In TV Newsday, Hearst-Argyle Senior VP of News Fred Young comes up with an outstanding metaphor for how things are changing in the TV news business. He talks about an end to the “high priced anchors” who “singletask.”
“Every TV station will look more like the Tampa Bay Rays than the New York Yankees… the Rays have one of the lowest payrolls in the major leagues.” (It’s second to last, actually. And, for those who don’t follow baseball, the Rays are in first place, over two of the four teams that spend the most: the Yankees and the Red Sox.
Young has exactly the right attitude when it comes to reinvention. Asked about the end of the high-priced anchor era, Young walks gently - but firmly:
“I hate to stereotype because there are some great anchor people, many of whom work for us. But the ability of anchor talent to just leverage one station against another is going to end very soon because this is going to be all about what we can do within our communities and not what we can do to keep a small group of people happy.”
“The great anchor people of the past are just sort of leaving the business and we all know who they are. As news becomes more ubiquitous, I think that the team concept will be more important than the individual player.”
Young talks about the challenges of investing in technology - how stations need to put their money in HD cameras and in Flip cameras. “If it were up to me, I’d put (the money we save by not having high-priced talent) into technology, because the technology is changing by the hour.”
H-A is also changing the way its locals approach the Web. Because it was an early investor in IB, Young says “The first few years were a little awkward (because) a lot of the Web people worked for them. Now we have our own people overseeing the Web people, so it’s far more of a team effort.”
So H-A is working to integrate the IB product more closely with its own staff, adding more dedicated Web people - including systems staffers. Young gets that this is a 24/7 product.
I hope that Young’s process will translate to success on the ground. These are exactly the sorts of challenges we desperately need to overcome at the local level. We have been doing so many things out of habit, superstition and fear that it feels impossible to change. But change is the only way to save ourselves and our business.
For years, people have accused me and Terry of yelling “The Sky is Falling!” Actually, it’s worse than that. The sky is made of air. If it falls on you, nothing happens. A giant, 100,000-ton weight is what’s falling. We need to shoot the damn thing out of the sky.
