Web Needs TV, But TV Doesn't Need Web

Excellent commentary. Stations need to focus on re-building their core business. Local news is eroding because it's crap. Stations drive viewers away with news that is defined by crime, car wrecks, and constant weather hype. It's easy...and it shows. They add to this mess with over ten minutes of commercials and promos in a half-hour newscast. Yes, you need an Internet site, but it shouldn't be a priority.

We pour resources into the web because we want to appear to be on the "cutting edge". Techno geeks at the agencies stroke each other by talking about the fabulous things they're doing with "digital media". The Ball State study (largest look at media usage ever conducted) found that YouTube, Hulu and all other Web/cell phone media accounted for less than 1 percent of viewing. Traditional TV accounted for 99 percent. We watch 5 hours and 9 minutes of "live" TV per day and 2.4 MINUTES of video on the computer. (AdWeekMedia May 11, 2009). For the life of me, I don't understand why buy we in the TV industry seem to suffer from a collective inferiority complex. The networks give lip service to being our "partner" all the while forming strategic alliances with the Hulus of the world. We stand by watching this, somehow convincing ourselves that all these alternate sources can't hurt anything. I agree with Mr. Mirek. We need to grow some stones and say enough is enough. No more free lunch.

You're right. But, preaching to an empty choir. The take anything they can mentality prevails. Mindless and no real business plan. Selling web ads still seems to be the next frontier. Station web sites are a jumbled, complicated, mess. Yet, they own them. They want the demo, but refuse to work on attracting them with their formats/content. So, the easy way out is to give away the product and hope some one shows up. Phones and computers will save us all? Sure. Some kid will come up with attractive and easy to use formats and most likely not use stations or nets for distribution of video and content, compelling to the demo (19-34).One problem is that decision makers are not in the demo and maybe don't even like them or their moraes(sic). This is no longer a great business for a C student. You have to wonder why websites etc...are not treated like another channel? Too much thinking involved. .

The last time I checked in, local television still had the capacity to reach out to the local market unlike any other medium. To use the TV platform as a promotional tool for driving viewers to the Internet seems to be a logical use of the medium. Their advertisers do this all the time. When was the last time you saw an 800 trlephone number on a Toyota TV spot vs. the URL for the Toyota website. Regardless of where viewing or Internet usage is today, building another revenue stream is where local television needs to be. No one has a crystal ball and can look into the future with 100% accuracy, but with broadband reaching ever more households, why wouldn't a TV station try to push their viewers to a website that they can monetize by building an audience there. If they don't someone else will. The newspapers have done a good job of building out local sites with lots of traffic. What's needed is a revenue model that makes sense and revenues that will enable the local station to grow content and viewers to the station and to the web.

Somehow, the publishing system on this site had a glitch, and a posting from 1997 slipped in. Interesting though to see how the closed mind used to operate back in those days. Newsflash: It's not about you or your precious "product" Kevin, it's about the audience. And the audience is undergoing a revolution in media consumption. Your suggested response...basically ignore what's going on, tweak...o.k., improve...the product. Somehow, I don't think you learned that in any reputable business school. You or your predecessors are the same people that scoffed at cable in the first 10-15 years also.

those web revenue dollars are about 80% profit. which is what corp told wall street to get the market off their backs. now we have to live with the damage. on another note our web traffic goes through the roof.. but only our web site has a news story that everybody wants to see. As I stated before. the web is, at best, a extension of our news dept and reaches folk in the office who do not want to wait until they get home to see the end of the police chase. That will not provide enough connection to drive sales at the local home and garden on the way home...

Mr. Mirek says what everyone else believes but is just too afraid to vocalize because our companies are all so enamored with the Internet. Facebook is worth 10 billion dollars???? How much do they cash flow? Last time I looked they did not have a revenue stream as much as the average TV Station. I don't see politicians pushing them or other internet sites for space and lowest unit rate or trying to enact laws regulating commercial or content limits? Only TV is that powerful. I don't see government regime changes in foreign countries taking over internet sites like they do in regime changes--taking over TV Stations to reach the masses. Networks continue to cut their own throats-NBC news is busy prostituting their own newscasts with CNBC business logos and then they use affiliate audiences to plug their nightly MSNBC cable fare. It's time affiliates muscle them and cover those spots which tells people to leave FREE over the air TV. Don't these bean counters and lawyers realize they are driving share of revenue down? No instead some poor GM will get the axe because these same geniuses determine his stations' share is down. Thanks Mr. Mirek for expressing your thoughts, I hope you go to work for a big broadcast conglomerate that will have you stand up to the networks and reposition our model away from thinking that the internet is the big deal that it isn't.

With apologies to Al Gore, Mr. Mirek has spoken an 'inconvenient truth'. The web should be just part of the mix station operators use to promote the over-the-air product.

Y'all are really scaring me. Dinosaurs. BTW, it's not just the audience that's voting with their mice. So are the advertisers.

Hey Rocker. You drank the whole pitcher of kool-aid. Read the study conducted by Ball State's Center for Media Design on behalf of the Council for Research Excellence. It's been called the "largest observational look at media usage ever conducted". No, really, READ IT. Don't respond until you read it. Traditional TV viewing is at an ALL TIME HIGH! Teens watch traditional TV 3 hours and 27 minutes per day! That is an ALL TIME HIGH! I know you want to believe that the world is turning away from traditional TV but the facts don't support your fantasy. Read the report! Go on, move along. Read it.

Kevin makes some good points that web video doesn't compare to TV viewing, but misses the point completely in not realizing that the shift in ad dollars to the web has nothing to do with web VIDEO but with time spent online *overall* -- and the growth in paid search and display advertising (both text-based ad categories). Web video is obviously lagging far behind, and we all know it. So, all TV/station folk can try and believe that the world isn't changing and TV/video commands a premium, but advertisers know that they often get better and more targeted results by advertising with AdSense and other online ad formats in many cases. No amount of wishing that we still lived in 1985 will change that. Facebook may not have much video, but teens spend more time there than they do watching TV.

Couldn't disagree more with the guest commentary, and I'm compelled to write. Before I get started, allow me to make the observation, and how ironic it is, that the guest commentator's column is broken apart by a "story continues after ad" animation ad for "Mobile Local News." Somebody is spending (and making) money. I was 22 and working my first job inside the CBS News newsroom when the president of CBS News strode to the bulletin board by the Foreign Desk and posted CNN's first overnight ratings, cockily circling the hash marks they had scored. Well, he was the president, I was starting my career ,so I figured he knew what he was doing. But I distinctly remember the arrogance of his gait and the smirk on his face and I wondered then and still why a news guy would ridicule a 24 hour news concept. Especially when his correspondents did hourly radio updates around the clock. Was the leap to a 24-hour television news concept that far a visionary stretch?? (as an aside and in full disclosure, there was also much emotion in the CBS management ranks at the time as several key executives and had defected for Ted Turner's brash idea. CNN perhaps had the last laugh inside the Broadcast Center 15 years or so later when we purchased CNN's video news service to supplement CBS News's video service at our flagship television station. (I was back in the Broadcast Center, then news director of WCBS-TV and amazed at the presidential-like price that came out of my operating budget for CNN's Newsource. Zeroes grown from hash!) I don't know about you, but the nay-sayers and negativity and whining are things I always like in my competitors. And never surround myself with. The lessons being inside CBS were many and good, and some included what not to do in my career. But I digress. The guest commentator actually writes that broadcasters should "make" people watch favorite programs and local news on their stations. Naive, wistful, arrogant, and Bill Leonard's behavior one day in 1980, all come rushing to mind. Same sensation. Difference is, I am more sure-footed about speaking up. A great friend and boss boiled it down to what has become my mantra inside a station, which is "remember the viewer." Pop quiz: Any of you ever use a VHS or DVR? Just wondering why you'd expect your customer to be different than you. Another boss once told a group of us that the fact is, and always has been, that the masses will decide. And that when it comes to vision and innovation, don't try to hard, don't waste time, money, or human capital in building something ahead of the masses, because, inevitably, the masses will decide. And to borrow from yet another boss, one that taught a legion of managers and producers in our business who are successful in both business and serving their communities, anticipate that wave of viewer interest and need. Plan for it. Have a strategy. Get smart and see where it will come from. And not unlike "The Art of War," lead your team so that you catch that wave -- the masses -- when they come. For the cardinal sin as a leader charged with growing your ratings and revenue is to not anticipate, to not calculate, to not attract and retain viewers when they come. So when it comes to the Internet or digital platforms, is there anyone who thinks the Internet is a flash in the pan? Or that people aren't looking for local news,weather and information online? Is the answer to exit the super information highway and head for the flat panel screen hoping people won't think to find what they want online when they want it? Just because revenue is down and we have challenges?? Yes, big flat panel screens are a better viewing experience. Why doesn't yours have the Internet plugged into it yet? It's just a matter of time, you know. Do you doubt that your three screen home will not only converge in the same room, but on the same big flat panel screen you prefer? Hulu and its like are a direct threat to broadcasters. Go tell a Hulu user you are going to "make" them do something. See where that gets you. And don't blame networks. They are working to innovate and change and follow the masses too. The guest writer singled out Tribune. In full disclosure, I'm connected to Tribune these days. Proudly and by choice, by the way. And only because it was singled out -- and decidedly not because Tribune needs me to rise to its defense -- let me share with you that Tribune is positioning itself for the future with bumps, bruises, Hulus and economy nobody predicted included. Their head isn't in the sand, but a good part of their thinking is in the basement, where Tribune Interactive is building a solid foundation and will keep the Tower steady. There are two choices regarding "make," and I do think it clarifies which lane you decide to take down that Santa Monica Freeway, to wit: You can stick with the old model and "make" people watch when you want them too. If you fall into that line of thinking I suggest you put your blinker on and follow the guest commentator off at the next ramp. Or.... you can embrace what the masses are deciding, plot where they are heading, and build a strategy to serve them and grow your business. It is going to include the Internet and your website, without question. Personally, I'm not sure about Twitter just yet, but I'm on it almost daily and experimenting with it without taking my eye off our goals. We kick around ideas and one or two currently have possibilities that could help us build our audience. We'll see. There's still time. When the Internet first hit broadcasting and local stations as an extension of its brand, and before the bubble burst in 2000, "weather.com" made it a business to give its content away and link to any and every start-up and website it could find, including the start-up I joined. Now, weather.com is the destination site for local weather online. They have the market share in every town -- something our websites in local broadcasting should own with the promotional leverage we command. Looking in the rear view mirror, would it have been wrong or foolish to extend our weather franchise in local newscasts to our websites in a more robust, forecful way, even ahead of advertising dollars that didn't really show up in the bigger markets until 2003 or so? Can't we all agree that we knew the Internet would be here to stay even as the bubble burst in 2000? And oh, that start-up that I joined? It pioneered the concept of local news video on a broadcaster's website. Way ahead of its time. What makes anyone think that video and local news video in particular, still belong as the exclusive domain of local TV stations? Or that we can "make" people not watch local video online, say YouTube? Heck, everyone and anyone can go around our transmitters and deliver to that big flat screen. If I thought the guest commentator's point of view was isolated I guess I would have stepped over the temptation to write this missive. But I know, and you know, broadcasting is being challenged from within by short-sightedness almost as much as by outside forces of technology and cultural trends. My personal history lesson would suggest that if we don't keep pace and grow our product and make them available where people are, we might one day be buying local news video off YouTube, thereby solving any current cash flow issues YouTube might be facing, and damned to watch CNN compete to supply video to the established networks and their affiliates. Hey, I reported, you decide. Wait. That was a content and positioning idea that was scoffed at too. But ya got to admit, whatever your politics, a brilliant opportunistic piece of business. And there for anyone to have conceived, (with no offense to Mr. Ailes) and let's face it, fewer people to have been willing to back. .

Nice novel there Bill! Seriously though, everyone has some valid points. However I for one think the people driving streaming of local TV content and other web-only content from local TV news are the same ones who are neither very web savvy nor the average consumer. There in lies the problem for local TV stations.. Ask anyone who has been getting their news and information from the web for years; most of the page views looking for news are from out-of-market surfers, not local viewers. The result is the sales department can't sell or comp their local advertisers (national is pretty well dried up) because there is little or no traffic generated from a web-based local business ad. Corporate management (the people who really aren't web savvy) still believe there is money to be made by flogging their stations web sites, in the end taking away resources from their core business, television. I'm regularly commuting between Washington DC and the West coast and I must say that local TV news, whether in small or large markets all pretty much look the same...boring and bad. The same corporate execs, all the way to news directors would rather copy the other bad cliche' news presentations rather than coming up with something on their own and unique to their market. Instead of embracing the possibilities of interactivity between the viewers and news departments, stations would rather throw more new graphics and snypes at viewers, then take the already ineffective content and place it on the web too. YAWN! What made television news great to begin with? News, real investigative reporting, being visible and in the end, making a difference in people lives.

I certainly wish Kevin well in his endeavors and appreciate his passion on the subject. I would probably feel the same way he does if I had bought into the display ad as revenue salvation. No question that display ads have been a disappoinment as a revenue source on nearly everything we've tried and that merely repurposing the 11pm news on the website is not the right answer. But, the web is here and its influence grows daily so we really can't ignore it. So, where's the opportunity? How about we look in a different direction on the web as a business. How do you turn the web platform into a business generator for your clients? The web enables interaction and wouldn't it be a great idea to find a way for your station to generate more sales for your ad clients through those discussions? There are so many companies that have built outstanding applications to drive business opportunities for our clients but are dying for ways to quickly monetize them. They get delayed in that revenue development by having to rent office space and hire local sellers. What is desirable is to find a partner that's already in the market with relationships and that would seem to include every local TV station. Being able to associate with a strong local brand works well for them and relieves you from having to try to build the application yourself. It's a win/win for both entities. They get up and running and we find a way to drive a greater ROI for our ad clients. I'd just encourage some of you to look at the web this way. I think you'll find it much more engaging and rewarding and just might end up growing your client list .

Great series of posts - very thought-provoking. I understand Kevin's sense of anger and incredulity, but status quo doesn't seem like a viable business plan for the future. I tend to agree with Bill Carey's analysis: good luck putting the genie back into the bottle. Consumers (especially coveted younger viewers) are not content with merely consuming content, they want to create, participate, comment, interact - they want to add value to the process. The Internet is merely the means to an end: the ability to completely rethink and reinvent news on-line. Just slapping video story snippets on a web site reminds me of the early days of television, when baffled programmers aired radio shows. It took a few years to figure out the full potential of this new medium. "Hey, let's create new content that takes advantage of - moving pictures!" So it is with the 'net. The future is not rehashing existing television news on a laptop. The future is personalizing the product, combining video with text, maps, alerts and compelling graphics to create a completely NEW EXPERIENCE, one that transcends anything consumers can get from their favorite local TV station. Why will it be better? Because it will be neighborhood-specific (don't show me a crime story at the top of my personal newscast unless it's within 3 miles of my home). Show me a long sports segment and a short weather update, lead the news with environmental stories. Don't show me cuddly kittens or water-skiing squirrels. Because it will use Google maps, Wikipedia and other web resources to add context and meaning to any story, allowing people to drill down and learn more, doing what no static, one-way flow of information will ever be able to achieve. Media is morphing from a speech to a conversation, and smart stations will take advantage of these trends to reinvent their approach, using the Internet as the ultimate tool to add analysis, depth and meaning. People are drowning in information. So much data - so little wisdom. What does it mean? The Internet is still the Wild West, we're still early in the game. The reinvention of media is painful (I know that from first-hand experience) but we're faced with what may be the biggest business opportunity ever. It's being handed to us on a silver platter! But as Steve Jobs extols we all have to THINK DIFFERENT. How can I turn a traditional 30 minute newscast into an ongoing, interactive conversation, not only encouraging consumers to watch, but participate, interact and add value of their own? The arc of history and technological revolution is pretty clear - younger demos who didn't grow up with the habit of watching the late news or reading a paper will consume information on their terms. The media companies that will not only survive but thrive are the ones who will experiment, taking their existing news and entertainment product and leverage the 'net to make the experience more visual, compelling, informative, individualized and inclusive. The opportunities are staggering. This is (still) the new Gold Rush. What's required is creativity, innovation, fresh thinking and some level of bold experimentation. I'm reminded of the sage words of Bill Gates at Davos in 2007. He said (paraphrasing here) "5 years from now we'll look back at what we were watching on over the air TV and laugh. Fixed time-slot viewing is going away." Attendees smugly snickered at this, but at the rate we're going his prediction may wind up being overly conservative. In the spirit of full disclosure I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is: investing in smart weather outsourcing from 3 HD studios in the Twin Cities (WeatherNation), personalized news on-line (NoozMe) and launching patents and technology focused on allowing consumers to choose their advertising preferences (Singular Logic). No more Cialis ads, unless of course you want or need to see them. One thing seems clear: consumers will always respond to great content, great storytelling, and stories that hit close to home. TV broadcasters are in a unique position to benefit from this (vaguely terrifying) deconstruction of traditional media. They have the local experts, the brand, the trust and integrity. If they repurpose their content wisely and take advantage of the 2-way, personalization-power of the 'net they can and should be at the forefront of customized, interactive news, targeting and monetizing personalized ads in a way over the air broadcast will never be able to achieve. I'm a naive optimist, but this new, instantaneous, global, 2-way communications architecture doesn't have to be our Death Star. Here's a prediction with rare 100% accuracy: 5 years from now we'll look back at the state of our web sites back in 2009 and laugh! We're just scratching the surface of what is possible, how we can elevate storytelling to the next level and better communicate essential, local news & information. It's a humbling, yet tremendously exciting time to be brainstorming the future.