Local TV News - what have you done for me lately?

I don’t watch much local television news, due to a variety of factors. First of all, I don’t have a television; not because I’m the type to eschew the pleasures of zoning out to a screen, just that said screen is my computer and the content is streamed and selected based on my whims, which surely could, but never do include the local news. I do enjoy keeping up with the events of the world near and far, and in order to do so, rely on (online) newspapers and blogs, and the occasional news website, King or KOMO. For some reason, I only find myself drawn to the local news when it snows. I think I’m still trained from my childhood when snow = day off, and I found nothing more delightful than seeing the name of my school district across the school closures banner.

When I did have a television, I would end up watching the news by accident – you’re flipping through the channels, a story catches your eye, and before you know it, you’ve been sucked in for an hour. As viewers have more control and channel surfing becomes a thing of the past, the local news is going to have to try much harder to get viewers to select the news without the benefit of a compelling hook to lure them in.  As far as I can tell, the format of the local news has not changed much in the past 20 years, while the world around them has changed dramatically. It is time for the local news to get hip to the times. To be fair, all of the local news channels have made an effort – they have great websites, helpful apps and tweet in real time.

However, in order to truly keep up with our rapidly digitizing, mobilizing world, I propose a grand restructuring. First of all, I do not see the point in having 4-5 networks (I’m looking at you, King, KOMO, Kiro and Fox) all basically airing the same content, competing for the same viewers. I suspect that tv news viewers are a diverse bunch, so why not appeal to that diversity? Programming could be separated into various categories: business, politics, arts/culture, food, sports, crime, weather, traffic, etc. Each network could have a few niche categories that they cover very well. This would adapt local news to the digital age in which viewers want to select content that is meaningful to them, rather than being presented with a mixed bag of content designed to appeal to the masses. This system could be a boon to advertisers who could more effectively target their offers based on the content being shown, and just might be willing to pay more for the privilege.

In addition to diversifying the content, I would love to see more hyper-local tv news. I’m admittedly naïve about the technologies available, but it seems like it should be possible to vary content by zip code or neighborhood. Everyone loves to see things on tv that are happening in their own backyard, hence the original appeal of local news. Rather than broadly appealing to the Puget Sound region, some content could be specifically for and about Edmonds, Olympia or Issaquah. Within Seattle and larger cities, content could be narrowed by neighborhood. The popularity of neighborhood blogs (MyBallard, West Seattle Blog, Capitol Hill Seattle, etc) is a testament to the fact that people are hungry for this content, and it seems that local tv news networks would be wise to take advantage of this.