Variety’s Mike Flaherty wrote an article about the upcoming makeover for WNBC in New York City. NBC Universal’s flagship station is scheduled to undergo a $15 million dollar technological and personnel upgrade. Many veteran (high salary) employees who aren’t already out will be early next year. Flaherty found one employee who aptly described the upcoming change:
WNBC
“They don’t call Cheez-Whiz ‘cheese’ on the package; they call it a ‘cheese product’,” said one survivor. “What’s going to be produced here isn’t really news. It’s a news product. And you have to wonder what will happen when a major story breaks and you have someone from a small market who was cheap enough to hire.”
But what does he mean by “news-product?”
Well the first change will be one just like what I last wrote about in I told you so Philadelphia, that is, a resource sharing program with FOX News. Variety thinks, like I do, that this program will lead to less unique content and less competition – two elements that drive most news organizations.
Freelance journalists have been eliminated, further shrinking the pool of original content available to the station.
Whole teams of reporters, photographers, and engineers are being replaced by a position called: Content Producer. This backpack journalist position, sends a single person with a high-priced mini-camera after a breaking story rather than a crew, a satellite truck, and all the related resources.
One thing that wont reportedly change, the anchor team of Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons. Apparently both have iron-clad contracts that are keeping them secure despite a huge dip in the ratings
“It averaged a paltry 17,000 viewers at 5 p.m. in October, compared with 38,000 at Fox’s WNYW, 71,000 at WCBS and 126,000 at WABC. At 6, it garnered an anemic 28,000 demo viewers as opposed to the 41,000, 58,000 and 133,000 of its respective rivals.”
If it has been said once, it has been said a hundred times: broadcasting is not a strong business to be getting into. But this happening in New York City, the number one market? It might be worse than I had thought.
