• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

ABC News Radio DC Bureau Closes

KMan said:
But ABC's downsizing is quite drastic, and for a former industry leader, their ability to cover a big event on radio is serious diminished. I heard a montage of their live 9/11 coverage the other day ...
Click to expand...

As I said earlier in this thread, Top of the hour news is mainly an AM product. AM news radio has fallen dramatically in the last five years. ABC Radio News was built around the big ABC O&O radio stations. They sold them about 8 years ago, and the new owner dropped ABC Radio News at the beginning of this year. So when you lose all your major market stations, you have a much smaller budget. However, they still own lots of TV stations. In fact, ABC TV owns Channel 6 in Philadelphia, so they could have easily obtained coverage from WPVI, unless they needed a dedicated correspondent.

But the entire news business, including newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and even NPR, is having a rough time because the audience doesn't want to pay for news, and really doesn't care if what they get is factual.
 
Hard to dispute any aspect of Big A's analysis. I've always preferred CBS' TOH news, but the only way ABC was going to continue to offer radio content was to repurpose what they were already producing. It's basically what they are doing now, or nothing. Something is better than nothing in this case.
 
umfan said:
Hard to dispute any aspect of Big A's analysis. I've always preferred CBS' TOH news, but the only way ABC was going to continue to offer radio content was to repurpose what they were already producing. It's basically what they are doing now, or nothing. Something is better than nothing in this case.
Click to expand...

No dispute here, just making some observations. Turns out this forum's archive has become a tremendous historical record for happenings over the last 15 years. But if you don't make the observation, it never gets saved.
 
TheBigA said:
But the entire news business, including newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and even NPR, is having a rough time because the audience doesn't want to pay for news, and really doesn't care if what they get is factual.
Click to expand...

I'll agree with part one of what you say here. The audience is used to getting their news for free. Despite all the advances in media technology, OTA radio and TV haven't gone away. The glory days of their revenue streams may be in the past, but they still make money through advertising because they will always have audiences who don't get charged for tuning in.

An older generation had no problem paying for a newspaper subscription. But they interpreted that as a delivery charge, not a charge for the actual news content. In the digital realm, I already pay for my "delivery" when I pay my internet/mobile bill. And, if I pay for content, why do I still get subject to advertising that either blocks my view or interrupts my news content?

As for not caring if the news content is factual, I disagree. Viewers, listeners and readers have expressed their outrage when its learned somebody fudged or completely blew a story. Lara Logan's Benghazi author interview is a great example from the past few years. Even Oprah couldn't avoid the heat when it turned out one of her featured authors was a phony.
 
NewsStud said:
As for not caring if the news content is factual, I disagree.
Click to expand...

You can disagree if you wish. People continue to believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts. So while broadcast radio and TV try to remain impartial and present facts, the audience will prefer to seek out confirmation for their opinions even if they're wrong.
 
TheBigA said:
The audience will prefer to seek out confirmation for their opinions even if they're wrong.
Click to expand...

True, you can't convince somebody to change their mind. But when presented with obvious falsehoods (or in the case of Brian Williams' misremembrances) the public does voice their displeasure. I think the point is that the audience wants to be allowed to draw their own conclusions or keep to their own perspectives, but if they find you've been force-feeding them blatantly false stuff, they get unruly.

Aside from all this, if anybody reading is also a SiriusXM subscriber, the new All-News channel from Fox News is now on Channel 115. Anybody hear it?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom