again I was prepared for that. But when I came to Fox 6 here in Milwaukee, I was kind of amazed that there are no blackout months for vacation time. You can take your vacation year-round. We have a couple of dates that we send out when we know big things are happening so that people know about them in advance. But you’re not blocked out from taking your time off for an entire month at a time.

Then, when we became a Fox O&O looking at the leave options, that’s really for me when things started to change. So having 12 weeks fully paid maternity leave and six weeks of fully paid parental leave, that was huge. And not having to worry about that, starting with three weeks of vacation plus floating holidays, plus sick time separate from that, and then having a trajectory where you could quickly move to that fourth week of vacation time. That was huge as well. So, all of a sudden, this whole world kind of opened up where I didn’t have to use my vacation time only to travel to see family. It made it much more realistic to live further away from family, but it also meant being able to take time just to rest. And that concept was so new to me.

I want to go back to that concept of work life balance, because when we say balance, it implies this like 50/50 split, and I don’t think anyone really has that. Again, Jill Geissler writes a lot about this work-life harmony, when you have different points in your life where different things can take priority. That’s the key.

So, I have parts of my job where I have weeks where I’m staying maybe later than I’d want to on a daily basis. And I’m OK with that because I know there are also other times when I’m encouraged to take time off, time where I can take that rest time when something’s going on with my family or my children, where I can prioritize that. And I’m going to have managers and I’m going to have a structure here that allows me to deal with the ebbs and flows of life.

So, you have time to wax and wane. You believe that a lot of the conversations around work-life balance tend to put the onus on the worker. Why is that problematic?

It’s problematic because it’s not really solving the problem. I remember being on a seminar about work-life balance and burnout, and the person kept just telling us to drink water and do yoga and take deep breaths. And I just felt so dissatisfied with that.

Nothing against yoga or drinking water or taking deep breaths. All of those things are important, but burnout is structural, and there’s so much research about this. It’s about your workload. It’s about how engaged you feel at work, your emotional connection to your work and is what you’re doing sustainable. Deep breaths and stretching aren’t going to take care of that.

And being in a management seat now, I’m extra sensitive to the fact that when we put the onus on the employee, it means then we kind of get to avoid getting at the root of the issue.

OK, so what do newsroom managers need to hear and to understand about why this is their issue, too?

I think sometimes there’s a misconception that if we are questioning the systems that we have in place, that we are somehow coddling people or we are somehow lowering our standards. Rethinking how we do things and building time into the day for people to take a deep breath and do really important aspects of their job that they don’t have time to do when they’re sprinting and day-to-day news that actually allows us to raise our standards, because then we’re keeping good journalists in the business.

We can expect more from people and we can push them to be better and better because we’re giving them the infrastructure to do that. It’s kind of like when I was in high school and I ran cross-country. I was very bad at it. But our coaches had a very regimented training system, and in that training system we had one day that was our off day, but we weren’t doing these crazy hard workouts the other six days a week. We actually had three runs a week that were recovery runs.

And the idea is you’re learning how to recover while you’re still moving, but important work is happening, happening during that built-in recovery time. And the coaches didn’t do that because they particularly cared how we felt. They were they were pretty old-school military. I don’t think they cared very much about how we felt, but it was because they wanted the results and they wanted to get our peak performance. And if we were injured all the time, they knew they weren’t going to get that.

So, when we talk about building recovery time into our systems, we’re not talking about being soft. We’re not talking about holding hands and singing Kumbaya. We’re talking about making sure that we’re setting it up so that we can get the most out of our staff and they can get the most out of their time at the station and the most out of their careers. It’s about the math. It’s about the results.

Let’s come back to your job, then, because what’s particularly interesting is that a large part of your job, the news content manager side, has come now to mirror some of the prerogatives that you pursued personally. You started explaining a little bit about what it entails before, but can you expand on that?

Sure. So, I take a step back and go, is this system working and how does it affect our content? An example of that would be we’ve implemented something at our station called development days. If you’re a reporter today where you’re off the air, if you are a producer, you’re off your show and you have that day. It’s a structured day.

You are watching your own work and evaluating it. You’re watching work from other markets. You’re meeting with managers to get feedback, but also for us to pick your brain about how things are going, where you see areas where we could improve, what are the day-to-day challenges you notice, and are there easy fixes or hard fixes that we can then as a management team, go back and brainstorm and pick apart. You’re meeting with sources or following up on stories. And that’s something for us that has brought a new energy into our staff.

So, we started it with reporters and we’re getting better story pitches. We’re getting reporters who have a renewed excitement about their work and we’re getting people who are ready every day with additional tools to do their jobs really well. Now, it was harder for us to figure this out with producers at first, because by nature, if you’re not producing your show, someone else has to, right? If you’re a reporter, maybe we can do without that one reporter for the day. It’s harder for producers. So, we actually added to our producer headcount and we’re now approaching a space where we’re able to give producers that time more regularly because we have to. It’s not an extra. It’s a necessity.

So, those are the kinds of things that I tool around with. You know, do we need to rethink how, when and why we do our live hits? Is this system working not just for the viewer but also for the employee? And are we getting the most benefit compared to the cost?

And I understand the anchors are going to be able to partake in these development days, too.

Yeah. So, we actually are just wrapping up our first round of anchor development days. We have someone having theirs tomorrow and that’s been really eye opening and helpful as well because they’re in leadership roles in the newsroom and they have a lot of experience that sometimes we don’t fully tap into in the day to day.

So, doing these development days, it helps me understand individual goals and how we can help people meet those. But it also just gives us a bigger picture of what’s happening in the newsroom and how we can work with kind of the natural newsroom leaders that we have in place to have the kind of work environment that we want to have.

What’s the frequency with which you’re able to do these days?

So, reporters, it’s about once a month. With the anchors, we just finished the first round, and then we’re going to evaluate how often we think makes sense for that. And then for producers, the ideal is going to be once a month. I’ll be super transparent with you. That’s not what we’ve been able to do to this point, but with a couple additional hires that are coming down the pike, ideally, it’d be once a month.

What’s the feedback you’re getting from people? You said that reporters are coming in with better pitches. What other sorts of upsides are you seeing so far?

I mean, I was just talking to someone else about this where they said they had gone two years in this industry without getting a single piece of feedback on their work and that coming here to our station in the first two months, they got more than they had in the first two years.

And feedback isn’t just, hey, you need to do X, Y and Z better. It’s here’s what we’re noticing and here’s what you do well. But also, here are some tools that you can use to help you do your job better. So, we have employees who say they feel a comfort in kind of knowing where they stand. It puts them in a position to have regular conversations with managers and not just hearing about when something is bad, but then it’s also unlocking a certain level of creativity.

When you’re sprinting from day to day, there’s just there’s a part of your brain you can’t use when it’s in that mode. And by shifting into this other mode where you can think about things ahead of time, you’re able to create that muscle memory where you can bring more of that creativity into your work.

This all sounds fantastic, but economically, this is not going to be a smooth year for most newsrooms. There’s no political revenue this year. There are very strong economic headwinds. Do you think that newsrooms are going to be able to afford this kind of breathing room in this in a tough year like this? Is it sustainable?

I think we can’t afford not to do it. It’s one of those things where I’m really fortunate I work at a station that is well-resourced and has a long history of prioritizing quality, and that foundation has really helped us. It has put us in a really strong position to be able to do this. When we started rolling this out, it would have been very easy for my bosses to say, Well, if we have room to do this, maybe we don’t need as many people. And that never once came out. It was right away. We believe in this. We are committed to doing this and we’re seeing the results because they could look at the big picture.

You can either do without the employee when they’re calling in sick because they’re burnt out and they’re run down, or they’re disengaged. Or you can do without the employee for that day because they’re actively learning new things and they’re getting re-energized for work.

I would argue, and especially looking at the data, because I’m an investigative reporter, there’s so much research directly linking employee engagement to productivity. By tapping into this pretty innocuous way of engaging people, that that’s actually going to help us through some of those hard times.

Does that mean that some days we’re going to have three reporters and instead of four? And it’s going to be tough to get to certain things? Yeah, it is. But we’d have to do that if that person called out sick anyway. And somehow, we make it work and somehow, we figure it out. Part of it is a shifting of our priorities and the recognition that being off air or being off your show doesn’t mean you’re not working. For so long some of these things have been on the employee to do on their own time, and that’s also led to burnout. And when you bake it into the system, you’re sending a message that says this part of your job is crucial. Meeting with sources is crucial. Thinking about your shows is crucial.

I’m not saying we’re perfect at this. You know, Fox 6 is a wonderful place to work. It is not a utopia. We still have a lot of work ourselves to do in this area, and we don’t have all the answers. And to me, that’s the point. In the same way that managers, we expect our journalists to be curious and to be able to go back and rethink past stories and to be open to where the story takes them.

I don’t think we as managers are absolved from that. I think we have an additional responsibility to do that and to question ourselves. As we keep looking at our systems and how we change them, we’re learning along the way as well.

Well, Amanda, you’ve managed to carve out some space to keep yourself sane while doing this job and perhaps some people listening to your example today might be able to follow suit. Thanks for sharing your story.

Thank you.

If you have a similar story about how you’ve been helping your newsroom become a more sustainable workplace, or if you’ve figured out a good hack to make your job more sustainable for you, share it with us, too. We’d love to hear it. You can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on YouTube. We have a new episode almost each week. And thanks for watching. See you next time. 

The post Talking TV: One Reporter’s Work-Life Balance Win appeared first on TV News Check.

Last week, viewers finally got a look at a news product that has been months in development. What WWJ has tried to deliver is something gritter, less polished and more distributed across its communities than centered in its newsroom.

In this Talking TV conversation, Adrienne Roark, president of CBS stations; Brian Watson, VP and GM of WWJ; and Paul Pytlowany, the station’s news director, lay out the case for what makes WWJ stand out.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: This month, CBS News and Stations has launched a new news operation in Detroit at WWJ. After months of incubation, it’s a hotly competitive market and WWJ will face a number of entrenched and innovative players there. So, how will the station create a compelling enough value proposition to lure viewers?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. Today, conversation with Adrienne Roark, president of CBS stations, Brian Watson, VP and GM of WWJ and Paul Pytlowany news director there. We’ll be talking about what WWJ has up its sleeve to try for momentum right out of the gate.

Welcome, Adrienne, Brian and Paul to Talking TV.

Paul Pytlowany: Morning.

Brian Watson: Hello.

Adrienne Roark: Happy to be here.

Thanks for being here. Adrienne, why launch a news operation in Detroit? And why now?

Adrienne Roark: So, you know, Detroit as we’ve all discussed, is a very strong news market. Viewers want news. They are devoted to news. And it is a market where there is a lot of consumption of news. And it just it just made sense. It just absolutely made sense to stand up a news operation and serve the viewers of Michigan.

I’ve been reading that you intend for this to be a streaming-first newsroom. Paul, pragmatically, what does that mean?

Paul Pytlowany: Our focus is delivering content on the stream that feeds the broadcast in linear time frames. But with the streaming mentality, we have the freedom and the ability to look at news from a different lens. More in-depth stories. Stories that maybe aren’t confined to standard broadcasting stipulations and time frames there. We can actually go into subjects that matter and really focus in and spend the time necessary because we don’t have those time constraints in the linear timeframe.

Right. And I understand that the bulk of your journalism corps is going to be comprised of MMJs, and many of them are embedded in specific communities across the DMA. So, Paul, does that mean that that most of them aren’t going to be coming into the newsroom too often to file? Will they stay out in the field?

Paul Pytlowany: That’s the intent. I mean, we love to see their faces every now and then because it’s a team building exercise as well. But yeah, this allows them to stay out in the field and really dig deep into the communities and the issues that matter most to those that perhaps aren’t being heard.

By keeping them out there, what are you finding about their productivity? Are they generating more story ideas? Are they having more conversations in there in their subset communities? Has it been more productive?

Paul Pytlowany: Absolutely. You see them not having to spend the time to travel into the station to file reports. Technology allows them to really be more efficient out in the field and really kind of get to know the neighborhoods that they serve.

Are their packages being edited in the field?

Paul Pytlowany: Correct. They are shot and edited in the field.

How long were they out there just making contacts and creating relationships with people before you actually went on air?

Paul Pytlowany: Well, it’s been a while as we hire the team. They they’ve been designated into the communities that they’re assigned. And that allows them to really make those connections with civic leaders, elected officials, but more importantly, the people that aren’t being heard. So, we’ve spent quite a quite a bit of time getting to know the communities prior to us launching.

Adrienne, this community-based approach to reporting is a growing staple, I know, across the whole CBS group. But is it fair to say that you’re doubling down on this dynamic in Detroit?

Adrienne Roark: Yes. I mean, this is really, as Paul said, the primary focus of how we are doing news in Detroit.

So, is this sort of what you intend to be a key differentiator for the market?

Adrienne Roark: Absolutely. I mean, really turning neighborhoods into newsrooms.

Brian, it has to be a daunting prospect to launch a sales operation whole cloth in this market amid so much very well-entrenched competition. How are you getting on with that effort?

Brian Watson: Do you mean on news operation or what do you mean by sales operation?

You’ve got your news operation, but you’re selling spots, are you not?

Brian Watson: Correct.

That operation, I guess, has been in place for before you had the news operation. But has that changed at all with the news operation on board now? Has that changed the sales dynamic?

Brian Watson: Oh, absolutely. Once it became official that we were going to be starting news, well, quite frankly, even before that, the ramp up to the official announcement, we began to map out our strategy with our go-to-market strategy with how we were going to position news. Fortunately, you know, we had the pent-up excitement and lessons that we had learned from having to sell against news that we knew that we would convert into the sales strategy for how we were going to sell our news product.

And we’ve just been so overwhelmingly happy with the results that we’ve got from the market. It almost seemed to us in a lot of ways that on the part of our advertisers, they were happy to see a new and fresh voice coming to the market. And so, our pre-sales leading up to launch far exceeded our expectations.

Have you been able to expand your client base because of a news operation coming on board and have new folks in there that you didn’t have before?

Brian Watson: Absolutely. I mean, I was already happy with our team, how we were able to convert what you would consider non-news advertisers to our non-news environment that existed prior. But absolutely. Now we are capturing those news-only advertisers now and in a greater capacity.

We know that the news operation staffed up obviously from zero to what you have now. Are you sharing that number yet? How many people were hired up?

Brian Watson: No specific numbers, only that were comparable from, you know, comparable from a staffing size, but more importantly, output to other news organizations.

Well, have you stepped up any on the sales side commensurate to the news growth?

Brian Watson: No, we already had an overachieving and very productive team in place that that is quite capable of selling this new news product.

Sales have a lot of headwinds this year, obviously, because no elections, recession looming, auto hasn’t exactly had a rebound yet. Has this mitigated any of those headwinds?

Brian Watson: Absolutely. The premium that advertisers place on a news impression is greater than what those time periods are, the dayparts that those newscasts are now falling in. So, we’ve been able to offset and augment, you know, our revenue that we’re seeing from those time periods.

I imagine there’s been no small marketing effort in all of this either to get Detroiters aware of what’s going on. I’m sure you’ve been building momentum. So, where have you been focusing your efforts, Brian, on that so far?

Brian Watson: Well, we’ve been running just a basic awareness campaign that CBS News Detroit is coming. Just leading up to launch in the weeks prior to launch and continuing now we’re changing that now to more of “Hi, nice to meet you” messaging, basically who we are. And that will continue as we move forward before we start getting into really into the nitty gritty of a comprehensive marketing campaign.

Given the community-based nature of the reporting, will the marketing of the station kind of be molded around that? Will it be a different flavor of marketing because it’s a different flavor of news?

Brian Watson: Absolutely. I mean. First of all, we know who we are. You know, we’re new on the block. But we know the whitespace that we’re identified in our go-to-market strategy to execute within that space. You know how we’re going to be bringing in viewers to our station. What you’ll also see is how well woven the brand in the messaging is in our marketing materials outside of the newscast.

But also within the newscast, there is a perfected integration that we see that we’re looking forward to leaning into heavily in the weeks to come. But already it’s started now, if you if you watch our newscasts, you’ll see how we’re really driving home that messaging of converting neighborhoods into newsrooms. You can see that in the different elements that we’ve incorporated already.

Getting back to the news product for a moment, I’ve read that you’re aiming for a more democratic kind of environment where people at all levels will have a say in stories, in the story meetings, rather than a more top-down sort of approach. Paul, on the day to day, how does that look and feel differently in daily meetings and in workflows?

Paul Pytlowany: Well, I think it goes back to the messages being in the communities. They’re there bringing content in and story ideas that they’re hearing from the communities that they’re in because they’re hearing discussions from people that are talking about topics that matter to them at dinner tables and in backyards. So, those ideas are being presented in the editorial meetings and collectively as a group, we talk about those issues and see what really resonates with the producers and what’s coming in from the MSJs. That’s different. Instead of someone just sitting in an office saying, these are the stories I want, go and report it. It goes back to neighborhoods, into newsrooms, instead of vice versa.

Pragmatically, for a morning meeting then, is that a hybrid zoom/in-person kind of affair?

Paul Pytlowany: It’s a combination because our producers are in here, our EPs are in here. And then the MSJs kind of Zoom in as well with their what their topics and their ideas that they are hearing from the neighborhoods that they’re in.

You had mentioned at the top there’s a bit of elasticity with story length because of the streaming kind of digital-first nature of the newsroom. Is that translating onto the air at all to you pushing past a minute 30 with your stories? Are you able to expand and contract a little bit more liberally than other more entrenched newsrooms might do?

Paul Pytlowany: Absolutely. We’re seeing in our in our extensive research that people want to have extended periods of time to tell stories, and our audience wants that as well. And I think that’s what’s perhaps missing in local news today. Absolutely.

Now, as we’re talking, you’re only just a few days into this operation being live on air. What are you hearing with regards to the newscast product so far from viewers? What kind of feedback are you getting, both positive and negative?

Paul Pytlowany: We’ve only heard positive feedback. For example, our one of our sports anchors, Ronnie Duncan, went out to get a sandwich the other day at Jimmy John’s and he already saw people watching the newscast saying, we’re watching. We love what you’re doing already. So, it’s that granular already in the market.

The other word kind of out there, what I’ve read about that newscast is that you’re not going for polish or a slick veneer here. And there’s a more conversational tone in the reporting. In terms of the set and what you’ve got there, does that mean more minimalism in the set or less use of it overall?

Paul Pytlowany: The set’s important to what we’re doing because it’s a working newsroom, right? Everyone’s in the same room working. The assignment desk is there. The producers are back behind the anchors working and producing their shows. So, it really shows how gritty Detroit is, how focused we are and how we’re working together as a team to tell the stories that resonate most with our viewers.

And you have cameras in the newsroom, like on the assignment desk, for instance. You can cut to that if you want to?

Paul Pytlowany: Yes, we do. So, if something is going on, we have another outlet that could contribute and that really shows that the team is multi-skilled. We have team members that perhaps are coming in from different organizations where they were in silos, but they want to grow, they want new opportunity. And this provides them that that avenue to kind of to grow personally, but also to present a product that perhaps isn’t as polished off as, as you mentioned, It’s more that we’re working in your community, we’re working in the newsroom, and we’re able to have many different voices contributing to that broadcast.

And while you’re in the business of eschewing some conventions, are you are you questioning or getting rid of other conventions like the anchor throwing to the reporter in the field and then the toss back or, you know, things that take a lot of time in a newscast and don’t necessarily add anything to it? Are you looking at those things and saying, you know, we don’t need that?

Paul Pytlowany: No, I think it’s important to have that interaction. We need to let people know that we’re here and they’re getting to know us. But I think it’s important to have that relationship and that and that ability to toss to our reporters who are out in the field. Yeah, we’re still doing that as well.

So, Adrienne, you have a view over the whole group or at least a chunk of the group here. You’re watching this develop and seeing how this experimentation takes purchase. Detroit is its own market, it’s got its own vibe. Every market is individual. That said, are you thinking about taking some of the successful elements here that might be deviations from conventional newscasts and applying them perhaps at other stations?

Adrienne Roark: You know, we do that. To answer your question, yes. And we do that with every station. Every station has unique things that they do and also best practices to share that can absolutely be shared across not only, you know, the stations that I oversee, but all of our stations in the group. And we do a really good job of doing that. The general managers and the news directors and the staff talk to each other at each station and really do a great job of sharing a lot of best practices and ideas.

Well, I know that all of your Detroit competitors will be watching very closely and so will the industry at large. So good luck to you out of the gate this month and keep in touch with how things evolve at WWJ. Thank you, Adrienne, Brian and Paul for being here today.

Adrienne Roark: Thank you.

Paul Pytlowany: Thank you.

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 will see you again next week.

The post Talking TV: CBS Goes Live With News At WWJ Detroit appeared first on TV News Check.

Pereira, a Canadian-born former anchor at KTLA and KTTV who also had  a seven-year stint at CNN/HLN (where she co-hosted New Day and hosted MichaeLA), is currently readying her own eponymous talker for fall release with PPI. She says the key ingredient for it — or any other talk show that stands a chance — is the host’s ability to forge a genuine connection with audiences in an age where we’ve all come to feel too disconnected from everything.

In this Talking TV conversation, Pereira expounds on how to come at that sense of connection and how a long career in daily live television can be one of the best foundations for helming a talker.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: The syndication pipeline isn’t thick with talk shows anymore, but Michaela Pereira is an exception. The former KTLA anchor and host of Good Day L.A. on KTTV is currently developing an eponymous show for fall release with PPI, banking on the notion that there’s still room for a good talker, if not a $30 million one.

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 Michaela Pereira about what makes a good talker work and what that genre — and its hosts — need to do to stay connected and relevant for audiences in 2023. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Michaela Pereira, to Talking TV.

Michaela Pereira: Hi Michael, one of my favorite things to talk about.

Michaela, it is a very competitive landscape in talk and there are a lot of well-known bodies on that battlefield. Why do you want to host a new talk show in 2023?

It’s something I’ve wanted, Michael, my entire career. And I think that I have been working towards this moment since the day I realized as the light bulb went off over my head that this was something that I could do and do very well. TV and I came to each other sort of by accident.

But, you know, serendipity, fate, God, whatever you believe in. And so, the culmination of a 30-year career has brought me to this point. And look, I’ll tell you, when people ask me, well, why you? Why now? Frankly, I’ll say, why not me?

I’m a journalist, first and foremost, and I’ve spent most of my career talking to people and interacting with people and hearing their stories. They give their stories to me, and we connect.

And the fact is now I think that’s the thing we need more than anything is to reestablish connection, right? We were so disconnected for so long and are now just trying to remember how to do it again. And I’d like to be part of that conversation. Remind us who we are. I think the time is now.

So, what is your show’s value proposition?

That’s always such a challenging thing to answer, right? I don’t necessarily speak in those terms, But look, I think when I look around the landscape right now, like you said, there’s a lot of big names and a lot of really talented people out there. But the idea that there’s not enough room for all of us I think is misguided. You have a veteran of conversation and connection. 30 years.

I said it before, and I know I keep repeating that. But the fact is I’ve interviewed people, leaders of state, people of note, names that are familiar to all of us. And I’ve also talked to everyday Joes, people that are in their communities trying to figure out ways to make those communities better. Frankly, those are my favorite stories, the people that are looking to fix what’s wrong. Fix what’s not working. People that are trying to make the world a better place for all of us.

So, I’m hoping that we can shine a light on some of those things. Look, it’s not a secret to any of us that things are tough right now. The economy is tough. We’ve had a string of terrible storms and flooding and drought. The climate is in chaos. And I think there’s a lot of stress in individual lives. So, I’m hoping that we can provide an hour a day, a bit of an escape. A bit of home, a bit of comfort, some connection, some warmth and try to get through this thing together.

Now you are known to L.A. audiences, but maybe not as much beyond that market. So how are you going to work with that? How do you introduce yourself to the nation?

Well, I don’t know that is a brand-new introduction. I think my face will be familiar to those who watch CNN and HLN. My six years at both of those networks allowed me great access to folks across the country. And I know that they’re watching. When I look at my comments on my social media, folks are saying hi from all over the place. It’s funny. My friends jokingly say that I collect people and I do that in my personal life, but I think I do that with people who watch and cheer me on in my career, too.

It’s been really remarkable to watch that. Somebody who used to watch me when I was on CHEK-TV in two decades ago still is following along to see how I’m doing. Somebody from when I go home to see my family, people on Vancouver Island will remind me like, Oh, hey, Michaela, how’s Gordie on CHEK around the show that I did nearly 30 years ago

So, CNN and HLN and my time on Vancouver Island, my time on I’m TechTV in San Francisco, I think will really help in terms of a bit of name recognition. But the fact is, I think people are open to seeing something new. And we’re hoping to bring something slightly new. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel here. Television is television. And I think we’re going to try and do things a little bit differently, try to innovate a little bit here and there. And we feel confident that’s going to work.

And it’s my understanding that former anchors or current anchors, people who know daily TV production have a little bit of an advantage coming in to talk shows. How do you see that helping you?

Well, I’ll tell you one thing for sure — you need is stamina. I mean, I’ve spent six hours on the air at one sitting covering breaking news or a special event, a royal wedding or the funeral of a head of state. So, that idea that I can I have the intestinal fortitude and bladder strength, if you want to be silly, but you know what I’m saying? It takes energy.

Anybody that does television and is really good at it, we make it look easy. It’s like how LeBron makes shooting a layup look easy. People that are good at their job make it look easy. But the fact is, it does take a lot of work and it takes a lot of energetic output. Right. So, to be able to do that for two hours at a time, three hours at a time, or four or five or six hours at a time, it takes stamina, and it takes skill, and it takes patience, frankly. So, I think that’s one advantage right off the bat.

The second thing is I’ve been able to carry our two-hour-long broadcast. That isn’t a weight that is unfamiliar to me. It’s very comfortable, live TV. I’m very comfortable with is the same way I am with taped pieces. The first show I ever did in television in Canada, in British Columbia, was a live-to-tape daily show. So, we had that demanding schedule. We had to turn a new show out every day, but it was live to tape. So, we weren’t really having to do heavy editing. It was very much, you know, shooting from the hip, getting it on as quick as you can. Pretty raw, pretty dirty. But it was, you know, it was a great show. It had a great following. So, I think that live element, I think is going to is an advantage for sure.

Right. Now, you touched on this already a little bit, but it does seem like the existential need for any talk show is the host’s ability to connect. I mean, Oprah was the apotheosis of that. And others have reached connectivity to greater or lesser degrees. How do you plan to tap into that? How do you come at that?

Well, look, it’s interesting because it’s not something I have to try to do. I’m infinitely curious. I’m infinitely curious about humans and the human experience and people. I’m what you call a people person with a dash of introvertedness. So, for me, it isn’t an effort to try and connect with people. It’s what I do.

Try leaving a party with me, Michael. It’s impossible. Ask my partner. Try walking down the street with me or go grocery shopping with me. People and I find each other. We connect. So that’s if that’s at our basis, right, if that’s our starting point, we’re not going to have to work very hard. What we’re going to have to do is make sure we set up the show that allows those avenues to me.

So, does that mean I’m in the studio audience? Does it mean I’m in the field talking to folks? More than ever, we’ve understood the need to meet people where they’re at, right? You’re sure there’s aspirational TV, but we also just have to check in with folks. People are struggling. I need to go to where they are to see what’s up, to see what’s going on, connect with them in an authentic way. And the team’s working on different ways, really innovative ways.

I want to come back to that leaving the studio in just a second. But I want to hold on to the authenticity idea for just a second. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night. And it was funny because we were talking about that this interview and a well-known talk show host who I won’t mention… I have to confess, I don’t watch a lot of talk and so I happen to be in a lobby and watching a clip that was live of this show when they had the sound off. I was just sort of watching it in a soundless, pantomimed way, just sort of watching the body language and that notion of relatability. So, she saw the very same clip and happened to bring this up as an example, which is extraordinary. I’ve never seen the show, but she locked into the fact that she thought that this was a great example of this host’s authenticity and ability to connect, whereas I watched the very same clip and thought: This is so performative and so overexaggerated. It’s so frankly, it’s the opposite of authentic to me. And it looked very contrived. So, two people coming at…

But OK, Michael, so you’ve lived long enough to know that two people can witness a scene and have two very different opinions of what happened. Right. And look, that’s the challenge of trying to get a studio audience to like, you know, connect with your show, connect with your product, stay loyal to it; tune in day after day after day, is that people are going to receive it differently. So, you know, I’ve been looking a lot at intention and impact in my own life. You know, I may not have the intention of being rude or being short with you, but if you end up feeling that way because of how I behaved, that’s different from my intention and the impact, right?

We have to be aware of the impact we’re having on people. And so, I look at that. I take that notion and look at what we’re what we’re doing in terms of, you know, working on grabbing an audience. We can have the intention, but we also have to see what’s actually landing.

I have been on TV for a long time. And I know that the thing that I that I do uniquely is that I connect with folks. They see themselves in me. Maybe I’m familiar to them in a way. I’m not sure. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. But time and time again I hear it and I know it. And as much as it sounds hokey, in a way, it’s my superpower, Michael.

So, if for me it comes off as disingenuous, I don’t I don’t know what to say. But I can tell you this is who I am, Right? I know that that has been a challenge because there are actors on TV. Separating fact from fiction and separating truth from, you know, how is somebody authentically and how are they in actuality? But it’s how they make us feel when we’re watching it. That’s what you said. You felt completely different than your friend did. I there’s a Maya Angelou quote that I that I love and I’m paraphrasing. It’s not what you say to people. It’s how you make them feel. And so, look, that’s the thing that we’re going to have to be really mindful of as we do this.

Well, on the flip side of this, what about the audiences themselves? Do you think that they’ve changed or evolved, especially if you’re on streaming?

Oh, look, I realize because I’ve changed, my habits of consuming have changed dramatically. All of us have you know, our habits have changed. How we get the content we consume has changed. Our appetites have changed, our attention levels, our attention spans have changed.

So, that’s one of the reasons why we have talked about the fact the need to innovate how we do this show. We can’t just take the same model, I believe, of a traditional talk show and do it just the same way with a different host and expect different results. So, to me, we have to think of an innovative way to connect, to present it and bring this show to life.

Let’s talk about where the studio fits into that, because it seems you’ve already brought up the prospect of leaving the studio, going to people where they are. Where at this moment, where are you envisioning that playing a role in the show?

Well, I think it’s going to be important to get to people. Look, none of this has been finalized to a point where I can announce it to you. But we’re going to work on how to weave into the into the daily show aspects that are shot and brought to us. You know, obviously, playing on my ability to be out in the field from my journalism experience, obviously, that’ll help us. But I think that I see it daily in the programs so it’s not just studio based.

It also seems to be the case that the more enduring shows now are thinking about their structure a little bit differently. In other words, they’ve built in a more modular construction of the show for social distribution and audience development on other platforms beyond just linear TV. As the show is continuing to get there, how are you thinking about the structure in that way?

We have to consider that. I was having this conversation with a news friend of mine recently and she was lamenting the fact that the station that she worked for (prior to the one she’s in now) that digital was always sort of an afterthought. Oh, yeah, I post this to the web, whatever. We have to understand that … look at how you and I are having a conversation via Zoom over the internet from your place to mine and on different coasts. We’ll post this on digital platforms. The newsletter will go out via email and people will read it on their phones or watch the content on their phones.

So, if this is where we’re spending most of our time, we can’t just be considering the box or the frame on our walls. So, we had this conversation just recently how vital it is to have a robust presence online in digital and make sure that that content is of equal value, because that’s how so many eyes will see it.

When you look at the field that’s out there now and the reticence of many producers to go down this road of new talk shows, what do you think is going to happen in talk over the next couple of years? I know you said there’s room for everybody, but does that mean that that there are going to be opportunities for everybody?

There have to be opportunities. Look, if I understood all of the ins and outs of this and if I had a crystal ball, I would be a very rich woman. It’s hard to say, right? It’s hard to say. There have been so many changes, and I think there were changes that we could have seen coming and then there are other changes that we just didn’t anticipate. There will be opportunity for shows like this. And time will tell where audiences, what they what they drift towards. But we’re going to give them another option that I think will be home for a lot of folks. I’m really excited about it.

All right. Well, Michaela Pereira’s new show, Michaela, from PPI will be debuting this fall. Good luck as it continues to come together. We’ll look forward to seeing it.

Happy New Year to you, Michael.

Happy New Year. And you can watch past episodes of Talking TV on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you next week.

The post Talking TV: For Michaela Pereira, Lots Of Opportunities Remain In Talk appeared first on TV News Check.

Many producer positions remain unfilled. Freshly minted journalism school graduates are trickling, rather than pouring, into the market. And those coming into it are insisting on a greater work/life balance than previous generations would ever have thought to ask for. Many are digging in their heels, feeling good enough about their prospects in adjacent industries to insist.

In this Talking TV conversation, Gary Brown, owner and CEO of recruitment and talent coach firm Talent Dynamics, looks at the industry’s major employment issues at the new year’s outset and how they’re likely to play out, especially if recession’s claws dig deeper.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: It’s a new year, but has the broadcast industry yet been able to turn the page on the Great Resignation? How is hiring still impacted, especially among producers, on-air journalists, anchors and even news directors?

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 Gary Brown, former SVP of Content for Meredith and now CEO and owner of Talent Dynamics, which does placement for TV stations and networks as well as talent coaching. We’ll be talking about the job market dynamics for key newsroom positions in 2023, who has leverage and how they’re using it. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Gary Brown, to Talking TV.

Gary Brown: Thank you. Nice to be with you.

Gary, is the local TV industry still struggling with recruitment and getting recent graduates into the business as we kick off 2023?

I think there’s no absolute answer there, but I would say it’s still not the way it was. I would say, yes, it depends, though. It depends on the location of the station. Lots of different things. Here’s what we know: The amount of journalists coming out of J-schools has decreased over the years. So, you have students graduating from school and getting jobs in top 30 markets as producers, with good experience, but not they don’t have a couple sets of call letters after graduation. So, it is it is still very challenging. Broadcasters, when they’re hiring, they have to move very quickly. The days of giving a week are gone.

Right. One of the biggest shortages that stations and groups seem to have is with producers. How bad is that?

It’s bad. It’s a challenge, I’d say the last year or so. And it continues to be, I mean, depending on who you talk to, you get lots of different answers. Some groups have just decided, well, maybe we don’t need as many producers as we had in the past, or that stations have to get used to not having as many. Others are still being very aggressive, offering signing bonuses, increasing pay to attract them. But it is definitely not fixed. I don’t think it will be fixed for quite some time, to be honest, because it starts at the college level getting people interested in producing.

Well, and obviously they’re finding some problems with their perception of that position. What are they seeing as problematic going into [the job] or are they being warned off?

I wouldn’t say they’re being warned off. And I don’t want to speak in general sense, because I’m sure there are some great journalism schools that are guiding them towards producing TV. But there’s also a lot of push to digital, which I understand, because that is the future. And so, they want to make sure their students are future-proofed, right? So, I think you have a lot of them wanting to do these integrated digital marketing or producer roles, things like that. And linear TV and producing newscasts, be it streaming, be it on TV, be it wherever, we still need those people.

Maybe I should walk back the “warned off” as a phrase, but maybe just getting a more realistic picture of what the job entails. And that job is really hard, isn’t it? It is a very stressful job, a lot of demands and maybe not a lot of gratitude all the time.

Well, you know, it’s interesting, because I started as a producer in Steubenville, Ohio, right out of college, but that was before computers. I’m aging myself, the old-fashioned way. It’s interesting because now with automation, it has made shows much more consistent and easier on the tech side to do. But a lot of the coding and the controls and the cues you have to put in have fallen on the producers to do. And producers are making their own graphics now in a lot of cases, in a lot of places. And not just writing a show. And they’re doing that a lot of times where, you know, 10 years ago you might have had a writer or associate producer assigned to each newscast. There might be none of that now.

So, that producer is taking care of a whole show and then creating their own graphics, making sure all the commands are in there for the automation. And, you know, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. And I’m not taking anything away from anyone else involved. But in many cases, too, those producers are having to make decisions on content, especially after hours, weekends and nights where they’re making the column. Do they cover the story or not?

It’s interesting that you frame automation, which is generally kind of touted as a positive for news production, as somewhat onerous or at least a mixed bag for producers, that it’s not all gravy. Once you can automate something, in fact, there may be an additional burden that falls on producers to have to accommodate what automation demands.

When I produced, we couldn’t make our own graphics. It wasn’t possible. Now it is and it’s like careful what you wish for. And I understand why they do it. And in some ways, there are probably some producers that like it because they own it. It’s theirs. They don’t have to rely on someone else doing it and possibly making a mistake.

But the producing job has changed and evolved quite a bit. It’s more than, you know, writing X amount of scripts and putting a lineup and making sure the tapes get cut. They’re editing video in a lot of cases. There are teasers and things like that, too. It’s a lot, in many cases, producing hour-long shows as well. And so, I’m not trying to take it easy or give them an out. But I think we’ve all come to the realization we’ve asked them to do a lot. We’re asking them to do a lot.

Let’s talk about anchors. It seems that their negotiating positions are not quite the same as they used to be. How has that changed?

Well, I would say this: Generally speaking, our talent, we’d call them, we would always say recruiters. Are they recruiters? Are they going to bring people when they see them on TV? Are they going to make people change the channel to you? Right. Ultimately, you love to have that. In many places there are still anchors that have that ability, but it’s not like it was. And I think in every market there could be one person who does have that ability.

So, I wouldn’t say they don’t have it. It just it varies. But generally speaking, and it’s still very important. I don’t want to diminish that because the average viewer, how do they relate to TV? They truly like who they see. And then hopefully those people have, you know, a team behind them that covers the right news, does it the right way.

But if you don’t have good anchors, are people going to watch? Because it is a first that you see. So, it’s important. But I think the reality is the jobs don’t pay like they used to. And so, you know, I always would tell people when they would ask me about what’s my future, it’s like, look, you’ve got to get into this because you love it. It’s not to get rich. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a really good career and a really good life and a really good lifestyle if you stay in it long enough. But if you’re looking to be the star and million-dollar contracts and stuff like that, well, I personally don’t see that going far.

Here’s the part of the conversation where a thousand anchors have picked up their ears and are listening carefully. So, let’s talk about salaries. What is the outlook for their salaries going into 2023? Are they going down demonstrably? Are they flat?

I would say flat. Some groups, because of the Great Resignation, are trying to make sure that they can they give people proper increases. And they have budgeted for that, from what I hear. But I think everyone’s cognizant of everything being more expensive right now. So, you don’t want to leave people hanging that way. I wouldn’t say you’re going to see 10% raises or anything like that. I mean, the average has been kind of, what, 2%, I would say.

Does it mean there’s someone who can get a 5% raise? Some companies do it based off of merit, not, you know, what you bring to the table, what you do every day. I would say probably flattening. I don’t think it’s going backwards. I haven’t heard of that. There might be a one-off case here or there, but I think it’s more flat to slightly up or, you know, depending on the group in the station, some places that might be like, hey, you’re getting a 4% raise. I haven’t seen those in quite a while.

Since the pandemic, particularly on air, journalists seem to be more insistent on a work/life balance. How are you seeing that play out as positions are opening up?

It’s a very important thing, I mean, people are turning down jobs. When I started in the business, I’m going to have to work places I never thought I would live because I needed to do that, build that path for myself. But man, when we talk to people both on air, off air, it’s well, I don’t know if I want to go there, even though it’s a great job and a great market. And that’ll be a huge move for them. It’s well, I kind of have my mind set on this or I don’t want to work mornings, I don’t want to work weekends.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by it, but I’m just like, this is a really good job and a really good opportunity to eventually get you to a point where you don’t have to work those shifts. And these are not people that have 10 years of experience saying this either. So, it’s very important. And I think that’s, you know, something, the hiring managers and the news directors and general managers have to deal with on a daily basis, especially with recruiting.

It’s very interesting. It seems like it’s a generational shift. I mean, millennials sort of look at this saying, who the hell do you think you are? Whereas Gen Z is like, I’ll tell you who I am. So, I mean, is it that people coming into the industry just see themselves as having sufficient options both within and outside it? And actually, I should say not even just coming into the industry, but people who are they’re only there for a few years? They see that they have more options than they did in the past. They can either stay in TV and find other jobs or their adjacent jobs and enough of them dig their heels in. They can afford to have that position?

Maybe, but I also think it’s just this is how I believe, and I’ll wait. And they are in a position they think they can wait. They’ll wait. It’s I can’t say one way or the other really what’s driving and it’s just a thing right now.

Has this given them leverage? They dig their heels in and TV stations are capitulating?

I would say probably some have it because if they really like the person, maybe they will. But then if you capitulate there, then what? I always look at it this way: If they’re this way when you’re trying to hire them, then how are they going to be as an employee?

What I would tell people is this is not just a career or a job. It’s really a lifestyle when you think about it because when first responders go into things, we’re right there with them covering them. And when bad things happen, we don’t stay off the roads. When there’s a blizzard, we go to work to show people what’s happening during the blizzard.

And so, I think that, again, just my opinion, some people it’s just a job and you can be fine. Just a job that people that excel in really realize. I want to be there when the big story is happening. So, it’s a lifestyle and sometimes those big stories happen on holidays, weekends, nights, overnights and I don’t care. I’ll be there. I want to be there when that’s happening. I want to be the face of the station. I’m going to be there to serve the viewers.

With regards to this negotiating position that they do or don’t have, or they perceive themselves having, is the recession that is all but here going to throw cold water on this dynamic this year?

Possibly. I mean, when I was a talent agent, I tried to keep my clients from having contracts come up in odd years because there is no political, no Olympics revenue. So, I knew the raise you get is going to be lower than potentially in an even year. And I would really try to steer them away from that.

And so, if someone’s job searching this coming year, could they be leaving money on the table, doing it now versus waiting till ’24? Possibly. There’s still so many jobs. There’s still so many pent-up openings that stations have and MMJs, things like that. I think that there’s still going to be demand. There’s still going to be a marketplace maybe come summer depending on is this recession, how bad is it, how deep is it kind of thing, what’s it what’s it doing to the industry as far as revenue?

That may affect some things, but right now, I think especially producers. I haven’t heard of anyone saying we’re in a hiring freeze and we won’t hire a producer yet. So, I think they’re still going to there’s still going to be demand.

Do you want to hazard any other predictions for hiring dynamics that might change this coming year?

No, because I don’t think anything we’ve seen this year is going to go away next year. I mean, MMJs in the largest of markets, that’s here to stay. There’s a realization, too, that talent, especially anchors, have to be working journalists. Now more than ever, you’re seeing it in a lot of places where there’s an expectation you might anchor the 6 and 11, but we still want you reporting more than four times a year. I think that’s very big. And I do think something we’ve started to see in some places is the community. The community involvement expectation and that piece of it.

What do you mean by that?

I think people expect their on-air people to be involved in the community. I think just anchoring and being a very good anchor is great, but they want to see you. They always have this fascination of what’s behind the curtain, so to speak. They want to see you in their community. They want to be able to interact with you. Maybe it’s pent up from COVID and restrictions. But that plays an important role that you have to be involved in the community. You have to be.

Is that going to meetings, going into neighborhoods and talking to people that you see on the street and coffee shops, etc.? Or is that involved in structured activities?

I think it’s all of the above. I think for a TV station to be successful, you have to be. That community involvement piece is more important than ever. Because you see all these fractures around us. Local TV is comfort food to some degree. And there’s an expectation that we represent our community. It’s essentially the old school community affairs director really helping make sure that they are in those doing those touchpoints.

Well, interesting. We’ll see how that plays out this year. Gary Brown, CEO and owner of Talent Dynamics, thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

And remember that a new episode of Talking TV is available most Fridays. You can watch our whole back catalog of episodes at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel, where you can also like and subscribe. See you next time.

The post Talking TV: What Will TV News Hiring Look Like In ’23? appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Brian Lawlor, a veteran Scripps executive and new head of the division, explains the company’s plan to lure sports franchises with the prospect of 100% local reach via broadcast versus the dwindling audience RSNs face with cord cutting and audience belt-tightening.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Last month, the E.W. Scripps Company announced it’s launching a new sports division. The aim is that Scripps will look to leverage its local market depth and national broadcast reach for partnerships with sports leagues, conferences and teams.

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, that conversation is with Brian Lawlor, a veteran Scripps executive who’s now president of the new Scripps Sports division. We’ll be discussing just what this is going to look like and the thinking behind it. We’ll be right back.

Welcome, Brian Lawlor, to Talking TV.

Brian Lawlor: Michael, good to see you. Happy holidays.

Happy holidays to you, Brian. I must confess that after reading several stories about the launch of this division, I’m still unclear as to what it’s going to look like for viewers. So, what exactly are you planning to do here? Can you spell out the plan?

Yeah, I think it’s pretty simple. I think, you know, Scripps, is, you know, a long-time broadcaster with a pretty significant portfolio on the local side. We’re on 61 stations in 41 markets. On the network side, we have eight or nine national networks, the largest of which is Ion. And we believe that linear television is the most significant distribution platform for sports, and sports is the most powerful driver of linear viewing. Ninety-five of the top 100 shows on television this year were live sporting events. We see the decline of sports viewing as a result of being on the regional sports networks. And as a result of that, we think bringing sports rights back to linear television broadcast over the air is sort of a savior to teams and leagues.

And so, we’ve been talking to teams and leagues pretty regularly now over the last year. And as many of their rights begin to come up, they’re all assessing their current situation. And, you know, we see an opportunity and a moment in time right now to plant the flag and say, you know, let’s bring some of these sports rights back where 100% of the households in a market can see local sports teams.

So, we’re going to become pretty aggressive in trying to acquire sports rights, either in local markets where we can partner with an NBA team, a major league baseball team, the NHL team, which right now is limited by its reach on the regional sports networks, or we have the national platform of Ion, and we acquired that during the pandemic. It’s the fifth largest broadcast network in America behind ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. Clearly, all of them have significant investment in sports. And, you know, we have the same reach as they do and quite frankly, a unique proposition to localize. And so, I think you’ll see us on a league level focused on trying to acquire rights for Ion and on a local level trying to acquire sports rights for our broadcast stations.

OK, so Ion — let’s just look at that part of it then for a second. Obviously, it’s a very important part of the strategy. So, you’re not going to rebrand these stations as Scripps Sports on air.

We are not.

Just looking to get more sports on the Ion stations across the country.

Yeah, think of like a TBS or a TNT where there’s entertainment or procedural genres, but they also have some live sports, marquee sports on certain nights or on certain times of the year. We think of Ion as similar to that.

What’s the timeline for this? I know you’ve been working on this for, I think, the better part of the last year, correct?

Ever since we acquired Ion during the pandemic, we’ve done sort of a portfolio review of everything we have inside of our company, and we have this unique new massive asset in Ion. And, you know, we’ve done some strategic analysis of how do we think we can grow this and increase its reach and obviously its profitability. One of the areas that we look at are sports.

And so, we have begun having some conversations with leagues about the unique asset of an over the air broadcast network. And, you know, that’s what really makes Ion unique is while it is a national network and it has national distribution on cable and satellite, it’s actually different than many others in that it’s actually local licenses and local towers in every market. We have a 100% reach, 96% reach of the U.S. with Ion fully distributed on cable, on satellite, it’s on FAST and then it’s over the air.

What makes Ion unique and very different than the networks is we own the majority of affiliates and control all of the programing. And so right now, you know, all the programing, all the commercials, everything looks the same across the country. But because of the uniqueness of having local towers and licenses in every market, we can localize Ion, which means, you know, if we were to acquire sports rights for a given league and we said to that league, hey, you know, why don’t you align every Saturday night, we’ll do a Saturday night game of the week on Ion.

And if you could have all your teams playing at 7:30, we could literally localize every market with their home team games. I’m based here in Cincinnati, right, so Cincinnati had a professional team and whatever league it was, every week we could feed them the Cincinnati game, and then Nashville could always get a Nashville game and Kansas City could always get the Kansas City game. And then for places that didn’t have local teams, we could regionalize games or even have a national game.

But obviously you could roll all that up, sell it together, cume it and have a big national audience with sponsors targeted for the market. So, we think we have a really unique asset there. You know, ESPN can’t do what we just described. If they have a game, the entire country sees the same game. And so, the ability for us to have a relationship with a league but be able to localize that in every market really, I think is a unique proposition.

Let’s talk about the conversations that you’re having with the leagues. Are we just talking about the big professional leagues or how much will college play into this potentially?

You know I think college will play into it. With Ion, we’re not going to turn it into a sports network. We know what it is. And so, you know, I think there’ll be two or three franchises that make sense for it. We’ll be very selective about what makes sense and understanding that it’s a national network. Many of the colleges or conferences are more local or regionalized. So, I think we’ll look at opportunities, but we recognize that we do have a strong national network with the ability to localize it. And I think we’ll be really targeted with what are the right franchises for air.

What about more niche sports? I mean, might we see pickleball on Scripps Sports?

I think time will tell. Pickleball is an interesting one because of its growing popularity. But don’t just think that we’re going to be all about niche. When you have a big national network like we do, I expect that we’ll be in conversations with, I don’t know about the NFL, and of course their deals now run out 11 years, but I think some of the other significant leagues. I think we can be a pretty material solution for them.

Are you also planning concurrently to develop some centralized programing? I mean, might we see some things in the vein of ESPN Sportscenter, for instance?

I think down the road, that could be something we consider, Michael. I think first and foremost, what we’re interested in is using the immense reach that we have to really, you know, distribute a sports league or team, you know, across the country or fully through a market. And I think that’s our top priority. And then as we acquire rights and begin to distribute those, you know, I think we’d figure out what complementary programing would make sense alongside that.

As you know, Sinclair has had a rocky road with its RSNs, so did that sort of give you any pause or maybe, conversely, encouragement to make this tactical shift to go in this direction?

Yeah, look, I think that’s our opportunity. Their business model is cable and satellite distribution. And so, when many of the current teams that have deals with them signed their last contract five, seven, eight years ago in many markets they might have had 70% or 80% distribution through cable and satellite. The reality is in most markets today, that number is less than 50%.

And so, I sit here in Cincinnati. Fox Sports Ohio in Cincinnati is distributed to 46% of the households in Cincinnati. That means that for the Cincinnati Reds, more than half of their potential customers can’t see any of their games. That’s not a good business model if you’re a baseball team trying to build audience, build fan loyalty, sell the excitement of young players.

There are leagues and teams around the country that cable and satellite and the distribution of the regional sports networks and their local market is 30%. And so, again, you know, it’s really hard to get people excited about your team if 70% of your audience where your team is based can’t even see your games. There’s no searchability. You’re not flipping channels and you suddenly stumble on to them.

You know, there’s very little visibility for showcasing players and think about all the businesses. If your sponsors and partners can only showcase to 30% of the people, it’s going to have an impact on ticket sales, suite sales, merchandise, sports betting. All of those subcategories benefit from a team bringing their rights to broadcast over the air where they can reach 100% of the audience.

Well, how are there conversations that you’re having with the leagues and the teams going so far? They’re showing receptivity to this?

On a local level where the teams have their relationships with the RSNs, I think they’re very concerned about the future. And, you know, as teams in the next year or two years, their rights start to come up, they see what has happened over the last several years. They see the projections for what’s going to happen to cable or satellite in the next couple of years. And I think the conversations we’re having is they’re very concerned about that being their primary distribution platform.

And I would say the leagues are as well, and at the highest levels. We talked to some of these leagues, you know, being exclusively distributed on cable and satellite is limiting the visibility of those leagues. And they’re very concerned about what’s happening in the local levels where their teams are only viewed by 30 or 40% of all the households in a market.

Well, the Scripps faith in OTA is bottomless. Brian, I know that you’re a very big sports fan and a fellow Islanders fan, I must say. And so, this must be something of a dream job for you personally, isn’t it?

Yeah. Look, this was not how I thought I was going to end my career. As you know, Michael, I had been with Scripps almost 30 years. I’ve been running the local TV division for 14 years. As we wind down 2022, when I took over running the division, we had 10 stations in nine markets, and as I hand off 61 stations in 41 markets, I’m incredibly passionate about the power of local broadcasting. I’m proud of the local journalism we do, the way we serve communities.

And so, I guess I thought I would take that to the end. But I also recognize there’s a unique moment in time right now with sports. And as the company at the highest level was reviewing its portfolio and taking a look at its assets and identifying Ion as an opportunity.

On the local side, we acquire and negotiate a lot of local sports rights. Obviously, we have a lot of sports from ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox and our affiliates. But we also negotiate rights for Monday Night Football with Disney, with Amazon. We were able to do a big deal with Amazon for the local markets on Thursday nights there.

This year we were able to acquire the Big Sky Conference, which is a huge conference out West for us. We’ve got a big footprint in Montana and Idaho, and we were able to take that away from the regional sports network there. And so, you know, and then, you know, my prior history, I was the chairman of the NBC affiliate board at one point my career, the president of the ABC affiliate board.

And so, you know, I worked with the networks at the highest level as they were negotiating Olympic rights and NFL rights. And when Jimmy Pitaro became the president of ESPN a couple of weeks later, I was in there talking to him about starting to bring more rights back to ABC, which at that point there weren’t a ton. And then we were able to get the NFL draft over and we moved the ESPYs over to ABC and then we got more stars out of Saturday night’s NBA and now we’ve got a bunch of NFL games and now they’re in the rotation for the Super Bowl.

So, I’ve spent a lot of time talking sports and trying to help influence sports. And so, as this opportunity presented itself, it just sort of came together. It wasn’t something I ever pitched, but there came a point where I so actively involved in the development of our strategy and sharing that strategy with the board that [Scripps CEO] Adam [Symson] said, Look, we’re going to go all in on this. It seems like you’re the right guy to lead this. And I spent a couple weeks thinking about that and said, you know, I’m passionate about over-the-air broadcast and the power of reach and what we can do with it. And sports would be sort of fun. And I still get to do it with a company I love and I’m proud to work for. So, this is going to be fun.

Just make sure you get a good bit of hockey into that mix.

Absolutely.

All right. Well, Brian Lawlor, you’ve got a lot of work cut out for you. We will be following developments with at Scripps Sports with great interest. Thanks for talking to me today.

Good to see you, Michael. Thanks.

Thank you. Remember a new Talking TV episode comes out most Fridays. You can watch past episodes on TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube channel. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.

The post Talking TV: Scripps Sports Looks To Edge Out RSNs For Rights appeared first on TV News Check.