The Business Crisis of the Press is Coming for Local TV News

Funders should beware, operators focus on digital

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

In thinking about the business crisis of the press that has been building for almost 20 years now, we have spent comparatively little time thinking about local TV news. At one level, that makes sense: much (although certainly not all) of what is conveyed there is highly derivative of text reporting, so that as newspapers have contracted, there has been less grist for the TV mill, resulting in even more focus on crime and weather.

But on another, perhaps more important level, the lack of attention to TV news was a mistake, particularly as survey after survey showed that the 6:00 or 10:00 or 11:00 shows were where more people got their local news than anywhere else. And local TV news, unlike newspapers, remained solidly profitable.

Winter comes next Spring

This year, however, while many of us have been looking elsewhere, I think there are important signs that the business crisis is finally coming for local TV news, and that the Spring of 2025 will likely feel like Winter there. Here are some indicators:

• Pew reports that more than 20% of the people who said in 2018 that TV was their preferred source of local news have now shifted to digital. Newspapers also continue to shrink, of course, although radio is holding steady (and is now tied with newspapers as a preferred source!). Those numbers for local TV news are likely to get worse over time, as almost two-thirds of folks over 50 tune in, while only 20% of those under 30 do so. The median age in the country is 39.

• Sinclair, the propagandistic right-wing network that people love to hate, has quietly been shutting down local TV news operations at major stations. While they continue to provide their national spin to those audiences, viewers in cities ranging from Omaha to Toledo to Gainesville have lost one local TV news option entirely, while local newsrooms from Macon to Saginaw were slashed, and CNBC reported in May that Sinclair wants to sell about a third of its stations. Why? Because the value of the properties is collapsing as more and more viewers cut off cable to save money, reducing the lucrative transmission fees. In fact, what used to be called “broadcast” (and is now known as “linear”) viewing now accounts for only about one-fifth of all television watching, with the rest going to cable (where local news is minimal in most places) or streaming (where is it almost non-existent).

• Some of these effects are likely being masked this year by election advertising, particularly in swing states, where local TV is experiencing a sugar high that is going to crash in precisely 54 days. Even assuming we have another presidential election in 2028, pace Donald Trump, on current trends a lot of this sort of ad money will by then be headed elsewhere.

• Most of my consulting practice involves print or digital, but when I do talk these days with linear TV news executives, despite their continuing to register significant current profits, they invariably report that they feel poor, and expect their businesses to continue declining. In response, the cost-cutting is well underway. One striking recent example, admittedly at the national level, was the CBS Evening News swapping out its anchor not to goose the ratings but to save cash.

What does it mean?

Beyond expecting more bad business news ahead for local TV news, there are a number of important implications to all of this, I think.

Those in philanthropy and elsewhere who thought that local TV might fill the growing gaps in local journalism are likely to be disappointed. Local TV newsrooms, for their part, will be under increasing pressure to get serious about their digital offerings in a way many now are not. They had better hope they do better than radio stations, including public radio, which has generally lagged far behind even newspapers in making this transition.

For local TV, this should probably include a much greater emphasis on YouTube and TikTok. Many are going to instinctively resist this, because the advertising revenues from those channels are just a small fraction of what they had long seen in broadcast. That would simply repeat the same mistake newspapers made at an earlier stage of the business crisis, when they hesitated to fully embrace the web for the same reason.

The predicament of local TV, of course, has only been deepened by an increasing nationalization of the news itself— a greater salience of national relative to local news for many people. It’s not clear to what extent this is cause or effect, that is, whether the decline in the quality and quantity of local news is primarily depressing interest or reflecting it. Perhaps the news pendulum will swing back toward local after the election, especially if Vice President Harris prevails. But perhaps not even then. In any event, it seems to me that the days of thinking our business crisis has passed them by are over for local television newsrooms. We, and they, need to act accordingly.