commentary

We’re well into the upfronts, as the major TV networks are wooing advertisers with sneak peeks of their schedules for the 2016-17 season. Once again, there’s a focus on new ways of reaching consumers as traditional commercials, which interrupt the programming that viewers want to watch, become less and less effective. Common in TV’s early days, sponsorships are coming back into vogue as a method to reduce clutter and make commercials more palatable by making them less annoying.

The goal of advertisers is simple: to reach consumers. So as consumers shift from reading traditional periodicals to Internet content, advertisers generally follow. If ad dollars follow time share, we could see a 25% to 50% drop in broadcast TV ad revenues. But for now, advertisers are sticking with broadcast TV. As hot as digital advertising seems to be these days, many advertisers find that it doesn’t provide the same reach and return on investment that broadcast TV does.

Lots of stories I cover in media make me angry. But few leave me actually disheartened about the role media play in our lives. I have long been decrying the role of dark money, hidden persuaders and stealth media efforts to win votes and shape election outcomes. But I mainly thought about the problem as a national one, focusing on presidential and congressional races. This spring, it got local and personal for me.

Dan Schechter, managing director/partner at L.E.K. Consulting: “Traditional TV remains a robust offering, but new forms of entertainment (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, etc.) are also performing well. In our proprietary research on media consumption habits, we dove even deeper into why consumers are shifting. Many analysts talk about what is happening, but we are among the very few who ask ‘Why?’ ”

Hulu sales SVP Peter Naylor: “New media” was what everyone called that whole content-in-a-browser-dial-up-internet thingy about 20 years ago. TV on the other hand is traditional media. Some might call it “conventional media.” But I assert that the most conventional of media — television — is new media. Here’s why.

Steve Gray thinks local journalism is not producing enough of the right kind of content, which ought to be “providing information every day that meets genuinely felt needs among the people who live in our communities.” Much of what that’s comprised of tends to get de-prioritized as “consumer news,” he says, while it’s really a lot more important to readers than many newsrooms realize.

Vincent Duffy, news director at Michigan Radio: “We sometimes treat local journalism like it’s not as big a deal or as important as the national networks. But in the communities we cover that is not the case. [The Flint, Mich., water] story would not have come to light without local journalists, and now that the national media have turned their attention to Trump, and Zika and the Panama Papers, local journalists are still in Flint chasing this story.”

The Baltimore Sun‘s David Zurawik: “I lost a lot of respect for the national media, while I gained some for local TV. I came to realize there are news outlets so ideologically oriented they might be beyond redemption. One year after the death of Freddie Gray, these are some of the things I learned from the countless hours of coverage I watched as well as the more than 50 print articles and online posts I reported and wrote since the two citizen videos of Freddie Gray being arrested first tore through the media ecosystem.”

Even the catchiest pop songs eventually make you want to dive for the earplugs. And so it goes with Fox’s American Idol, which is being taken out of rotation today the way we shoo away a beloved house guest who has overstayed his welcome.

In order to stay relevant in a profession practiced by increasingly digital journalists, Benjamin Mullin suggests the Pulitzer Prizes take some steps to further broader their standards for award consideration. Among them: allow broadcasters in, consider international media and give readers a say in judging.

Former broadcast lobbyist Preston Padden: “ATSC-3 and SFN’s may be the just what broadcasting needs to prosper in the future. Certainly there are smart and dedicated women and men working hard to make these technologies a reality. However, I would offer a few cautions.” Also, “The [affiliation] dispute between NBC and [WHDH’s] Ed Ansin is unfortunate on many levels. If I was running a network today, I would want him as a part of my distribution platform.”

Deep breath, publishers: you won’t need to be cranking out VR stories for the new Oculus Rift headset overnight. Joseph Lichterman writes that based on the spate of early reviews, it’s an impressive and positive step in the VR revolution, but widespread adoption will likely be hampered by its price tag ($599) and the high-powered PC it needs to run (no Macs yet). In short, it’s also just thrilling enough to get critics revved up for the 2.0 version.

Alas, for all its power, the media did not create Donald Trump. Prior to campaign 2016, he already existed as a cultural force, enjoying greater name recognition than any of the other Republican candidates. Nobody can deny that Trump has shrewdly gamed the media for maximum exposure. But Trump’s skills at attracting publicity do not make a very good paternity case against the media.

When TV stations can serve audiences anytime and anywhere, on the screen that is most convenient, they cement the role they play in informing and influencing viewers, especially millennials. This relevance also increases stations’ attractiveness to advertisers because they can deliver an audience throughout more of the day rather than in just a few time slots.

Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance: “Media Alliance finds it troubling that the FCC’s current re-examination of the rules for exclusivity may jeopardize local broadcast television as it exists today. The commission is in the process of reexamining rules which allow broadcasters to negotiate the terms of use for broadcast content to be disseminated to cable providers. If the current system is upended, some local stations across the country will face the very real possibility of having to shut down due to a lack of adequate funding, because they are not being compensated for their own content.”

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: “As it is being applied today, the commission’s existing rule intended to protect nonpublic information hinders commissioners’ abilities to engage in the fulsome dialogue and obtain the data needed to most thoroughly and thoughtfully consider and comment on items. As a first step, let’s make it standard procedure that all commissioners and their staffs can discuss the substance of items on circulation or a meeting agenda, minus adjudicatory law enforcement items.”

Digital sales veteran Andrea Duggan says local media are well positioned to win a healthy share of 2016’s election spend, provided they can meet four key criteria. They must tout their engaged civic audience to campaigns, price to reflect the premium value of their inventory, work in an agile manner with fast-moving campaigns — who have also embraced scale through programmatic — and confront potential viewability problems directly.

Megyn Kelly is suddenly the premier TV newswoman in America. Well, maybe “suddenly” is not quite accurate since her success did not exactly happen overnight. Her nightly news-and-talk show on Fox News Channel, The Kelly File, has been the centerpiece of FNC’s primetime lineup for more than two years, since October 2013. In recent months, though, the graph line on her public profile has shot up dramatically.

As TV embraces diversity, characters become more like us, and shows get better. The critics Wesley Morris and James Poniewozik of The Times discuss.

Media Institute President Patrick Maines: “The proposed merger between the cable systems of Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks has brought out the usual poseurs in opposition. As it happens, there exists a bridge between these armies of progressivism in the person of former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Whatever the pros and cons of the Charter and Time Warner Cable merger — and there are many more of the former than the latter — it speaks volumes to know about the kinds of people who are in opposition to it.”

The FCC recently announced that it intends to vote this month on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at creating a competitive retail market for video set-top boxes, a move that gives clear meaning to the biblical proverb “as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” There are plenty of technologies and services available today through which consumers can get video programming. So what could be driving Chairman Tom Wheeler to stick his burnt finger back into the fire?

In March, the FCC will begin its broadcast incentive auction. The auction provides an opening to take advantage of four disruptive changes that together comprise a perfect storm for broadcast television: targeted advertising, stringer news collection, indie entertainment production and migration of workflow infrastructures to the Internet Protocol standard. An Internet-only TV station embracing all four could become a model for vigorous television through the remainder of the century.

Mike Cavender, RTDNA executive director: “It isn’t enough that we have to contend with fighting legislation around the country that seeks to prevent police videos from being released. Now, in Arizona, there’s a state senator who’s introducing a bill that would make it illegal to record your own video of a police action if you’re closer than 20 feet to the officer.”

In a world filled with new viewing behaviors, the old-school TV commercial may no longer be ready for primetime

Jordan Weissmann says that Al Jazeera America’s name and Quatari pedigree may have had a role in its demise, but its bigger problem was its content. “The channel was founded on the utterly ill-conceived idea that Americans were starving for sober, ‘unbiased’ hard news coverage,” he writes. “It made the mistake of offering viewers the programming they claimed to want, instead of the programming that all available evidence suggests they actually enjoy.”

A number of analysts have forecast 2016 will be the year digital ad spending surpasses television to become the No. 1 medium. But accountability remains a problem for the Internet. While many advertisers are moving their dollars online, there are serious concerns dogging the medium, including worries about ad fraud, ad blocking and viewability. Martin Utreras, an analyst at eMarketer, talks about how the problems are being addressed, what can be improved and what changes to expect this year.

The new role marks Schieffer’s return to television after stepping away as chief Washington correspondent and anchor of Face the Nation in June 2015 after a 24-year run in that seat.

Lotteries and their occasional huge jackpots have become such a journalism trope that I worry we have lost sight of the negative aspects of lotteries and have become, instead, boosters and an important part of the lottery marketing ecosystem. But there is more to lotteries than that, and I hope we can start doing some real reporting again on this multi-billion dollar industry.

For the past several months, for my own curiosity and on behalf of a dozen clients, I’ve been interested in what sort of “Racing Form” the FCC may have given us that could be helpful in the reverse auction. In fact, I believe it has given us one, and this essay is meant to be a sort of guide to how to interpret this information. Learn whether your station or others in your market could be “winners.”

Let’s have a round of applause for the NBC Broadcast Standards employees who had their hands on the mute button during Sunday night’s Golden Globes telecast. They did an impressive job, and it was no easy task.

MFM selected Gannett’s Alison Engel to receive its Distinguished CFO Award. In her acceptance speech, she shared her “rules of the road” for becoming a better leader. I believe they apply to any management position, whether it’s at a TV station or corporate office.

Brent Budowsky: “Today we witness one of the greatest scandals in the history of professional journalism. Many of America’s leading television news companies are so fully in the tank for Donald Trump that they should file with the Federal Elections Commission and report their coverage of the 2016 election as political donations to his presidential campaign.”

Anick Jesdanun wants to see more TV networks disentangling themselves from costly bundles, better ways of tracking what to watch among shows expiring from streaming services and a better alternative to passwords among a wish list of other media tech improvements for 2016.

Much has happened to advance storytelling. One of the most important, in my view, is that we don’t hear the phrase “digital first” as often as we did in 2014. It is more about “the story first” now. Concern about platforms has become secondary. The story as protagonist is where it’s at and should continue to be. Those who populate newsrooms globally are getting the idea: we are in the storytelling business and we now have more platforms than ever to tell those stories. Amen to that, but I hope 2016 will be a year to concentrate on the need for innovative and creative storytelling techniques.

To be sure, many technical accomplishments have been achieved in the television industry this year, but there is so much more to do. What follows is my top 10 list of New Year’s wishes for television when it comes to technology. They range from a repack rethink to re-imagining television broadcasting as a whole.

Next year’s spectrum auction will see the FCC selling bandwidth it will have simply usurped from entrepreneurs, local communities and even churches that use it to provide free over-the-air local low-low power TV without any form of compensation. Moreover, it will be grabbing spectrum in a way that violates the FCC’s longstanding mission as well as the Fifth Amendment.