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TEGNA shuts down Northwest Cable News

Roughly 20 people. This is the biggest cut to KING/KONG and its properties yet. I cannot believe that they are taking it off the air. Folks here in Eastern Washington won't know what's going on in Seattle or Portland now unless they go online. The Yakima stations never mention anything on the westside during the 5 or 6PM news. They spend 7-8 minutes on local news (mainly crime and events going on in Yakima) then they spend 20 minutes on Consumer Reports, health news, the weather and technology news!
Also, that means this year is the last year that folks outside Seattle can see New Year's at the Needle. It's going to be interesting moving to an online stream come 2017-2018, because we don't watch 3-hour-old Ryan Seacrest. No more Gardening with Ciscoe, Northwest Sports Tonight or Northwest Backroads either in Yakima/Tri-Cities.
Another one of Tegna's cheapening factors...get rid of veteran reporters, anchors and now a regional news network. I can't wait to see KING drop to #4 in ratings. Dorothy Bullitt is spinning in her grave.

RIP NWCN - 1995-2017.
 
Another way of looking at it is it opens the door for someone else to do local cable news. In a lot of areas, the cable company itself does this.

Here's an example of one that Comcast runs in the NY area:

http://www.news12.com/
 
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TheBigA said:
Another way of looking at it is it opens the door for someone else to do local cable news. In a lot of areas, the cable company itself does this.

Here's an example of one that Comcast runs in the NY area:

http://www.news12.com/
Click to expand...

You mean Optimum/Cablevision?
 
itsRoly4266 said:
You mean Optimum/Cablevision?
Click to expand...

Not exactly. This cable channel is carried on multiple systems in the area. Here's their ownership wiki:

The News 12 Networks are a group of American regional cable news television channels that are owned by the Newsday Media Holdings subsidiary of the Altice USA. All channels provide local news coverage 24-hours a day, focusing on different regions of the New York City metropolitan area outside of Manhattan, Staten Island and Queens. It has become the most-watched hyper-local news channel in the USA.

No reason why such a thing couldn't be done in the Northwest.
 
TheBigA said:
Not exactly. This cable channel is carried on multiple systems in the area. Here's their ownership wiki:

The News 12 Networks are a group of American regional cable news television channels that are owned by the Newsday Media Holdings subsidiary of the Altice USA. All channels provide local news coverage 24-hours a day, focusing on different regions of the New York City metropolitan area outside of Manhattan, Staten Island and Queens. It has become the most-watched hyper-local news channel in the USA.

No reason why such a thing couldn't be done in the Northwest.
Click to expand...

Yes, but its a Optimum/Cablevision property. That's what I meant by.
 
itsRoly4266 said:
Yes, but its a Optimum/Cablevision property. That's what I meant by.
Click to expand...

Regardless, Comcast is using it on their systems, as is Time Warner and other cable companies.

So as I said, a cable company could easily start a similar service in the northwest. It doesn't have to be a side channel of a broadcast station. The trend seems to be for transmission companies to get into the content business, as we see with AT&T.
 
TheBigA said:
Another way of looking at it is it opens the door for someone else to do local cable news. In a lot of areas, the cable company itself does this.

Here's an example of one that Comcast runs in the NY area:

http://www.news12.com/
Click to expand...

Umm, News 12 just announced cutbacks and consolidation a few weeks ago. They are centralizing their production in 2 places, rather than having 6 or 7 separate local newscasts. Even in the largest metro/concentration of population, they are still cutting back!

Let's face it -- if NWCN were wildly profitable -- TEGNA would gladly keep it on the air. The ratings really must have been tanking, since the costs should be very low because they were sharing staff with KING/KONG for the most part and repeating the same newscast over and over again.
 
Average rating HH about a .1 or .2 I heard a rumor that part of it had to do with negotiation to stay on cable but I don't know if its true. Gotta sell a lot of $20 spots to make the budget work so yes I think it's time has just come and gone.
 
CarAgencyGuy said:
Average rating HH about a .1 or .2 I heard a rumor that part of it had to do with negotiation to stay on cable but I don't know if its true. Gotta sell a lot of $20 spots to make the budget work so yes I think it's time has just come and gone.
Click to expand...

I don't know about cable carriage rates, but I am confident that NWCN killed itself. When they started repeating newscasts for 8-hour chunks, the death was near. Likely Tegna didn't want to be in the cable news biz, IMO. So assisted suicide? Tegna has a big boat load of problems in Seattle right now, again IMO.
 
seatownmedia said:
When they started repeating newscasts for 8-hour chunks, the death was near.
Click to expand...

Wasn't that the basis for CNN Headline News? What killed that was when they started incorporating talk shows in the formula. People tuned in hoping to get the latest and instead got a talk show. But all-news radio is built around repetition, unless there's actual breaking news happening...which doesn't always happen.
 
TheBigA said:
Wasn't that the basis for CNN Headline News? What killed that was when they started incorporating talk shows in the formula. People tuned in hoping to get the latest and instead got a talk show. But all-news radio is built around repetition, unless there's actual breaking news happening...which doesn't always happen.
Click to expand...

That is a good point, and perhaps why HLN is still struggling today. But, NWCN rarely has gone to breaking news in the past year or so. There have been many instances where they could have simulcasted with KING or KGW but chose not to. There was a time when you could count on NWCN for breaking news, or at the very least, updates at the top of the hour to important stories. Unfortunately, this has disappeared the past couple of years. This is why they are not relevant at the end of the day.
 
seatownmedia said:
This is why they are not relevant at the end of the day.
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Well, not exactly. The reason they're not relevant is because this kind of centralized, one-size-fits-all news isn't what people want. They want individualized news that tells each person what each person wants to know on demand, rather than wait for it to come around on the pinwheel. That gets to the heart of all broadcast news.
 
TheBigA said:
Well, not exactly. The reason they're not relevant is because this kind of centralized, one-size-fits-all news isn't what people want. They want individualized news that tells each person what each person wants to know on demand, rather than wait for it to come around on the pinwheel. That gets to the heart of all broadcast news.
Click to expand...

I understand that point, but not sure this is is a good thing. On demand is definitely out there today, but if NWCN was more "on demand", perhaps they could have averted this demise.
 
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seatownmedia said:
I understand that point, but not sure this is is a good thing. On demand is definitely out there today, but if NWCN was more "on demand", perhaps they could have averted this demise.
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I think what killed them is too much expense and not enough revenue. That's not a programming problem, it's a business problem.

The conflict being that you can fix the cost problem by re-running the same news over and over.
 
Well looks like the plug got pulled on NWCN today around 10am but it also took Down KING and KONG. No local spots on KING looks like they got network jacked right into the transmitter. No local breaks on King and Kong has a Slide up, so does NWCN.

Things are recovering around 10:35am. Maybe some one rebooted the wrong computer and it decide to do a windows 10 upgrade which affected all 3 stations. Or "That's what that router does." Ooops. Or maybe they forgot to return the breaker to On after the generator was serviced.

At least the "Experiencing technical difficulties" slides worked. Since this was a short lived issue hopefully no revenue or jobs were lost.
 
xmtrland said:
Well looks like the plug got pulled on NWCN today around 10am but it also took Down KING and KONG. No local spots on KING looks like they got network jacked right into the transmitter. No local breaks on King and Kong has a Slide up, so does NWCN.

Things are recovering around 10:35am. Maybe some one rebooted the wrong computer and it decide to do a windows 10 upgrade which affected all 3 stations. Or "That's what that router does." Ooops. Or maybe they forgot to return the breaker to On after the generator was serviced.

At least the "Experiencing technical difficulties" slides worked. Since this was a short lived issue hopefully no revenue or jobs were lost.
Click to expand...

Symbolic for Tegna. They have completely lost Seattle. I hope they put some resources into the market. Dorothy is rolling in her grave.
 
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