TV on the chopping block
On campfires, pink slips, and the really dumb outcomes that are depleting television news
After reversing course on a phenomenally stupid plan to lay off the local meteorology team and parting ways with an anchor who had been a station fixture for 51 years, the owners of KWWL-TV in Waterloo, Iowa, have given up and put the "For Sale" sign on the station.
■ Allen Media Group has only held the station for four years, but the plans to sell are being spun as a means "to significantly reduce our debt". KWWL was one of seven stations in a $380 million sale at that time, and it's part of a 25-station clearance sale this time, so it's not clear exactly how the station is individually valued.
■ But for a station in a top-100 US market with a population somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000, it seems like a lot of unproductive turmoil. The on-air shakeups earlier in the year, followed now by a station sale, gives the impression that perhaps the future is even unsteadier than it is already perceived.
■ America stitches together a patchwork of media markets, in which local ownership was quasi-mandated because large group ownership was prohibited not that long ago. It's not clear that the kinds of disruptions going on at KWWL and elsewhere would be any better if local ownership were more prevalent. But it also isn't clear that large-group ownership has been of any real use to the quality of the broadcast product.
■ Metaphorically, at least, broadcast and print news outlets are the campfires around which a community gathers to tell the stories of the day. And if some serious effort doesn't go into finding an economically sustainable way of continuing to "gather" in old or newer ways, the extent of the trouble is going to be much more than just a few local celebrities who find themselves ousted.
