TV news is here to stay: J-Talk with Canadian broadcast executives
Television news is here to stay for at least the foreseeable future, but in an age of instant information, networks must provide more than just the scheduled newscast to keep their audience engaged. Eric Mark Do reports from the recent CJF J-Talk, where a panel of Canadian broadcast executives discussed why their networks are still the sources people rely on, and why the industry is not ready for Internet-only broadcast.
The traditional television newscast is here to stay for a long time, according to a panel of broadcast executives, but like much else of the journalism industry, it faces a number of challenges.
Steve Paikin posed tough questions about the future of broadcast news last night to Wendy Freeman, president of CTV News; Troy Reeb, senior vice-president of news and station operations for Global News; and Jonathan Whitten, executive director of news content at CBC for the Canadian Journalism Foundation's J-Talk: Keeping You on the Tube, The Mission of Broadcast News.
While money rules many decisions, don't expect CTV or Global News to adopt American-style partisan reporting in order to boost ratings, the panelists said during the discussion, which was driven by questions posed to them by Paikin and the audience. From there, they moved on to the race to be first, which they said has now been replaced by the need to be right and the issue of competition and credibility in television news.
Business model
Canadian television news should not follow the lead of American networks such as MSNBC and Fox in covering news from any partisan angle, said Freeman.
“We cover the news. We don't make news and the news is not about us,” said Freeman. “We are fair and balanced.”
Speaking from a business standpoint, Whitten said that news organizations with an angle seems to be where the audience is right now.
Reeb countered that SunTV appears to be trying to duplicate Fox with Sun News Network, but not a lot of people are watching them perhaps because “they forgot the 'news' part of 'all news.'”
One recent development in American news coverage did stand out for Freeman though. The networks took commercials and had sponsorships during the presidential election—and it was the first time she had seen that happen. She speculated that they probably lost viewers by airing commercials, “but they made money off of it,” she said. “And I'll be honest, this is something that we (CTV) may look at next time around.”
Competition/why traditional broadcast news matters
Everybody is competition now, said Freeman. “Everyone has a smartphone; anybody can be a journalist. Anybody can shoot anything at any time. It's not just the major news organizations anymore.”
Newspapers are competitors on both text and video platforms, said Whitten. But he also said that the newspapers are actually coming up with innovative ways to use video to tell stories, and the traditional news broadcasters are actually learning from them.
Whitten said he sees social media and citizen journalists as competition as well, to a certain extent. “With the Eaton Centre shooting…what you actually saw were people who had video or had facts or information were sharing with each other,” he said. “So I actually look at people who are doing that kind of journalism work as our partners.”
But even with so much information out there, “people still want the trust and tradition and the credibility that the networks provide,” said Freeman. “And I think it'll always be that way.”
And that's the value in the brand said Reeb. News organizations were always racing to be first. “But we've taken a step back from that” to vet information “because if it's attached to that Global News brand, people should be able to say, 'that's sound.'”
Freeman agreed. “It's not about being first anymore, it's about being right.”
Venturing into new media
[node:ad]A younger audience member asked why distribution of the news couldn't be purely through the Internet, thereby potentially saving money by needing less technical staff.
“I think the real answer is monetization,” said Reeb. Organizations will celebrate having 50,000 viewers on a livestream, he said, while the three national newscasts get an average of three million viewers every night. “The advertisers are willing to pay about 10 times as much for the same impression on television as they are on the Internet.”
At last month's CJF J-talk, newspaper editors criticized the CBC.ca, arguing that online news didn't fulfill the public broadcaster's mandate. Whitten addressed the issue and said that as a public service organization, the CBC will serve the public in any way that they can. “It would be in a sense like asking the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail not to do video on their website. How would they respond to that?” he said. “They obviously understand the need to be in that sphere, in the same way that we understand the need to be in what they're doing”
Reeb and Freeman were divided on the role of the public broadcaster. Reeb wouldn’t comment on whether he thought the CBC should exist at all. But he did cite the $1.2 billion in public money being used to fund the CBC, while getting 6 per cent viewing share.
Whitten asked what the global share was, and Reeb said 9.5 per cent. Throughout the night there was tension and debates about whether the role of the CBC as a public broadcaster was still relevant.
Scheduled news vs. ‘News now’
Just as the newspaper panelists said that the paper is not dead, the broadcasters said television is not dead either. “Television and scheduled television, I think will almost always be a part of people's lives,” said Whitten. “There's no indication that that's going away anytime soon.”
Reeb disagreed, noting primetime shows are getting up to 80 per cent of their audience through playback (PVR, video-on-demand, etc.), because “they want to see it on their time; they want to see it when they want.” While he said that people aren't going to PVR the news, “The idea of the 6:00 newscast and the 11:00 newscast is going to be a consistently challenged model because it doesn't fit in certain people's schedules.
“News needs to move to 'accessible now' and that means accessible by mobile, accessible by online, or accessible on television.”
Freeman talked about the how the television is no longer a standalone. “The smartphone, the laptop, the tablet, and the TV set … it's very important that it become a companion when you're watching television.”
Storytelling
Tim Knight, a former CBC executive producer in the audience, pressed the panel to address how they planned to keep their viewers engaged. He offered his advice: “Do far better storytelling.” He said that the stories being told night after night have no logical structure, and have lost the sense of drama that captivates the audience.
Whitten, who was trained by Knight 25 years ago, said that good storytelling isn’t easy. There are storytelling courses at the CBC, he said, but there is a lot of reporting of breaking news. “We still have a lot of resources committed to storytelling, it may not always be the best…but we’re certainly still there.”
Storytelling is the most important thing that broadcasters need to do, said Freeman. “That is something that will keep network television alive, is good storytelling,” she said.
Reeb agreed as well. The lack of good stories being told is due to networks watching each other’s channels in the newsroom, he said.
The faster pace of today’s newsroom hinders the ability to produce stories with substance and context, said Freeman. “There are no deadlines anymore— the deadlines are now, every second is a deadline and that’s a problem. There’s no time.”
Even with tighter deadlines, Freeman said properly checking sources takes precedent because in the end: All we have is our credibility and our reputation. That's the most important thing.”
