RALEIGH – The Asheville Citizen-Times reported today that WLOS-TV, the ABC affiliate there and the only North Carolina-based major broadcaster serving the western part of the state, will cut its Saturday and Sunday morning news programs.
The move came at least partly from the corporate headquarters of parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Baltimore. And station officials cited both economic reasons and the need to strengthen other news broadcasts as justification for the WLOS move.
Certainly the last few months have been a challenging one for most media companies due to dropping ad revenues. A couple of days ago, The Wall Street Journal surveyed the damage, describing it as perhaps the greatest in the magazine sector with television a close second.
Still, I can’t help feeling at least a vague sense of uneasiness about the elimination of the two news broadcasts. Overall in North Carolina, local stations have been adding “news” coverage, in some cases starting at 5 a.m. in the morning slot and at 4 p.m. in the afternoon slot. But much of the programming is light and fluffy – entertainment news, restaurant ratings, prepackaged stuff from syndication. I am not one of those “eat your greens and like it” types who thinks that television stations should plow a huge amount of money into school board meetings and legislative sessions. Ultimately, viewers must vote yes on what you do in order to sustain it with advertising.
Still, television is the main way that people learn about the world around them these days (sorry, scribes) and so the relative dearth of political and policy coverage is problematic. I don’t think the solution need be prohibitively expensive. Stations could at least read some wire copy and invite a talking head or two to comment in the studio (which is far cheaper than sending out crews).
I am afraid that if the “news hole” starts to shrink in local television, serious coverage of government will be where the time is made up, not the “adopt-a-pet” segments that are proliferating like, well, stray cats. WLOS officials say they will replace the Saturday and Sunday shows with “public affairs programming” that is not locally produced. As long as it doesn’t simply duplicate the national news and talk shows already out there – it’s state and local government where more coverage is truly needed – maybe the results will be salutary.