My take on it: Time Warner is realizing they can save money (or maximize profits, or increase efficiency - however you want to word it) by consolidating YNN Rochester/Buffalo just like they did with Syracuse and Albany.
Seems crazy to have production in Albany for the WNY markets, but what do I know? I'm just wondering how they do it all. Are there multiple studios and production control rooms? There's no way they can shoot all the anchor on-cam reads they need with just one studio. Must already a tight squeeze for the Albany-based anchors to do all the reads for Albany and CNY, let alone having the same production people handle WNY as well.
But, I digress. TW is obviously looking to trim expenses. Sure, they spent money like crazy on R-News. But they also had no competition for a long time. For quite awhile, there has been competition from satellite. In the past few years, competition has increased thanks to Verizon Fios.
It's been known for awhile that you can call TW to complain about the rates, threaten to switch if you need to, and they'll almost always offer to lower your rates, even if just for a few months. My bill was in the mid-100s per month. When I called to ask about cutting services or finding other ways to lower my bill, they told me I'm in a "Verizon Fios Competitive Area" so they would match Verizon's intro rate of $99/month for cable, internet and phone. I didn't lose any channels, but my bill became significantly smaller.
The goal for TW: customer retention. When a $150/mo customer threatens to leave, TW would much rather keep that person for $99/mo than see the customer walk away altogether and take their business to Verizon.
So, what's my point?
Well, we've seen all the headlines about cable companies battling with program providers (Comcast, Viacom, News Corp., local station owners, etc.) about subscriber fees. Those fees are firm and have to be paid, no matter how much subscribers are paying for cable.
Next, you've got expenses like infrastucture maintenance/upgrades and the service technicians who keep it all running. In many cases, installations are done for free (the service charges are waived as an incentive for people to become new customers) so that cost has to be absorbed by the monthly rate.
Things like YNN are "extras" so they're last in line to get subsidized by cable subscriber revenue. If YNN isn't making a profit on ratings and ad revenue alone -- and I highly doubt it is -- they need that subsidization to stay in business. But think, if I was able to get my bill cut by about $40-50 per month, multiply that by everyone else doing the same thing -- that's a significant dent in the budget. If YNN has to replace live programming with a video server news wheel, consolidating jobs in the process, then that's business.
That might be a little different in Rochester, where people were used to the higher-quality product R-News offered when it was a standalone service, but for those of us in the YNN areas formerly known as News 10 Now and Cap News 9, YNN has never been anything "spectacular" and it never will. Sure, it's a "nice extra" but it wouldn't be missed if it disappeared. You don't have to be a TV expert to realize it's never live, and when it comes to news, people prefer live.
