A Highly Opinionated View of TV News Solutions
Television News, whether on a big screen or small device, can learn from newspapers. Decades ago there were cracks in Newspaper's dominance fueled by Cable TV and the Internet. Instead of acting on those cracks, they were in denial assuming their greatness could never be diminished. Fast forwarding to the 21st Century, there's panic and massive cutbacks all at once due in failure to address and adapt to the problems early on. TV News shares the same scenario. Many will likely be sitting around in 2025 wishing they had addressed the issues aggressively instead of hoping that "tweaks, new furniture and another research project" thinking will solve the issues facing TV news in 2022. The solutions are not difficult but are undermined by a denial focused life within the walled-in TV World instead of looking at the big media picture and aggressively pointed to the new future. What an opportunity. The entire TV Industry seems to be on creative autopilot opting for a new set, a new anchor or some triple Doppler radar as their answer. That isn't it. And don't blame the web. TV's are in literally every home, and devices in every hand with sound and picture quality improving every year and the opportunity to stimulate eyes, ears and minds has never had more potential. We're living in an era of epic, and TV News is stuck in some mid 80's focus group time warp.
If you are number one and making a lot of money, good. If not, the answers are in having the courage and intellect to make some dramatic changes in thinking, content culture, M.O and actions---that of course defines NewsMovie something legacy media doesn't get---if they DID, you'd be seeing radical evolution in the content, not only the delivery systems and through consolidation.
The solutions are deep, though there are a few key areas that, if addressed and executed on, can lead to a positive revolution in News that will change the game. And while NewsMovie isn't a "news" service in the traditional sense, that is our mission with great confidence. Just a top level and over simplified look at some of those regions of change:
- Modern story telling. Most TV news is one dimensional. Anchors handing it over to reporters standing in front of a scene cluttered with hyperbole and hype.. Imagine using every imaginable resource to tell a story: Raw footage, Retro, viral, natural sound, music, UGC, cerebral writing---It would be a tour de force of video/audio magic.
-Inspiration. There's more inspired content on YouTube and in films than legacy media could even dream of. Stop looking at existing tv from a content/creative viewpoint. If you want to to aggressively re-invent, reference to old playbooks is toxic.
-Even-ness. Here’s a case where AM Radio news shines. Most times It’s even. It’s factual. TV news is clearly perceived as either blatantly one sided, or trivial
-THE BS factor. Maybe it worked in the 80's, but Best, First, On It, Off it, we Believe in you is just not going to cut through. People's BS radar is set on high to try to slogan your way to success. Ya just slogan your way deeper into the bullshit
-The Sameness. Is there an FCC Law that states every station needs a desk…a weatherperson, a cadence, a style that EVERY station uses? It's material for parody. The entire "rulebook" is dated, tired and keeps stations anchored to the past
-Over production. Usually pompous, slick and reeking of some New York agency than the streets of the community. An anywhere-USA packaged feel
-Celebrating fake. Weather it's fake syrupy sincerity, a fake skyline behind the set, a bad toupee or whatever, the fakeness and plasticity is self defeating
-The Barbie & Ken factor. Mattel has introduced a Barbie News Reporter. OK---cuteness is fine and can be effective, but it's way over rated, as are big booming voices. Very 80's. When some watch Fox because the girls are hotter...ya gotta think that while effective for them, it ain't the future.
-Screen clutter. A reporter standing in front of a 7/11 that was robbed 12 hours earlier. Even Beautiful photography is framed by TV "stuff. Beautiful photography is hidden by anchors, text, graphics, screaming experts or just about anything that clutters what's really important: The picture.
-TV Sound. News themes that electronically and percussively mimic a teletype or Bruce Lee swooshes between every photo.
-TV ization. A disease where every idea goes through the TV Production filter and ends up more of the same
-Balance. The structure of Newsrooms hasn't changed in decades, but the world has. News operations need to be re thought for 2022 and that includes liberating creatives with new plans instead of keeping them addicted to the tired TV News playbook
-Celebrating shallowness. Dumbing down by design. I always felt that on one hand newspapers believed in this holy Religion of elite journalism while TV operated on the other side of the spectrum. The middle ground is a zone of mass appeal intelligence that TV sorely misses the target on.
-Story selection. In the era of social, the story selection criteria is dated. The blind leading the blind. Nothing is more important than the TOPICS. The hits.
-Wording:
*The "tell"---Don't forget…Be sure to…Don't miss. Do you think ANYone takes that 50's rooted hype seriously?
*The "duh" factor---We'll be right back…The 10pm news in ON….Back to you Bob… Oh! I thought you were signing off!
*Brutal murderers and heinous crimes…Better than good murders and nice crimes I suppose.
and of course Head bobbing is A high art on camera
-Tricks-- The conference room thinking that Ratings are down because of:
Promo placement
The weather runs too early on the clock
Slow news day
…heard them all, but in most cases it’s because the programming itself is stuck in 1985.
-Intellectual scale. If 1 is Jerry Springer and 10 is PBS, where are you? There's no right answer other than defining and living to that point on the scale. Having an intellectual identity.
-Breaking News. The king of cliches.
-Anchors that look like Enron executives. They're the bad guys, why do so many presenters TRY to look out of sync with the pulse of America.
-Cliche buzzer. Build one. Three cliches and you're fired. We did that at XM and eliminated hundreds of cliches from "10th Caller wins" to 'Big puking voices telling you how hard we rocked"
...TV News makes radio look cliche free by comparison.
-Incremental change will not work. Gotta blow it up to get noticed. Tweaking or minor changes will not get noticed beyond the conference room.
THERE ARE SOLUTIONS. THE OPPORTUNITY TO WOW, ELEVATE, INSPIRE AND ENLIGHTEN. IT STARTS WITH DENIAL BUSTING IDENTIFICATION OF PLAYBOOK FLAWS, ELIMINATING DENIAL AND MOVING FORWARD WITH INTENSE NEW THINKING THAT MEETS THE ELECTRICITY OF THIS NEW WILD WEST