Each day we see news of changes in how media companies are operating, many of those changes driven by the fact that advertising revenues are down, and of course those ad revenues are down because of the larger economic problems facing this trouble.
Just in the past few days, Channels 19 and 3 announced an agreement to start pooling video. What this really means is obviously something that we won’t really know for some time now, but the mere fact that there is an agreement seemed like something that was impossible just a few short years ago. Washington DC station WUSA’s announcement a few weeks ago that it was moving towards the VJ’s (video journalists) or MOJO’s (mobile journalists) was another example of the unthinkable: a large market sending out “one-man-bands.”
For those of you not in the know, that’s short for sending one person out to shoot and report on a story.
I would argue that this activity might be a precursor to an even bigger change in how business is done. Let’s assume that the economy takes a while to improve…if that’s so, what I am about to describe to you may come to pass sooner rather than later. But rest assured my friends; I believe this is going to come to pass because there is mounting evidence that in small ways, it is already happening.
Shout it: “PINGO!” It’s not a wacky new version of Bingo! “PINGO” is my term (if you intend to rip me off here, please at least have the courtesy to cite your sources!) for what we are likely to see as the future of newsgathering…
Platform Independent News Gathering Organization. PINGO.
A company that exists to cover local news markets and generates news content in a variety of forms (video, audio, online) for a group of clients (broadcasters, newspapers). This means that the new company, let’s say PINGO-Akron, consists of a news team of multi-taskers who write in the hybrid AP print-online style and generate audio and images for clients.
Does this mean fewer voices and fewer points of view? Probably. Does this mean that station(s) will have to work with the PINGO-Akron folks to arrange for anchors? Maybe.
Can stations resist the incredible savings to them if they no longer have to pay all those people? Can they resist the savings afforded to them by no longer having to invest in the kind of infrastructure needed to carry on newsgathering today? I’m talking about tens or hundreds of thousands invested in cameras, news vehicles, live links, and editing infrastructure?
Now I know the skeptics out there will argue “what about breaking news? What about enterprise?”
The GM’s meanwhile will ask “what about a return to higher profit margins?” Stations will always need a couple of cameras, maybe a Final Cut workstation or two, but the kind of investment needed today would mostly be gone tomorrow if one decides to play PINGO.
Listen: is there anybody out there more capable of making this a reality than the AP? The AP model, which may have seemed outdated a few years ago, now is looking quite smart. A modest change in their practices and some investment in infrastructure could have the AP brand ruling the airwaves and Internet in a new way. A way that turns TV stations into conduits for local content, which can easily be branded for each station. One only has to look at Time Warner’s late 1990s experiments in doing that in Florida to see that it can be done.
AP already provides a significant chunk of the content for The Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Why not TV too?
And there are other models. Rubber City Radio Group in Akron is a trio of radio stations. And they could have easily chosen to remain just that. But the combo of News Director Ed Esposito and PD Chuck Collins have created something that was quite interesting: Akron News Now
Akron News Now is a web site that the station’s news team, one of the best in Ohio, keeps up dated with local stories, and sometimes video. Now skeptics can say “sure, but they’re using consumer cameras.”
Have you WATCHED TV lately? When you’re station is running clips from You Tube, does the gear really matter anymore?
Nope. We can all complain and hide our heads….or we can gather up our chips and start getting ready to play PINGO. The folks at Rubber City Radio already have a bunch of chips on the board. The folks at the Beacon are putting video online. Fox 8 seems to spend more time promoting it’s Twitter feeds, new website, and Facebook contests than actually reporting recently.
If the economic times don’t improve, PINGO will be playing at a station near you within 36 months from today, 2/18/09. Mark your calendar, and prepare to be amazed at the Media Doctor’s genius! And mark my words: our students will be ready.
Dr. Phil Hoffman is General Manager of The University of Akron’s Z-TV. He is also the single smartest guy on the face of the planet. If you don’t count about 9.7 million folks in China. And 2.9 million in India. And 790,000 in Japan. And….well, you get the idea. But really, he’s pretty smart. Unless he’s wrong about all this.
Phil,
ReplyDeleteGood post ... you've probably already seeing this coming to pass.
There are at least 2 groups offering their services around the market for stories.
One is a group of former Beacon writers, one is a group of health reporters for the PD.
Both are taking their news online ... and offering it to the television stations and such.
So, if WKYC (or any other station for that matter), wants to up its Akron content online, it might be cheaper to hire this group to provide content than to have, you know, a bureau.
If these groups start adding video and such ... you have yourself a PINGO.
As a good friend of mine once said, "If you've ever watched 'America's Funniest Videos', it's not about the quality of the video, it's the moments that count."
ReplyDelete