Why does local TV coverage of live events suck?

[jb4647]

I've lived in Houston my whole life (37 years). Has anyone else noticed that local TV coverage of live events always sucks? It had been a while since I've watched local live event but I did take the time to DVR the Parker inaguration via KPRC. Apparently Channel 13 handled the pool coverage but the picture and sound was awlful as it always has been! Looks like some local high school TV production shot it. What'd they have only two cameras? Hell, the cameras that they did have were so far away that the zoom made everything wobbly. C'mon people, this is 2010, not 1983.

Sorry for the rant....just always has bugged me about Houston. We're the fourth largest city for crisake!

[Tricky Matt]

I know many, many people who live in Houston and are from elsewhere who don't care about local events to such an extent that they don't watch local TV or read local print media...ever (I find this very strange).

I'm not sure if this causes the local coverege of live events to suck but it does show that there is a large part of the city that doesn't consume local media.

[TheNiche]

I know many, many people who live in Houston and are from elsewhere who don't care about local events to such an extent that they don't watch local TV or read local print media...ever (I find this very strange).

I'm not sure if this causes the local coverege of live events to suck but it does show that there is a large part of the city that doesn't consume local media.

Yep, unless something is on fire and may trigger secondary explosions, my interest in televised news is pretty much nil. I do read print media, but probably less than one eighth of the stories in the Chronicle.

[Fringe]

What I love is how the stations always seem to interview the most retarded person on the scene that has absolutely nothing relevant to say. This has been going on forever. What's the point? 

[Jeebus]

You have to have an audience before you can justify any production expenses. I think most of us were at work when the mayor was sworn in.

[LTAWACS]

Perhaps they are like Houston radio. Totally crappy.

[20thStDad]

What I love is how the stations always seem to interview the most retarded person on the scene that has absolutely nothing relevant to say. This has been going on forever. What's the point?

It's not their fault, the retard is usually the only one who wants to be on tv. The rest of us decline, worried we might come off looking stupid. And if we are brave (drunk) enough to want to, they'll probably steer clear for fear of dropping an FCC-fine bomb.

[editor]

Tricky Matt and Jeebus are both on the right path.

Jeebus is right in that you have to have an audience to make it worth the time and expense of having a crew staff a live event. Most people are at work or otherwise occupied during the middle of the day. Nursing homes, prisons, hospitals, college dorms, and mental institutions don't count in the ratings.

Airing a live event means bumping out what few paying ads you have left. And in this economy, that's not a wise idea. If it is believed that SOME people will make an effort to tune in, some stations will stream the event live on their web sites as a compromise. But there is still an expense involved in doing so.

If a station chooses to cover an event like an inauguration live, it's not exactly an easy thing to do. JB complained about the cameras being far away. At an event like that, the cameras are located where the mayor's office puts them. From a logistical and technical standpoint they cannot roam around the audience willy nilly.

And Matt is spot on when it comes to people watching local media. If more people watched, more time, thought, effort, and money would go into these productions. The Facebook generation prides itself on not getting its news from the mainstream media (a phrase ironically coined by Ralph Nader in the 1960's), then complains when events aren't covered because of slashed news department budgets. Meanwhile, they absorb rehashed New York Times articles on blog sites and take joy in proclaiming that newspapers are dying. When newspaper die, so will most blogs.

Houston used to have its own 24 hour news channel, and there were two Texas-wide 24-hour news channels (one based in Houston the other in Dallas). So far two of them have gone out of business. Not because of the people behind the scenes. I knew a few of them, and while they weren't the best in the market they were far from the worst. The channels went out of business because the majority of people in Houston don't care enough about local news watch the local news.

The radical shift in televised media we're seeing now wasn't caused by the media. It was caused by the viewers. The TV companies became really good at audience measuring and finding out exactly what the audience wanted, and it's giving viewers what they want. Unfortunately, viewers want some really awful things, whether they admit it or not.

Back when TV ratings were done with diaries, people would write down all the time how they watched PBS and educational programs and news. But when their viewing habits could be tracked electronically it turned out that while they were writing down that they watched "PBS NewsHour" and "Nova" and "Connections" they were actually watching "WWE Raw" and "The Simpsons" and "Jerry Springer."

There are still pockets of America where local media is still very strong and high quality. Those are areas where the people still support their local media. They watch the local news. They listen to locally produced radio programs. They read the local paper. They visit their local blogs. They are engaged in the city around them and not just a bunch of couch potatoes hooked up to a national satellite service who then complain that no one is doing stories that affect them. How would they even know?

[TheNiche]

The Facebook generation prides itself on not getting its news from the mainstream media (a phrase ironically coined by Ralph Nader in the 1960's), then complains when events aren't covered because of slashed news department budgets. Meanwhile, they absorb rehashed New York Times articles on blog sites and take joy in proclaiming that newspapers are dying. When newspaper die, so will most blogs.

Terrific observations, Editor. But newspapers (or at least the print media concept of what newspapers represent) will never die; they'll merely go online and relay national stories using the oligopolistic Reuters/AP business model. And what's left over for local coverage will be local a consortium of minimally-paid or volunteer bloggers, pretty much an extrapolation of the path that the Chronicle has taken in recent years. Independent blogs and forums will always have content to mull over...probably just vastly reduced in quality.

[AtticaFlinch]

Terrific observations, Editor. But newspapers (or at least the print media concept of what newspapers represent) will never die; they'll merely go online and relay national stories using the oligopolistic Reuters/AP business model. And what's left over for local coverage will be local a consortium of minimally-paid or volunteer bloggers, pretty much an extrapolation of the path that the Chronicle has taken in recent years. Independent blogs and forums will always have content to mull over...probably just vastly reduced in quality.

Either that, or the world will become so uneventful there will be no news to report.

Then again, tomorrow's news reporters (today's Facebook generation) will probably still report on that like they do now : "im soooo bored lulz."

[editor]

Terrific observations, Editor. But newspapers (or at least the print media concept of what newspapers represent) will never die; they'll merely go online and relay national stories using the oligopolistic Reuters/AP business model. And what's left over for local coverage will be local a consortium of minimally-paid or volunteer bloggers, pretty much an extrapolation of the path that the Chronicle has taken in recent years. Independent blogs and forums will always have content to mull over...probably just vastly reduced in quality.

What you describe is happening in a number of markets, of course Houston being one of the more notable ones. Some newspapers seem to be almost outsourcing their local coverage to local bloggers. In some places, newspapers are actually turning their reporters and columnists into bloggers. A few reporters I follow have gone from producing 2-3 long interesting reporting pieces a week to now being bloggers for their newspapers and churning out 20-25 shorter pieces a week.

One sign of encouragement -- the New York Times is beefing up its local coverage in markets where it sees the local newspapers are weak. Chicago is one of the test markets, and now instead of getting the generic Midwest edition of the New York Times, we get a full-blown Chicago edition with a lot of local news from local reporters. I think the Times is doing this in San Francisco, too. Hopefully this will work and spread to other cities where the incumbent newspapers have abdicated their responsibility to produce local news.

[editor]

Either that, or the world will become so uneventful there will be no news to report.

Then again, tomorrow's news reporters (today's Facebook generation) will probably still report on that like they do now : "im soooo bored lulz."

You have no idea how right you are.

The Medill school of journalism at Northwestern University is considered one of the top five journalism schools in the country. Because my boss had a special relationship with the school, we were (so I was told) given the best and brightest journalism interns the school had to offer. Almost universally, they were terrible. They can shoot video with their phone and tweet a link to it on YouTube, but they can't conjugate a verb, diagram a sentence, and have never had any training in ethics. Absolutely awful.

Based on my experiences with about a dozen Medill interns, I will NEVER hire a Northwestern University graduate.

That's not to say there aren't good people coming out of colleges with journalism degrees. But in my experience, they're from crappy second- and third-tier schools and they work harder because of it. They aren't interested in journalism or broadcasting because of their egos, but because they want to tell stories and inform the public. But again, they are a rare find.

It should be noted that Medill is no longer the Medill School of Journalism. A couple of years ago it changed its name to something like the Medill School of Integrated Marketing Communications or something awful like that. It's another example of a university that's not focused on the needs of the students or the community, but on chasing dollars.

[LTAWACS]

It should be noted that Medill is no longer the Medill School of Journalism. A couple of years ago it changed its name to something like the Medill School of Integrated Marketing Communications or something awful like that. It's another example of a university that's not focused on the needs of the students or the community, but on chasing dollars.

You have to admit... it does look better on paper. Lulz.

[SecondTour]

You have to have an audience before you can justify any production expenses.

Along those lines; Depending on which TV station you follow, the voter turnout was very low - around 14 %. Parker won with 53% of that. That's 7.4%. If only 7% of the city even cared enough to bother voting for her, the number of people who might tune into the inauguration would almost certainly be too low to justify any sort of significant coverage.