When was the last time you turned on the television to learn about your local politics? To find out if you should carry an umbrella tomorrow? To hear about local arts and entertainment and sports events? I’d guess you haven’t done so except perhaps during a disaster or very bad storm.
Is local television dead? Can it be saved? Should it be saved? If local TV is doing okay where you are, are there ways it could be improved? What would you like to see on local television that you’re not seeing?
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
In the UK, I don’t think we’ve ever really had “local” television – there’s been “regional” stuff, but that was both too large to be interestingly local and too small to be interestingly national.
The same goes for the Netherlands. All major Dutch “networks” (public and commercial broadcasters) are focused nationally. Some commercial broadcasters do produce shows that bring local news, but that is still with a focus to things that would of interest at a national level.
There are provincial broadcasters (The Netherlands is subdivided into 12 provinces, I live in North Brabant, so we get “Omroep Brabant”) which cater news/information at the provincial level, but as in the UK that is really more regional than local news.
Most people get their local news from the either their regional newspaper or their local newspaper.
I think the cable networks within a metro region have a local news channel of their own… at least here in Tampa Bay they have BayNews9 on Brighthouse. If anything they give a lot of time to traffic and weather, which the locals still watch for obvious reasons (“oh god is getting to work going to be screwy again?”). As for the nightly news… in my family at least, yeah we watch every weeknight.
In Amusing Ourselves To Death, Neil Postman argued that the problem with our national/international focus was that it was full of issues that were essentially irrelevant to us. All the time reading it I was rebelling against what appeared to be an aggressive form of parochialism, but it has always nagged at me, and increasingly I can see his point. What is the point of us consuming (and I use the verb deliberately) news and current affairs which is at such a remove from us that it has little to no impact on our daily life? Doesn’t it simply act to disempower us, to divorce us from our democratic responsibilities, and turn us into passive purchasers? Shouldn’t we instead be focusing on the stuff that is happening around us, to our neighbours, to people we might meet, stuff which we can affect, if we make an effort?
Well yes, there are plenty of arguments against this. But I can’t help feeling that it’s foolish to complain about weakening of community spirit when the media by which that spirit propagates are so attenuated.
Here the local newspaper, such as it is, is so beholden to its advertisers that it’ll never print anything it thinks they wouldn’t like (such as opposition to a new supermarket branch). (When I was in Newham, the local paper was also beholden to the council – and apparently had a contractual obligation to put a murder on the front page every week.)
So I get my local news from gossip in the pub.
I agree that more attention needs to be paid to local community issues, but not at the expense of national/international awareness. Can’t we have both? There are enough complaints about Americans being self-obsessed and uninterested in the rest of the world, as it is. ;-)
I have apps on my phone to check weather and traffic. I read the local paper online and on my phone, and listen to the local NPR affiliate. When I do tune in to the local TV news, or it happens to come on while I’m watching a football game or something (one of the only times I tune into live TV), I don’t recognize most of the anchors or reporters anymore.
As for other local TV, it’s been dead for a long time, as far as I can tell. I’m old enough to remember when there were local hosts for Saturday morning cartoons or late night movies, and several locally produced shows about everything from fishing to the city zoo. Those are all gone. Local cable access TV is kind of pointless in the age of YouTube. (These days, Wayne and Garth would have a Webcast.) Now one of the only local shows I know of that’s still on is a quiz show for high schools in the region called The Brain Game. I do still tune into that occasionally, since I was on my school’s Brain Game team back in the day. :-)
We don’t have a TV — we stream from the Web and watch DVDs on our desktop. For local news we listen to WNYC and pick up the neighborhood papers. I did stream some videos from the local TV station’s website to learn about hurricane damage to my daughter’s school.
I’m curious. I understand not having to have a TV nowadays, but being a movie lover, I can’t picture sitting in front of my computer and watching movies. Do you have a giant monitor with a super comfy chair? What about sound?
Yes, I know you don’t need all these things to enjoy a good movie, but it just doesn’t sound like the ideal movie watching setup.
I imagine your response will prove me wrong, which I welcome. ha.
I’m not Bluejay, but the way I do it is:
(1) a reasonably big screen on the computers I watch films on, and I’m reasonably close to them, so they take up a lot of the visual field;
(2) for the full cinema experience, I have another computer hooked up to a projector.
We have a 17-inch iMac attached to a couple of small JBL speakers, and a decent office chair from Ikea. The desktop is in our bedroom so we can take turns sitting in the chair or sprawling on the bed as we watch. It’s not the most spectacular setup, but it works fine for us.
When we want the full big-screen, surround-sound experience, we go to the theater.
Glad that works for you, but I love watching movies on a bigger screen. And mine are small compared to a lot of people. We have a 32″ upstairs and 42″ downstairs, where I watch most of my movies. I have a pretty good sound setup, but end up watching most movies with headphones on so I don’t disturb anyone else in the house.
I don’t get to the theater often enough, so it doesn’t satiate my craving for the “big” movie experience.
This could be another QOTD. Unless we’ve already covered it. I forget. “How do you watch movies? What’s your current setup, and what would be your preferred setup?” Hmm. Could end up being a “mine is bigger than yours” thread, which really isn’t any fun.
Hmmm.
I love watching movies on a bigger screen, too.
That sounds great. I’m happy for you.
I’m going to take this question as “Is local Media dead?” This means television (cable and regular broadcast), newspapers, internet, radio, whatever.
Local news, etc. has shifted. We now have to get it from the internet. In a way, that is great — more access to publishing the news, more access to more voices. However, there’s also the problem of having to do your own ‘curating’ (for lack of a better word) and I find there’s a risk of becoming too narrow in focus. In some places, the ‘local news’ seems to more like gossip. Too, in order to have the internet, one needs a connection and a computer or other tech that can present the web pages. So, this becomes a class privilege.
The places I spend most of my time (New York City and a really small town in Vermont) are actually pretty lucky in that they have a lot more ‘local’ than some other places I’ve been. There is a truly local weekly newspaper in the VT area. (This is aside from the bi-weekly advertising circular with the smattering of little league and volunteer fire department bbq news that is the feel-good stuff of free papers.) However, the no-longer-really-local radio station has (1) been bought by Puffer Broadcasting which has over 200 (!) small stations around the US, (2) moved across the river to NH even though its mailing address is still in VT, and (3) has been broadcasting canned music programs from wherever for several years. It always was a country music station, but it used to have a lot of variety and sometimes even had relatively local performers. Now, not much variety and it is the standard Nashville playlist. The DJs all have accents from elsewhere, it sounds like just about anything I’d pick up when driving along any interstate anywhere. It also has NO local talk. There used to be some local interviews, and local coverage and local call-in stuff. The website has links to VT and NH news that is through the vermont.gov portal and, well, the link to the NH news goes to a dead page at nh.gov. That’s not what I’d call local news.
And local news isn’t the only local thing that gets lost when stuff goes more national…accents, interaction, local activities/music/art/business/etc. — not to mention JOBS, maybe not many in each location, but a real radio station as opposed to someplace streaming stuff recorded elsewhere employs more people and you get to know those people in the area.
In NYC, there’s so much going on that, yes, there’s still a lot of local, and I was happy to see a few weeks ago that Robyn Byrd is back with her show (but no gold bikini). It films live from the Cutting Room every Saturday night now. (Ok, ok, I know, you all think I’ve got a one-track mind….but that’s my hobby. Everyone needs a hobby.) But, lots of “local” has gotten lost, too.
I think it should be saved. And by saving, I don’t mean making it a museum piece or precious. We just need more access to all the voices. Frankly, most of the stuff I’ve seen or heard on Public Access is no worse than the crap ‘reality’ stuff that bores the bejezus out of me and lots is lots better.
Local television still survives in the major markets that have local major league sports teams. But even that has changed. Years ago, one of the network affiliates would carry the local baseball and hockey games (preempting network shows for them). Now the local teams are typically carried on a local cable channel (for me a network called Root Sports, which used to be called Fox Sports Pittsburgh).
it may not be robust, but i have
two local news stations… one for NYC, one for the bronx only…
additionally, there are several Bronx cable access channels and a NYC book
channel… and our local PBS station which runs local news, local arts events and
local political shows.
I live in a burb of Chicago. It’s a pretty big city(where I live. Not Chicago. Although, IT is quite big), but doesn’t have much as far as media nowadays. I get all my local news on the internet. Mostly my FB feed.
Chicago, OTOH, has a ton of local stuff. News shows, radio shows, multiple papers, etc. I listen to a couple of the local radio programs(and, yes, they are TRULY local), and catch a news program on occasion .
I DO like to know a little bit of what’s going on around me.