commentary

If Peter Kafka’s got any chops as a prognosticator, Donald Trump will be having conniptions over more than just an election loss, if he decides to establish a media presence. First he’d have to find someone to sell him a TV network, Kafka writes, and then there are the distribution challenges. If he went the digital route, Glenn Beck’s relative success then precipitous slide provides a useful example of just how hard that is. “Running a network isn’t the same as showing up on a network, and Trump is going to learn the difference,” he writes.

Jordan Wertlieb, president of Hearst Television: “Whether it is severe weather events like Hurricane Matthew, tornadoes in the Midwest or domestic terrorist attacks, local broadcasters are the lifeline of support. Next Generation Television (ATSC 3.0) offers the opportunity for our communication lifeline to be upgraded to the latest technology. The television industry has worked hard to finalize a next-generation standard and the time is now for the FCC to approve this new standard.”

The legendary baseball announcer kept the best parts of the game on the radio, even after decades on TV.

The Washington Post‘s Paul Farhi: “Fact is, there really is no such thing as ‘the media.’ It’s an invention, a tool, an all-purpose smear by people who can’t be bothered to make distinctions. Those who work in the media don’t gather in our huddle rooms each morning and light up the teleconference lines with plots to nettle and unsettle you. There is no media in the sense of a conspiracy to tilt perception.”

Watching television can feel like therapy, thanks to all the idiosyncratic characters on today’s niche shows. 

Ron Stitt argues that killing user commenting on publishers’ owned-and-operated sites is about the worst move they can make, as it sabotages one of their best means of engagement. That engagement has a big impact on KPIs like low bounce rates and extended time on site, he says.

Steve Schwaid: “Stations, how do you think of your news and weather app? Chances are, many stations only think of their app as pushing forecasts and weather alerts. Few realize how many folks may actually use the weather or news app to watch the station’s air, especially during breaking events. Are your apps designed to provide a live stream of breaking weather and news? If not, you need to fix this immediately. Here’s how.”

Adam Buckman: “One thing I have never understood: Why do we care so much who wins an Emmy Award (or for that matter, an Oscar, Grammy or Tony too)? It’s great that people are being recognized and awarded in their industry for their work. More power to them, but this annual televised celebration of their industry almost always comes across as gross showing off. I suppose the same can be said of all awards shows.”

Andrew Sullivan: “An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.”

Jack Shafer: “A slavish devotion to balance — making sure every alpha who expresses an opinion in a piece is paired with a corresponding omega, or shrinking into a defensive ball every time a critic accuses you of overcovering a topic — is injurious to good journalism. To be alive, journalism must be a little swashbuckling, a little deaf to its critics.”

Seton Motley: “FCC Chairman [Tom Wheeler] wants to end all that pesky free market content creation and explosive growth — and shrink it all back down to one government bureau. He is doing all of this via a pay TV set-top-box power grab. What non-problem is his grab alleged to be “solving?”

Adam Buckman: “They just might be my least favorite group of TV shows all year. They’re the annual tributes to 9/11, all the documentaries and ‘special reports’ recounting the events of that day. Taking them all in — even while trying to avoid them, which is near-impossible at this time of the year — is a sad, maudlin experience.”

Haley Young spent the summer as an intern at WAOW in her hometown of Wausau, Wis. “Although I spent some time in the promotions and sales departments, most of my days played out at a desk in the newsroom, where I kept up with the station’s social media and overall online presence. I had grown up watching Channel 9’s coverage, but I had never appreciated all of the work that went into preparing a newscast for my living room every night. These are some of my biggest takeaways.”

Ken Wheaton says that while national TV coverage of the flooding in Louisiana was lacking, local TV deserves praise. “The local TV guys … worked this story hard, despite having their own families and homes to worry about. And the video of a rescue of a woman and her dog trapped in her car aired by WAFB out of Baton Rouge should win an Emmy and an Oscar and whatever else we give trophies for these days. That was a compelling and harrowing narrative. Just the sort of thing that national news outlets would pick up and run with until we were desensitized. But even there, you guys were slow to pick it up. I saw that clip on Facebook. In fact, I saw everything on Facebook.”

So many of the fundamental media bedrocks appear to be crumbling, while what’s rising up sometimes feels alien. Then there are other countervailing trends, which seem to fight the idea that everything is changing. So how do you think about all of this? How do you synthesize what you know from firsthand experience and impart that without sounding like Gutenberg bemoaning paperbacks? Here are a few suggestions.

It’s time for media in Baltimore to get real with the police. A police department doesn’t get as sick as the Department of Justice says Baltimore’s is without lots of help. And if the media want to really make Baltimore a better place to live, they have to push back against the police — as unpleasant as it might be. In their timidity and abrogation of a watchdog role, too many in the media have become enablers.

CJ&N President John Altenbern: Research shows that the battle for real estate on mobile phones is tightening. You don’t want your station’s app to be one of those that doesn’t get used — or worse yet, is deleted. In the local news business that means you must win that fight on the mobile screen. It’s win-or-lose. Here are six suggestions on what can do to win.

Yesterday, female-focused publisher Refinery29 announced it had raised $45 million in a funding round led by Turner. It was just the latest in a long series of equity investments made by traditional media giants in fast-rising digital media startups. These deals are frequently labeled as “strategic investments” benefiting both sides. What these deals also demonstrate is that while the death of traditional media might make for a great cocktail conversation, if the so-called disruptors succeed, so will “old media.” They’ve ensured it.

2015 was a blockbuster year for OTT TV platform launches, and in looking at those large enough to make a splash, there are 35 new services vying for consumer attention. Finding a niche is the key to surviving the OTT baby boom.

Michael Kinsley evokes a haughtiness of his own to decry the selfsame quality among data journalism’s rising stars like Ezra Klein and Nate Cohn and in sites like Vox and The Upshot. His piece is likely to have digital journalists furrowing their brows at least until the weekend, when Klein may hunt Kinsley down at a Hamptons beach party to punch him in the jaw.

Jonathan Cohen, a  partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, has been closely following the incentive auction by which the FCC is looking to clear a significant part of the television band and take that spectrum, slice it up into different size blocks, and resell it to wireless companies. He has been guiding numerous companies through its complexities. Here, he offers various observations about the auction.

Adam Buckman: On my cable system, Time Warner Cable in New York City, multicast networks are given short shrift. I have, at my count, seven of them. All seven are available in a diginet ghetto located way up on the 1200 block of Time Warner’s Manhattan channel lineup — from MeTV at ch. 1239 to Get TV at ch. 1284. They — and TWC’s subscribers — deserve better.

By complicating negotiations, the good faith rules made the failure of retrans negotiations more likely without any apparent upside. A lot of parties wasted a lot of time prosecuting good faith petitions at the FCC (and much more time was wasted posturing for good faith complaints that were never filed), but only one ever led to a finding of bad faith.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: “In my two and a half years as an FCC Commissioner, I have tried to make productive suggestions to improve the internal workings of the Commission.  These efforts have never been an attempt to undermine the authority of the Chairman…. Instead, this entire effort is about improving the efficiency of the Commission and increasing fairness and transparency with regard to a process that is questionable in some instances and downright objectionable in others.” Here are 24 reform proposals.

Colorado’s Ballantine Communications has been aggressively producing video content for its newspapers. One of the most important takeaways, says CEO Doug Bennett, is that audiences gravitate to the topics they’re interested in far more than navigating a limited and prescribed slate of online “shows.”

Game of Thrones. The Bachelor. House of Cards. It’s now possible to watch everything. How? It’s the future of storytelling.

University of North Texas professor Meredith D. Clark: “If you had the opportunity to build a news organization from the ground up, what would you include? What would you do differently? I’d build a new foundation by reconfiguring an old one: our news values. There is no substitute for truth, accuracy and the timely delivery of relevant news. But for companies that serve hyperlocal, niche, specialty and digitally based audiences, there are unspoken, and perhaps unquestioned values that should be discussed.”

Marlena Majoie, media director at MMI Agency in Houston, says yes, learning all these new terms and technologies can be intimidating for traditional media people, but it is possible. Don’t be afraid to experiment. It can help inform your buys.

Billy Penn’s Jim Brady says local journalists are often their own worst enemy in the struggle to keep their news organizations alive. That’s because they’ve been slow to adapt and have drifted away from a focus on their customers and communities. He says refocusing there creates opportunity for a robust events business drawing from the news, and it opens the possibilities to more engaging ads that will circumvent the blockers for their utility value.

Consumers who are trying to save money on their cable bills are increasingly moving to “skinny bundles” that have fewer channels. As consumers go on a cable bill diet, they are effectively dropping channels. But while skinny bundles are cheaper for consumers, they will be the death of some cable channels.

Gordon Borrell: “The marketing world has changed. Advertisers are more media savvy than they were just a decade ago. They know the power of each medium and see right through anyone who doesn’t. Rather than downplaying the effectiveness of digital advertising, television’s message should be: Look at the power of digital media and how TV magnifies it.”

The FCC commissioner sets forth his stance on reforming the commission’s media ownership rules. “Broadcasters and newspapers have much to contribute in terms of diverse, local content, but many have been left fighting, some for their very survival, with an artificially-narrowed range of options.  In general, they should be set free to compete on equal footing with all of their fellow content providers, not kept on an unnecessary and unfair regulatory leash.”

Cord-cutting appears to be all the rage with consumers, and that has put pressure on media stocks dependent on cable TV. But maybe it’s not such a big threat to media companies, after all. John E. Maloney, CEO of M&R Capital Management, offers three reasons not to count out traditional cable-dependent media.

Former Fox and ABC stations digital exec Ron Stitt lays out a modern vision for the local TV newsroom staffed by multi-tasking, highly productive staffers serving up much more relevant, engaging content (and a lot more of it). Getting there, however, involves completely refiguring budgets and personnel, plus the willingness to do so.

On Tuesday during a nationally televised news conference, the Republican presidential nominee experienced a towering meltdown after reporters asked him to account for the millions he claimed to have raised for veterans several months ago. The performance was vintage Trump and echoed a basic set of behaviors he has exhibited all campaign long. As the emotional equivalent of a toddler, Trump can’t articulate the rage he feels, and the interrogations at news conferences seem to make him only angrier. The press is not Trump’s keeper, but we can help him better handle confrontation. Here’s how.

Despite the sad state of affairs that the upfronts couldn’t truly mask, some smart moves might be happening with the networks. Now that the upfront cavalcade of audacious dreaming is over, what does it all mean?