The End of the Nightly TV Newscast?

A short--ish blog today. I'm prepping to teach two courses in the journalism program at Centennial College/ University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. My focus is elsewhere for now.

But some thoughts generated by a friend and colleague from my CBC days who has done some thinking about what's next for the venerable nightly television newscasts, now a staple of virtually all media in Canada, and internationally.

If I were asked what form the nightly newscast should take, I would suggest that the 30 or 60 minute broadcast - the essence of TV news for more than 50 years - has long outlived its usefulness. Audiences are now so bombarded with information all day long, the idea of turning on the set in the evening to devote time to what are now old news stories and events, seems rather antique...very 20th century.

Back in the 1980's the CBC had a brilliant idea: move the nightly tv news from 11 pm to prime time - aka, 10 pm, and give a solid 20 minutes of news followed by 40 minutes of the most innovative and explanatory television journalism every seen. It was called The National/The Journal and it garnered a nightly audience of 3 million, sometimes more.

A few years later it was killed off (that's another story), moved to 9 pm and became a one hour integrated news show. It bombed and was moved back to 10 pm but without The Journal. The program has never recovered and now languishes in third place in a three race market.

Now that citizens are overwhelmed with even more information received on all possible platforms including the receivers in our back molars, it's time to junk the idea of a television news program of record. I would suggest that TV news reinvent the form and bring back The Journal - or a variant thereof.

Sure, the program would start with a news recap - but no more than five minutes. Then segue into the most compelling explanatory journalism that can be found. It would include the biggest story of the day, but one that astonishes the viewers. It would include interviews, information about culture, sports but neither a sports report or a cultural presentation. There would be nothing like it anywhere on television and it would return the notion of "appointment viewing."

Of course, there would have to be a commitment from management to doing news that is important, compelling and not the usual audience pandering and faux moral panic about non-events.

Surprise! That program already exists. It's just not on television. It's on NPR and it's called "All
Things Considered."

Ombudsmen and BP?

Could an ombudsman have helped BP in handling its disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Probably not.

But an excellent article entitled "In Case of Emergency: What Not To Do" by Peter S. Goodman in today's New York Times Sunday Business section is instructive.

Goodman - one of the best business journalists around - writes about crisis management and how public relations stumbles only exacerbated the crises at BP, Toyota and Goldman Sachs.

What caught my eye was a line that reads:

"In times of crisis, communications professional and lawyers often pursue conflicting agendas. Communications strategists are inclined to mollify public anger  with expressions of concern, while layers warn that contrition can be construed  as admissions of guilt in potentially expensive lawsuits."

So it is with media organizations. Those with ombudsmen have found that legal costs actually decline when an ombudsman is there to address public complaints. The Guardian of London noted that within a short period of time after hiring their first readers' editor, the amount of legal work handled by in house solicitors declined by 30% - more than enough savings to pay for the readers' editor and his assistant.

A study commissioned by the Iowa Litigation Study Group noted that when a disgruntled reader called the newsroom and spoke with a harried editor, the chances of the reader filing a lawsuit increased. When the reader was directed to an in-house ombudsman, the chances of litigation almost disappeared.

Another study has found that when doctors apologize to patients for mistakes, the number of malpractice suits also declines precipitously.

Obviously, there is a huge difference between the complaints of shrimp fishermen in Louisiana who have lost their livelihoods due to possible BP collusion in the worst oil spill in US history, and the protests of an aggrieved media consumer who think there is bias afoot. Yet the approaches of large corporations and media organizations are often similar in their approaches to the public: ignore them and they will eventually go away. They may, but the damage to reputations has been done by an instinct to defensiveness.

As Goodman writes, "...in the view of many who are paid to extract corporations from terrible situations, Toyoata, BP and Goldman exacerbated their woes by either declining to fess up promptly, casting blame elsewhere or striking adversarial postures with the public, the government and the news media."  

Too many media organizations act as if they can still ignore public complaints while at the same time, hope to placate them by asking them to interact on their websites.


At a time when ombudsmanship continues to grow in academia, government and especially among international media organizations, North American media seem unable to see the value in dealing with their audiences in an non-defensive way. Or at least until they find themselves in the midst of a credibility crisis of BP proportions.

The Pleasure of Managing Great Talent

Carolyn Jensen Chadwick died over the weekend in California.

Not many people in the US would have heard of her; fewer still in Canada. Yet her skills as a radio producer were phenomenal. She worked at NPR and produced some of the finest radio pieces I ever heard. Along with her husband, the reporter and on air host Alex Chadwick, they created a series of exploratory documentaries called "Radio Expeditions." Carolyn and Alex wandered around the world for NPR and National Geographic and brought back a true sense of audio awe and wonder.

It's said that when radio does its job well, the listener becomes complicit with the act of imagination as the producers and reporters transport us in our minds to where they wish us to be.

Carolyn Jensen did that better than anyone. She also worked with some of the best editors, producers and engineers ever to be in radio. It was a fabulous constellation of talents. My favorite piece from Carolyn was a series from India called "The Geography of Heaven." Absolutely unforgettable and you must have a listen here.

A few years ago, Carolyn and Alex moved to southern California when Alex became host of a now defunct NPR radio show. When the show was canceled, they moved to Santa Barbara where Carolyn continued to produce radio and Alex produced a TV series called "Interviews Fifty Cents," named for a sign he once puckishly made for a series: he sat at a card table in Washington, DC's Union Station and asked passers-by if he might interview them. The results were remarkable as befit this enormously talented couple.

I met Carolyn at NPR in 1997. She came into my office to quietly ask (she was always soft-spoken) if there was some way that Radio Expeditions could be put on "base budget." In the arcane world of public radio, some program elements were inside the NPR budget; other were not and it was up to the producers themselves to raise the money for their productions and even for their own salaries.

"Radio Expeditions" was actually part of the NPR News family (it ran as part of "Morning Edition"), yet it was treated as a fiscal and organizational orphan especially by some short-sighted managers who had trouble pigeon-holing it: it wasn't hard news and it wasn't science journalism. Due to managerial neglect, it never had a "home" inside NPR, even though it continued to win many awards.

Carolyn made a convincing case for changing this situation and after I heard a few episodes, I needed no further argument. It belonged inside NPR.

It was a privilege to do this for her and a privilege to have known her. The greater privilege belonged to the listeners who were the real beneficiaries of Carolyn's vision and talent.

Why is Managing the CBC So Damn Difficult?

The recent departure (removal?) of Richard Stursberg as Executive VP of CBC Radio, TV and Online is being viewed in the usual manner of these things: some inside the shop are relieved; others are defending Stursberg's achievement of high ratings for popular entertainment shows, especially on the television side.

Stursberg was, by all accounts, a demanding boss. But as difficult as he was for his colleagues, he made enormous changes at the CBC that called into question the value of a public broadcaster in the 21st century.

In only six years, Stursberg changed the news and current affairs services of both Radio and Television by popularizing the content of news programs. He hired an American news doctor (Frank Magid and Associates) who brought urgency to newscasts by concentrating on crime reporting at a time when national crime rates are falling. He introduced a new flashiness to television news which gave CBC TV News a remarkable visual similarity to CNN. He removed most classical music from Radio Two and replaced it with more pop music offerings.

Stursberg pushed for mass appeal entertainment shows such as "Little Mosque on the Prairie," "Battle of the Blades" and other similar fare, and he was successful by the standards of commercial broadcasting. Critics claimed that successful ratings were being used to ensure continued government support for the CBC as long as the public broadcaster was more amusing than enlightening.

Stursberg was a hero to those who worked the non-news side of the CBC. But his relations with the CBC Board of Directors was reportedly shaky, even confrontational, especially once his previous mentor, former CBC president Robert Rabinovitch left the corporation three years ago.

Stursberg was ousted despite his ratings successes, in part because he neglected the news and current affairs side of the CBC - regarded by many as the crown jewel of the crown corporation. It was an aspect of public broadcasting that he openly questioned and allegedly disdained, and the feeling was mutual.

Like senior managers in many news organizations, power and control once achieved, are difficult to convey downward. Without buy-in from the troops, even the most brilliant manager is doomed to fail.

In the especially skeptical culture of news, staffers are frequently and openly unimpressed by bosses - a legacy of a strong union tradition in many media organizations. Power and control are antithetical in news cultures; they are more easily exercised and communicated in other more hierarchical organizations.

CBC's strength is that it has an excellent cadre of journalists, editors, producers and managers. They are the ones who understand the deepest values of broadcast journalism and convey the passion and the obligations that great journalism requires. Stursberg was never able to connect with that aspect of the CBC.

Ironically, as CBC became more successful in terms of ratings, the clarity of purpose of the organization became more confused. There is a new audience of online visitors, and that is a good thing and a positive legacy of the Stursberg years. But like many media organizations, the quest for the holy cyber-grail of news audiences is pursued, without knowing whether or how the enormous amounts of time and money spent in pursuit of that goal will pay off. Too often, on air attempts by the CBC to connect with an internet-based audience feels more like pandering to them than engaging with them.

Richard Stursberg's departure came about because his vision for the CBC and the traditional mission of public service became increasingly irreconcilable. Inevitably, these competing visions were bound to clash. Managers who ignore that reality do so at their peril.

Managing in public broadcasting, it is said, is like herding cats. It can be difficult, often exasperating, but not completely impossible. There are moments when it can even be quite satisfying. But it can also break your heart and end a career.