What good are affiliates? Posted on June 21, 2022 at 06:45:02 PM by From the other side of the tube
Weather doesn't require anymore staff. They just squeeze abit more time out of their overpaid anchors.
Newsgathering is staff intensive and since we have so many governmental jurisdictions, few of them are of interest to their wider audience viewers unless they're sensationally entertaining.
Repeating what's already been aired one more time produced that way is cheaper than the cost of independent or syndicated programming.
I think stations should quit doing local-Only newscasts and mix local with network pieces. And change the noon formats from the 5,6 and 10s. Its a good time for more detailed news treatments and network fare. And then make the morning news more of a headline radio with pictures for people not actually watching, but rather listening with the TV on. Maybe thats what they try to do.
Since cop news is so boring, I rarely watch local affiliate news with so many movie choices available.
What I do notice is that most local TV people don't even watch the adjacent network news; they're too busy preparing their local segments; hence they ignore the formats and delivery styles that their viewers notice. Were I a ND, I'd pattern my local evening coverage to look much more like my network in pacing and delivery, but they don't.
What's too bad is they all show rerun garbage on their other channels, apparently because they see their other OTA channels as competition against their own flagships.
Maybe someone in it today will contribute to that, instead of just quip, "You don't know shit about it, and we ain't tellin!"