AR&D Reinventing Local Media

Posted: Sep 13, 2009 7:16 PM

I'm filing this in the wake of an "open letter to Rupert Murdoch" from Mark Sudock, a senior editor at Fox 11 in Los Angeles about severe job cuts expected to hit tomorrow. In the letter, Sudock waxes nostalgic about things like competence, quality and "the gold standard" for news. "The envy (of their work)," he writes, "is palpable." Due to the pending cuts (117 jobs), however, he adds, "Chances are very real that our reputation and our legacy is at risk." The letter is heartfelt, passionate and very sad, and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would argue that it comes from the "bargaining" stage of grieving.

The cuts are so severe that virtually no one remains on-site to technically maintain the facility. The cuts are so deep that our ability to cover the news as we did this past week (with pursuits, brush fires and the Michael Jackson funeral happening simultaneously) is in absolute jeopardy.

While Mark's grieving is certainly understandable, the longer he (and many others) clings to the belief that what we're going through is "cyclical" and that "things will be okay, if we just hang on," the longer we delay the acceptance that necessarily precedes change. Before I can change, I must believe that I have to change, and that's true whether it's losing weight or fighting addiction. In that spirit, I offer the following open letter to news employees:

Dear Newsroom Employee, Whoever and Wherever You Are,

News people are by nature curious. At times, we can also be quite skeptical, cynical, thin-skinned and resistant to authority, and while that may make us hard to manage sometimes, those can be healthy traits for journalists who are asked to probe various aspects of life in search of truth. And probe we do. We may have our biases, but most of us are able to set those aside in the performance of our jobs. 

One place where we don't do that, however, is in examining our own potential demise. We seem unable to bring an open mind or a genuine curiosity to the discussion, and our distrust of those who "manage" us gets in the way of a realistic examination of the events contributing to the need for change. Somehow, we're convinced that this is some sort of a trick designed to squeeze us for the sake of profit.

So let's look at just ten facts.

1. The market share of people watching television news is off 35 percent in just ten years. Like everything else, there are exceptions, but the truth is people aren't watching what we're producing at levels we used to enjoy.

2. Profit margins for broadcast companies have shrunk from 50 percent to 40 percent to 30 percent to 20 percent, and while the slide is slowing, it's still headed south. Now, it's true that our companies still make money, but running a business is always about growth, not just standing still, much less sliding backwards.

3. The automotive ad category used to produce 40-45 percent of our revenue. That's gone to 15 percent, and while car dealers will always advertise on television, they've discovered whole new ways to talk to potential car buyers, so that money is never coming back.

4. The morning news is now the second most important newscast of the day, and yet we haven't shifted resources accordingly.

5. The six o'clock news is no longer the newscast of record, yet we behave as though it is.

6. National advertising used to be 45 percent of a station's revenue. It's now in the 20-22 percent range.

7. The personal media revolution has touched advertisers, who are now increasingly becoming their own media companies and finding ways to better reach people without us.

8. Network compensation — where the networks paid us to carry their programming — used to be a seven-figure source of revenue for most stations. Now it's zero.

9. News has become a commodity, and while we're convinced that nobody can do it better than we can, the reality is that scarcity as a business model can no longer produce the kinds of profit that we used to realize.

10. The demand for positions within the news industry continues strong, despite a reduced number of positions available. Newcomers coming up through the farm system have skill sets and attitudes about work that are foreign to many of those already employed, and this is a problem for mid-career journalists.

There are many other factors involved, and it's time we had the courage to face this and just turn the page. This is nobody's "fault;" it just is what it is. We can't blame our companies. We can't blame our managers. We can't blame "the consultants." We can't blame the Internet. And we can't blame the audience. We're all in this together, and we're all just trying to do the best we can with a lousy situation.

Perhaps the business has changed so much that you truthfully can't stand it any longer. If that's the case, take it as a sign that maybe you should find other ways to pay the bills. 

But whatever you do, do something, because standing still won't cut it, and cursing at the moon puts you in the way of those who have decided to move forward. Fear is tissue paper disguised as a brick wall, folks. Walk through it, and let's get on with reinventing ourselves.

Terry