commentary

When terrorists strike, television networks respond, sometimes sensitively and other times perhaps unnecessarily.

It’s ironic how some stations lament their digital growth is slowing. The desktop numbers have crashed because of mobile and apps. In some markets we’re even seeing those numbers decline. Why? Often, those local products are frustrating for users. In research, viewers tell us the information is old, the site itself has not been updated in hours and at least a couple of stations in pretty good sized markets don’t have a local person update their sites on a Saturday or Sunday. Really. What’s the solution? Treat your digital platforms like you would treat your air.

NBC buried Donald Trump in June. After Trump’s cracks calling Mexicans rapists and accusing them of bringing crime and drugs to the U.S., the network couldn’t fire him fast enough. It kicked him off Celebrity Apprentice and banished his Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. “At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values,” the network announced righteously. Funny how those cornerstones crumble when it comes to ratings. The Donald is scheduled to host NBC’s Saturday Night Live tomorrow.

Aging broadcast networks must come to terms with a changed landscape — or bleed out financially.

In Hispanic marketing, most of the attention goes to younger Latino consumers — particularly those bilingual millennials whom Univision has dubbed “billennials” — but smart marketers know there’s value in addressing older folks, who hold huge sway over purchasing decisions.

A new Gilmore Girls may be witty, heartfelt and great. I hope so. But it will be a different thing, no matter how much of the original talent returns, because there’s one thing even the best-funded, best-intentioned reboot can’t restore: lost time.

DVRs and OTT services have been eroding the primacy of live TV for years, but in just the last two, primetime viewing has hit a clear tipping point. According to the latest tracking study of TV habits from Hub Entertainment Research, the share of viewers who default to live broadcasts when turning on the TV has plummeted since 2013, from 50% of the total to 34%.

The FCC seems bent on usurping congressional Article One authority, as its just-announced decision to consider including the “exclusivity rule” on their docket for their next open meeting shows. Let’s be clear: There is no legitimate free-market argument for the FCC to once again overstep its authority and throw local, over-the-air broadcasters into a legal limbo with an existential threat by arbitrarily changing the exclusivity rule.

The latter day conventional wisdom on TV ratings, as recited by network chieftains and programmers, is that they don’t really count anymore until all the delayed viewing is added up. That’s all well and good if you’re a network looking to maximize profits. But you know who’s not impressed at all by those numbers? Stations that depend on shows to drive viewers to their late local news and run promos to help do just that. The great, great, great majority of local news viewers watch their newscasts live. Do you know anyone who regularly DVRs them for later viewing?

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has been calling for the FCC to reconsider the broadcaster exclusivity rule. At first blush, getting rid of rules sounds like a good idea. Who doesn’t want more deregulation? The problem is this isn’t the comprehensive video market reform that would unwind 70 years of video regulation in a way that would benefit both consumers and innovation. Instead, it’s another example of cherry-picked “deregulation” which seeks ways to advantage one competitor and/or one format over another, rather than taking a more holistic approach to reforms.

The framers of the Communications Act licensed broadcast stations to specific local communities. Congress and the FCC have created a system that emphasizes local service including the need to have outlets for local political candidates and self-expression. Given this time-honored federal policy, it is disturbing to see that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing to eliminate rules which serve as a linchpin of America’s irreplaceable system of local television.

Too bad if you missed it, but Tuesday afternoon, during the height of Chicago’s afternoon rush hour, NBC-owned WMAQ Chicago demonstrated why it’s now setting the standard for top-notch breaking news coverage among local television news outlets.

Let’s get real. Ad blockers are not going to kill advertising. The remote didn’t. The DVR didn’t. Fact is, Americans like good advertising. The problem is bad advertising.

Mark Ramsey and Tom Asacker argue that Apple has it wrong in its prognostications on TV’s future. The future isn’t in apps, they say, but in a small number of “apps” that are actually indistinguishable from networks. What consumers want is the content, not the app providing it.

Thanks in large part to the campaign spending flood unleashed in 2010 by the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ SpeechNOW.org decision, local broadcast television remains that rare legacy media business where things are still looking up. The key reason why political advertisers have stayed so loyal to TV while other advertisers have been straying has to do with the target demographic.

TV-news-exec-turned-college-professor Mark Effron asked his students what media they used in the past 24 hours. You can imagine what was on the list. Media consumed: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, movies and series on Netflix, Google and an occasional news site like CNN.com. Devices: Smartphones (overwhelmingly), tablets, some laptops, an occasional Xbox. Missing in action: television.

Retired NAB General Counsel Jane Mago: “An old adage says that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. In the world of communications, I would posit a variation on that adage: Those who have lived through regulatory controversies are doomed to repeat them — forever. As one who has witnessed many regulatory controversies since 1978, I am one of the doomed. The current controversy over network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity provides a prime example.”

Creating an elegant interface that combines streaming services and pay TV services, so that Netflix and NBC both live on the same grid, would go a long way towards improving TV’s user experience. It would also benefit all parties, from networks and MVPDs to streaming services. But most of all, it would benefit the consumer.

Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group, writes about her 65th birthday — and her refusal to accept that she’s past her prime. “For me, turning 65 doesn’t include walking away from my profession because of age; I love my job and the company I work for. It doesn’t include a makeover so people will see me differently, and it most certainly doesn’t include giving in to Father (or better, Mother) Time because that’s what I am supposed to do.”

Audience data indicate that two segments of the U.S. population will be hit especially hard by the upcoming FCC auction selling off television airwaves to wireless carriers: minorities, especially Latinos, and public television viewers. Where these two large groups of Americans overlap will be “ground zero” of this government-engineered shift from free, over-the-air television to a data plan near you.

Every TV newscaster in America had to do his or her job Wednesday, but it wasn’t easy. Most of us didn’t know Alison Parker or Adam Ward. But we all know someone like them.

There are plenty of steps newsrooms can take to safeguard their Facebook pages against hackers. Guest columnist Kim Wilson walks through the basics — including never sharing credentials or login information — and what to do if hackers still break through and hijack a news organization’s most important social platform.

The promise of the incentive auction was that volunteering broadcasters would be paid for the value of their spectrum. The duplex gap plan seems designed instead artificially to reduce the prices the FCC may have to pay in crowded and border markets. If the FCC is going to be the honest broker it claims to be in the upcoming auction, it should not be placing its finger on the scale.

“Keeping Up With Trump” could be the title of the continuing televised saga of Donald Trump’s run for the presidency. For the past two or three decades, this is a guy who has never exactly been invisible when it comes to drawing the attention of television cameras and news media. But the exposure he’s getting now is breathtaking.

My guess is that within three years, it will be normal for news organizations of even modest scale to be publishing to some combination of their own websites, a separate mobile app, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, Snapchat, RSS, Facebook Video, Twitter Video, YouTube, Flipboard, and at least one or two major players yet to be named. The biggest publishers will be publishing to all of these simultaneously.

It will be easy this year to identify the biggest losers in the GOP debates. They will be the candidates who aren’t on the stage. With a record 17 prominent candidates vying for the Republican nomination (so far), no system for determining admission to the debate stage will please everyone. But the GOP can certainly do better than the statistically unsound procedures announced by Fox News and CNN.

Don’t wait until your best account executive gives notice to look for a replacement. Scouting for the best sellers in your market should be a regular part of your job so you know where they are when you need them. And don’t limit yourself to account execs at other stations. Great sellers are everywhere, maybe even in the local high school.

Digital media has rediscovered a very old business model. Make your customers pay.

Politicians campaign to win votes and collect contributions. So somebody who is unfettered by either of those concerns represents a bit of a wild card — and a reason why Donald Trump is sucking oxygen out of the Republican presidential race.

In an analysis of what the Big 4 network-owned station groups might get in the upcoming auction, Todd Jueneger, senior analyst for AB Bernstein, wrote that “our most optimistic estimate for CBS, Fox, and NBC (Comcast) is $1.3-$1.5 billion … far below what … some companies have said is possible.”

U.S. media practice a different policy when covering crimes involving white suspect and those involving African Americans and Muslims. Shooters of color are called “terrorists” and “thugs.” Why are white shooters called “mentally ill”?

Assuming everything reported about Brian Williams’ transgressions are true, it’s still important to keep this in perspective.  While those grievous errors wouldn’t allow him to return to the anchor seat, it shouldn’t keep him from pursuing his life’s work — assuming he returns humbled and squares with his audience.

Now that we’re three seasons into “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black,” it appears that binge viewing has had its “moment.” When both of these series premiered on Netflix, what truly set them apart, aside from their nervy brilliance, was their presentation: You could watch as many hours as you wanted. But the reality is with a Netflix series, there is no shared experience, which, let’s face it, is one of the great pleasures of watching television. When we get to the climax of the story, we want to talk about it the day after. It’s a kind of celebration.

After avoiding the subject for much of its lifetime, television has begun featuring stories that include rape. And many people are not happy about it. Whether we like it or not, brutal and precisely detailed violence is being used to explore the human condition on television. Demanding an exemption for rape turns rape into something other than a violent crime and undermines all the work activists have done for years.

How did a man so fastidious screw up so magnificently? We give thanks for Brian Williams’ fall — not because we have anything against the broadcaster, but because from his disgrace can be distilled a medicine that, when taken as directed, will prevent others from a place in perdition.

Veteran TV journalist Mark Effron spells out the characteristics news directors should be looking for when adding to their anchor desks.  Some of these attributes date back to Walter Cronkite, but others are as new as the latest social media app.

With their fancy radars and camera-toting daredevil storm chasers, it’s easy to dismiss local stations’ weather coverage as nothing more than a ratings ploy — especially if you’ve never lived in the middle of the country, where treacherous storms can explode out of nowhere. But TV  meteorologists in tornado alley are more than just entertainment. They save lives.

The rise of social media has accelerated it to the point where it cannot be ignored. In fact, we’re at the place where it’s safe to say that for traditional media companies, online distribution is referral-driven. Broadcasters’ online strategies and tactics, therefore, need to be centered on this reality.