Content, Content, Content

"How Local TV News Could Improve and Why"

First off, let me say that I rarely watch TV news. Below is basically my reasoning for not.

My chief thoughts on how local TV news could improve needs to begin from the platform of “How local TV news has not improved—ever.” The format of local TV news hasn’t seemed like it’s changed since I was a kid, which has been a while. They still seem to be trotting down the same path as they always have. The only problem is that it no longer works.

All of the news that they talk about on the 5 p.m. news and the 11 p.m. news has been covered online and on Twitter by the same news station and by most other news outlets. By the time I sit down to watch the news, unless I’ve been down in a hole all day (which has happened before, not to rule that completely out), you know everything already. So, channel changed.

What could they do to improve the news? Stop the TV broadcasts is one for sure way to make local news “improve.” But seriously, here are a few suggestions, good and (probably) bad:

-          Take new angles on each story they cover instead of repeating the same thing they tweeted 2 hours before.

-          Make the news faster. Don’t run a story into the ground, just because Mr. ADD can’t focus. I don’t want to have to have a story repeated several times. Once and I got it. Move on.

-          Break some news on air if possible. Something new would be great to see and hear about.

-          Some stations do this already, but do some in-depth investigation pieces, even some multi-episode stories. It would be good to see some hard-hitting, locally procured content.

-          Get some live interviews or quotes for people that are intelligent and that can complete a sentence. I feel like every time a regular person is on TV they have only been educated to a 1^st grade level. Not that that is entirely bad, but it would help if the interviews provided some relevant information to the story.

So, there are my improvements. The reason they should make these should be plain as day. They need to improve viewership. They need to get my demographic back to the TV with good content. It’s all about content.