How are budgetary pressures hurting local news?
The local stations were hit by a perfect storm of problems that started with the growth of cable stations, the explosion of the Internet and the recession. There are now up to 300 channels to choose from on cable. My daughter Stacia is 26 and my son Jonathan is 24 and they make no distinction between Animal Planet, TruTV, MTV, TLC or NBC, ABC and CBS. My son Michael is 5 and David is 2. They watch the Disney Channel and Sprout. Add that to the fact that I watch Morning Joe on MSNBC and my wife and I watch HBO at night, and you get the sense of a typical household’s viewing habits. Also, the Internet has captured a significant portion of the news market, if it doesn’t have the majority of it already. The Internet is killing traditional newspapers and television news is next on the list. The news department has a much larger budget than any other department at a local station, so it follows that the news department suffers the most when things are bad. Most have had layoffs, put capital
