My TV is dusty and staring at me from the bookshelf. I haven’t turned it on since I got it two months ago, as a gift, nor do I have any plans to. It’s a decent set--big and flat and probably very nice in its HD way. We've got history together, TV and I. I grew up with television. It was my babysitter and connection to the real-time happenings of an expanding world. So why don’t I fire up that badboy up? Because nothing on the endless channels are relevant to me anymore. Because I get my news and entertainment online, when I want, how I want, in a voice that connects with me.
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Local news lost its relevance for me years ago when bloggers and tweeters evolved into instant news sources. There’s a car accident? Someone already covered that local news, the minute it happened. E. coli outbreak? That blogger I follow reported on that and is an eyewitness, seeing as how they contracted it and are experiencing projectile vomiting and can tell me what restaurants to avoid. I have to wait till 11, 5 or 9 local news, before you cover that? Or I have to be in front of a TV? Nope.
While local stations are offering more options for media consumption, (KOMO has a radio station, twitter feed and website) local news in its traditional TV form is dead to me. When I watch the news with my dad, a bonding experience, I wonder why I should care. The people I see don’t look like me, talk like me or are representative of the world I experience. But it’s ALL those things to my 65-year old retired military father.
I DO follow KOMO news online, but I mostly follow other Seattle locals. They tweet or blog breaking events, carry it down the line, and local news quickly pops up in my feed. And that’s the way I like it.
There are ways to lure my butt back into a seat to watch local news, though: micro-news. I would love to see events and happenings directly impacting me on Seattle news. How great it would be to be able to dial into “Belltown News” and see what roads in my immediate ‘hood are undergoing construction, which restaurants failed a health inspection or what local groups are doing something impacting the community I call home. I would be thrilled to see a calendar of events for volunteering to clean up the parks near my place, or to see what ordinances I should be aware of or items to vote on. To have all this in one convenient location with lots of images and high production values would be hard to resist. I want more for me.
That’s how the internet has changed us. It’s given us more for me, NOW. Until local television news catches up to the NOW and ME mentality, anything they broadcast is anything but new.
You're 100% correct. News people look fake, act fake and talk fake. I can't relate to them either.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
@Lelynn Ruggles, Thanks! I think TV news will get there, eventually, as a paid subscription, like papers are. They'll become much, much more specialized I predict. And within the next 15 years the shift will start. The older demography still get value from generalized, topical current events, while younger folk want more personalized news in a way that suits their consumer habits.
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