Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2008-04-08 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

The news about the news business is pretty rough these days. Newspapers, in the midst of serious heart attacks, attempt to recuperate by reducing their weight. This works in human beings but not news operations, where it leads to further weakening of

the heart.

But now, against all previous expectations, it’s the local television news operations that are suffering.

Last month, WMAR-TV laid off a couple of producers and one of its anchors, Brian Wood. Anchors are the face of TV news operations, but producers are the ones who do much of the actual work. And, last week, CBS News’ decision to cut jobs at stations around the country meant behind-the-scenes layoffs at its local affiliate WJZ.

It’s the same problem facing traditional news operations everywhere these days. The world’s technology insists on changing. Readers, and listeners and viewers, have options they never had before. Advertisers follow the shifting demographics, and so does the money.

Thirty or so years ago, when local television news was finding its voice, and Jerry Turner and Al Sanders seemed a kind of electronic Earth force, everybody said TV was the wave of the future. But, in historic terms, the future disappeared pretty quickly. The recent jobs cuts here are only the latest manifestation of tremors rumbling beneath the surface for a long time.

Some years back, when cable TV first came to Baltimore, WJZ’s general manager, Jonathan Klein, called a rare evening staff meeting. In those days, the station’s Eyewitness News utterly dominated the local ratings. Sometimes, it had more viewers than the combined audience for WBAL and WMAR, which were the only competitors.

On this night, though, Klein arrived to declare the opening of

a new era, and it was filled

with anxiety.

Cable, he said, would inevitably steal viewers from each of the local stations. In Boston, he said, the network affiliates already had lost

one-third of their audience since cable’s arrival.

In Baltimore, “We know that we’re going to lose raw numbers,” Klein said. “There’s no getting around that. People will want to see what’s on cable, and that means they won’t be watching the stuff they usually watch. At least for a while. But we hope some of the novelty will wear off after a while and people will come back to us.”

I was doing nightly commentary at the station in those days, and walked out of the meeting with Marty Bass and George Bauman.

“This is like dropping the bomb on Hiroshima,” Bass said.

“I feel like it’s 1945,” said the veteran Bauman, “and we’re working at a big radio station, and the boss is telling us, ‘Look, there’s this new invention, which is called television. And we think it’s just a fad, and we’re gonna try to ride it out until the fad passes and people turn on their radios again.”

Well, good luck with that.

The arrival of cable TV was followed by the full explosion of the Internet and all of its manifestations. Now the local TV news operations spend as much time plugging their Web sites as their TV sites.

Thirty years ago, when local TV news was finding its voice, everyone assumed this was the wave of journalism’s future. TV got its stories on the air faster than newspapers could get them into print. And it did it with show-biz pizzazz.

Newspapers responded by saying: Big deal, so TV’s faster and flashier. They offer 60-second stories. It’s a headline service. Newspapers go further; we can explain what it all means.

Today, that’s still the strength of many newspapers. But newspapers, too, simultaneously rely more and more on the strength of their Web sites. Now, newspapers not only offer texture but get the news on the Web as quickly as any television station can get it on the air.

So these are perilous days for TV news, and that means nervous times for TV stations. The news operations are their hometown face — and their financial heart. It’s estimated that the advertising built around news programs generally contributes nearly half of a local station’s revenue.

There was a time when local stations routinely made 40 percent profit. Those days are fading. How do you stop the fade if viewers, and advertising dollars, are dwindling? By cutting costs. That means, cutting the people who produce

the news.

When that happens, how do you hold onto your standards? That’s the dilemma now faced by TV news operations here, and around the country, in ways they never imagined.

Michael Olesker can be reached at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com