Serious TV news rant

[anarky]

This may seem weird here, but I don't care to post it elsewhere and get bitched at.

Does it seem to anyone else that existing media would all be fine and dandy in light of the internet if they only slightly restructured things, and maybe cut their expectations?

For instance, advertising revenue is way, way down, since audiences are way, way down. Yet advertising costs the same amount it did years ago. Why don't they realize they could cut prices and have things almost even out?

Same with magazines. Why is it so expensive to advertise in a comic or magazine?

But TV news is the best. Their audience is down. This is mainly because anyone, anywhere, can get news almost instantly online. So they bitch and moan about no one watching, and CBS is considering cancelling their news altogether.

Why the hell don't they look at the fact their broadcasts are still structured exactly like they were in 1975? I'm serious. Watch any news broadcast and pay special attention to what they say when they go to commercial. "When we come back, we'll tell you about a kid who got arrested for farting on his teacher. And you won't believe what happened to him then!" Only, uh, we will. Everyone in the world who cares about what's going on read the story six hours earlier!

So why don't they mimick BBC News (as an example of the only real "serious" news left in the country), with short, insightful, in-depth focus on stories--particularly local stories? Yeah, there may seem to be less incentive to keep watching, but, again, people who are watching the news care what's going on. If they know there will be new or exclusive information, they'll stay tuned. (And by "exclusive," I don't mean the shitty LA-styled "We're on the scene where something is happening, we don't know what, but, by God, we're the only channel on the scene right now!")

It's funny. Print survived radio, telephone, and television. So, for the most part, media don't go away. But all the media out there are run by dinosaurs who are so set in stone that they can't see that they can remain viable with minor changes. It makes me wonder if these idiots will make the farfetched prophecy that only the internet will be left in a decade be a self-fulfilling one.

[Sleazer]

You know who I hate ? That Steve Doocy from Fox News. Man that guy is a douchebag.

This is not a political attack, just a personal attack because I hate that guy.

[vynsane]

It's funny. Print survived radio, telephone, and television. So, for the most part, media don't go away. But all the media out there are run by dinosaurs who are so set in stone that they can't see that they can remain viable with minor changes. It makes me wonder if these idiots will make the farfetched prophecy that only the internet will be left in a decade be a self-fulfilling one.

at least they'll be able to say "you heard it here first" - of course they'll be saying it to a cardboard box that someone hastily wrote "camura" in sharpie on.

while i doubt the internet is the end of all other media, you have to look at some differences between the onset of radio, telephone and television and the onset of the internet: radio, telephone and television were not nearly as accessible in the early days as the internet is. they also didn't have as immediate and wide-sweeping coverage as the internet has. they were also not publicly editable, they were controlled by some governmental body or another, whereas the internet basically belongs to everyone. while it won't be the death of old media, it certainly is a usurper of the status of old media, for better or worse.

that said, TV news is and always has been simply filler between commercial breaks aside from some genuinely necessary/important reporting (watergate coverage, moon landing coverage, etc...). what it comes down to is, people are sick of being baited by the "guess what happened next" crap that makes you sit through all the commercials. you're right about the fact that they need to change the way they do business, but it's not JUST because it's business as usual - it's because either people aren't as they used to be, or the "buy buy buy" is more blatant than ever on TV, and not so much online (though animated banners might be worse...)

[anarky]

Yeah, I know the internet isn't exactly like any previous media, since it essentially does everything in a different format, and caught on far more quickly. But I think we're in agreement that, for now at least, it's not going to eliminate anything.

But it's crazy to see the "old guard" running scared, rather than doing what seems to me to be the most logical three-pronged approach: establish an online presence that supports your "old media" offerings, examine your current offerings and revamp if necessary, and re-evaluate your profit expectations. (That last one boils down to what I consider the most retarded rule of business: "If we anticipated 50% growth over last year and only got 49%, it doesn't matter that we did 49% more than last year; it only matters that we didn't hit our goal, so we're dismal failures.")