Bill Carter at the New York Times reports that NBC is launching a 24-hour local news channel in New York, which will subsume the network’s current local news operation. Local news audiences are “eroding and aging” (the words of John Wallace, NBC’s newly christened president of local media) and the way broadcasts currently work is “just not convenient because of the way people’s lives have changed with technology.” 24/7 is what the kids want.
The model for this, as anyone in New York knows, is NY1, one thing my company actually gets right. Time Warner has got 24-hour local news networks in a handful of other markets too—makes it easier to convince people to keep their Time Warner Cable and not opt for satellite.
NBC could be headed for more markets, as well. From the Times:
If the plan is deemed a success — and Mr. Wallace said that should be clear by the second quarter of next year — NBC will begin to take the same steps with the other stations it owns, in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.
This all works particularly well right now, as TV switches to all-digital, because reporters can be sent out with their own little cameras and without a crew to cost their company money slow them down. NY1 reporters write and shoot their own stories.
The Times story didn’t say how, exactly, reporters’ jobs would change under NBC’s new set-up, but this paragraph is pretty telling to me:
Though it will offer round-the-clock live news, NBC is not planning to employ additional staff on the new channel, relying instead on expanding the duties of its present employees, many of whom will have to be retrained, Mr. Wallace said. He called it “a work-flow change.” He said, “There will be no added staff; we’ll just use them differently.”
Work-flow change, I hear ya there. Did I mention that NBC lives in the GE Building (that’s 30 Rock to you Tina Fey fans) caddy-corner to where I live in the Time & Life Building? Here’s a picture:
I took that from my office window, uploaded it to my computer, then posted in on this blog, where maybe sometime later today some of the editors and photo people who work here will see it.