• 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

Scripps News Shutting Down OTA

tripinva

tripinva

tripinva said:
There really is no market for news, is there?
Click to expand...

Not in the traditional sense, no. The newspapers found this out many years ago. Radio knows about it. And now it's hitting TV.

People want content for free. That makes it hard to hire people when there's no money.

So what you end up with is people getting news from free sources, which is filled with inaccuracies.

I bet most people had no idea this even existed.

This is also why the bigger news channels (Fox, CNN, MSNBC) fill most of their time with opinion based talk shows. Not real news.
 
tripinva said:
There really is no market for news, is there?
Click to expand...
Not when most of their affiliates are on subchannels (Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus OH, and Raleigh NC are among a very few exceptions). I'm a regular viewer, and I hate to see it go, but they're not going to compete with the hours of well-produced local news available on ".1" channels in most, if not all major markets.

They're also not going to compete with the major networks' cable/streaming newscasts. Scripps is a station owner, not a network, and it looks like they may have finally figured that out. They just can't get the advertising that the big boys can.
 
I’d have to go back to some things to refresh my memories, but from what I recall, Scripps News was originally “Newsy”, which started as a kind of project from people at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. It was based in Columbia for a while, about a block from the J-school. Even after relocating and various ownership changes, it had a very earnest, capital-J journalism approach. I would watch it every once in a while. It really wasn’t the place to catch up on breaking news; it was more about in-depth reporting. Certainly these were worthy objectives, but I don’t think there’s much of a market for earnestness in this day and age.

Viewers who want that sort of programming can find it from the English-language programming on Deutsche Welle, France 24, NHK, etc., often available on public TV subchannels.
 
I watched Scripps News every once in awhile, but generally if I want to watch in depth news shows, I'll watch Frontline or other PBS stuff.
 
Mark Roberts said:
I don’t think there’s much of a market for earnestness in this day and age.
Click to expand...
Which is profoundly depressing. The cable news networks have long been little more than rabble-rousing telecircuses whose line is fracturing society rather than informing it.
Viewers who want that sort of programming can find it from the English-language programming on Deutsche Welle, France 24, NHK, etc., often available on public TV subchannels.
Click to expand...
Very much so, but their news coverage is Eurocentric (and NHK's, Japan Centric). They cannot replace a service like Scripps.

I mostly watch NHK World for their excellent human interest, travelogue, and documentary series on Japan aired from the bottom to the top of each hour.
 
I thought they made a mistake in not putting a morning block of "Scripps News" on the ION Network which is a .1 subchannel on the vast majority of the O&O's and in areas without an O&O ION has far better subchannel coverage than the Scripps News channel. All the other networks have morning shows and the vast majority of network stations have local news in the morning either on a second channel or around the network morning shows. It may have seemed like a good idea to present alternate programming in the morning such as NCIS or whatever but a three hour block of news from say 6am to 9am would have drawn some eyeballs from those switching around and would have shown that you were more serious about the news product.
But they seem extremely married to the police procedurals on ION even when there are only so many episodes to go around and they are on endless repeat. Things are starting to crack a little bit with the weekend sports but I can't help but think that putting some of the news on a channel with more viewers and potential viewers may have helped. Too late now I guess.

Val
 
valvashon said:
I thought they made a mistake in not putting a morning block of "Scripps News" on the ION Network which is a .1 subchannel on the vast majority of the O&O's and in areas without an O&O ION has far better subchannel coverage than the Scripps News channel.
Click to expand...

And they could do that easily since they own and program all of the Ion stations now.
 
In case nobody noticed, Scripps stock price has been well below $2 all week and rose nearly 40 cents today alone closing at $2.35. So Wall Street liked the news probably because over 200 job cuts are expected. Undoubtedly we will see the carriage of another shopping network on that subchannel, at least on the O&O stations which gives a guaranteed revenue stream and factoring in costs associated with producing the 24/7 news programming, a higher revenue stream than Scripps News did. Wall Street will also like that.
 
So has anyone forwarded them @valvashon's post yet? ;)

I wonder if they could even offer a couple hours of their channel each morning to major independent stations in each market that lacked morning news shows of their own, under an agreement where the stations took 50% to 75% of the advertising time in exchange for letting them promote which other channel the 24/7 version of their news service was available on when it wasn't airing on the current one. Basically, they would be booking what amounted to an infomercial for their news channel on major independent stations, but as a barter show that allowed them to do "lite" participation in the morning news game for some revenue, possibly more than what they would make from 120 minutes of Richard Karn selling flex-o-hoses.
 
The ideas put forward by valvashon and yeoldschool are good, well thought out, reasonable ones ...

... but I fear they come too late to be implemented.

Scripps has made a decision, the channel shuts down in six weeks, and given the slowness of corporate thinking and planning, even if one of their executives woke up on Monday and realized the same thing that the two of you have, said executive probably couldn't get anyone to listen.

That said, I would still hope that if anyone reading RD has a "in" at Scripps, now -- I mean right now -- would be a good time for them to forward those posts.
 
My take is the problem was more on the expense side than on distribution side. They know the resources they have. This is going on at the exact same time as they're expanding their local sports play-by-play business, looking to replace Ballys regional sports network in several cities. They may have decided that they're overextended given the economy, and concentrate more on sports.

One word that sticks out to me from the article in the OP is "linear." Everyone is looking to get out of the 24/7 linear TV business. Even the big networks.
 
Last edited:
yeoldeschool said:
I wonder if they could even offer a couple hours of their channel each morning to major independent stations in each market that lacked morning news shows of their own,
Click to expand...

There aren't "major independent stations" in most markets and haven't been for 30 years. The independent stations which do exist usually have their own news staff (e.g. WHDH/Boston), or share news staff with a duopoly partner (e.g. KONG/Seattle).

As such, I'm not sure who would actually be willing to air programming from Scripps News on their main channel. Would KING allow KONG to air it?

One of the problems with television is tends to be a zero sum game. A new morning news program will take a few viewers from everyone else without inspiring people who didn't watch news before to watch.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
There aren't "major independent stations" in most markets and haven't been for 30 years. The independent stations which do exist usually have their own news staff (e.g. WHDH/Boston), or share news staff with a duopoly partner (e.g. KONG/Seattle).
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it ... this is pretty much the case in at least the top 50 markets. Even if a market had only one dominant independent, they are going to have their own locally-produced morning show.

Let's just take Los Angeles, since I can discuss that market off the top of my head. 7:00-9:00am:

  • KCBS/2 - "CBS Mornings", follows a block of news -- both network and local -- that begins at 2:30am* with (inexplicably) a repeat of the previous day's "CBS Evening News".
  • KNBC/4 - "Today", which in recent years has added a "3rd Hour" version at 9 and "Today with Hoda and Jenna" at 10. Also preceded by network/local mix of news starting at 1:30am* with a replay of their 11:00pm news, followed by a replay of "NBC Nightly News" and then (even more inexplicably) a repeat of the previous day's Kelly Clarkson at 2:30 before going all-news at 3:30.
  • KTLA/5 - As has been discussed in a thread elsewhere on RD, all-news from 4:00am to 11:30pm, except for CW programming from 8:00pm to 10:00pm.
  • KABC/7 - "Good Morning America", also preceded by a mix of network and local news programming starting at 3:00am* (but at least they don't replay "World News Tonight").
  • KCAL/9 - owned by CBS, is the brand for local news on both channels 2 and 9, has a morning show (logically enough, called "KCAL Mornings" to emulate the network show's branding) that starts at 4:00am and continues until 11:00am.
  • KTTV/11 - owned by Fox, has a heritage local morning show, "Good Day L.A." which also runs from 4:00am until 11:00am, followed by "GDLA+".
  • KCOP/13 - branded as "Fox 11 Plus" ... no 7:00-9:00am show, but simulcasts "GDLA+" then repeats that hour at noon.

Not much room for Scripps in there. And the cross-promotion idea is only really attractive in larger markets ... a/k/a the markets where Scripps owns the Ion station.

(* - Because of the late night network programs' odd start times, going back to when NBC started running Johnny Carson at 11:35pm, the start times for the news programming on 2, 4 and 7 are approximate.)
 
Article in today's Los Angeles Times indicates that the real problem wasn't viewership but a reluctance by advertisers to run adjacent to news about today's "divisive political environment".

www.latimes.com

Scripps News is shutting down, another victim of the TV news business downturn

Scripps Chief Executive Adam Symson said advertisers are resisting national news programming because of the country's political divide.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom