As the David Letterman-Ted Koppel debate fades into the background, the larger issue underlying the recent tempest remains unresolved. What’s going to happen to local and network broadcast news in the face of variety of issues challenging the medium? Opinions vary, but the consensus seems to be that economic and demographic pressures are making changes we’ll be watching for some time to come.
 
While Letterman vs. Koppel maintained center stage, the debate seemed focused on the value of news versus entertainment. Now, with personality issues out of the way, media analysts are focusing on economics as the core of the issue.
 
“The larger message is: No one is immune,” said Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. “TV news is entertainment. When a show’s a hit, you’re a star. When the audience moves along, the ax falls….This is the latest phase in the struggle for control between the boardroom and the newsroom.” Lichter’s comments were reported in a Washington Post article written by media analyst Howard Kurtz.
 
Brit Hume, Washington managing editor for Fox News Channel, clearly describes the issue as one of fundamental supply and demand. “(T)here’s too much competition from too many sources now for the broadcast networks to make much money on news. The audiences are gradually shrinking. With news being discussed and argued about on three cable channels, part of ‘Nightline’s’ audience was inevitably going to be lost to that.”
 
Los Angeles Times columnist Howard Rosenberg, agrees, but takes the issue to a new level of catastrophe. Broadcast news itself is “diminishing, shrinking,” Rosenburg says in the Kurtz article. “There’s enormous atrophy in terms of quality. The genre is becoming less and less relevant to Americans. It’s like the entire Titanic is going down.”
 
Some ships also may be sinking in the sea of excess news supply at the local level.
 
According to Hank Price, senior fellow at Northwestern University’s Media Management Center and a veteran TV news manager, the oversupply of news has been exposed by the recent downturn in the advertising market, and despite the intangibles of branding and community service, stations and groups will consider dropping poorly performing newscasts. Price’s comments were reported in an article by Dan Trigoboff for TVinsite.com.
 
“Do we really need to have four or five newscasts in the same time in the same market,” asks Jim Willi, a consultant for Audience Research and Development in the same article. “I think there’s going to be a shakeout.”
 
“Although previous economic downturns have led to some culling of local news operations, many experts say the current trend may not necessarily ease as the economy rebounds,” says Kathy Bergen of the Chicago Tribune. “The combination of an explosion of news and entertainment options and changing lifestyles has led to a steady erosion of local news audience share, especially for the late news.”