More than 130 television news stations across the country could go dark if the merger between Nexstar and Tegna goes through, investigative journalist Nicole Vap said in a prescient on-line discussion hosted by Colorado Press Women on March 18. Vap talked with COLab executive director Laura Frank about the potential consequences of a merger during the Sunshine Week event.
On March 19, eight states, including Colorado, joined in a lawsuit to stop the merger, citing antitrust laws. Hours later, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr approved the merger, waiving the federal rule that bars a single company from owning TV stations reaching more than 39 percent of the market of U.S. households. The FCC’s approval of the merger would allow one company to own up to 80 percent of the national TV audience, Vap said.
In the Denver market, the deal folds Tegna’s NBC station (9News) into the Nexstar family that already includes Fox (Fox31) and CW affiliates. 9News is the state’s top rated and largest news station, with Fox31 a close second.
Vap said the consolidation impacts 265 stations across 132 markets in 44 states, affecting 28 percent of TV broadcast industry workers. She and Frank discussed how this will result in reduced staff, fewer reporters and centralized control leading to less diverse content. Much of the back-end work, such as ad sales and scheduling, graphics and IT, is already hubbed nationally, but it will be done on a “more massive scale,” now, Vap said.
She predicted only one news director will control the content on all affiliated outlets in a given market, and a diminished reporting staff will be required to cover multiple newscasts throughout the day, as more expensive programming, such as syndicated talk shows and soap operas, is cut. One camera would feed all stations.
The impact will particularly hit investigative reporting, Vap said. “The frequency of appearances keeps you from doing everything else,” such as making phone calls, reading public records, and tracking down sources in the field.
Vap speculated that both Fox News anchor Jeremy Hubbard and Kyle Clark, the popular 9News anchor whose show Next with Kyle Clark has occasionally raised the ire of conservatives nationwide, might both continue on their current stations because they are both quality journalists with distinctive styles, but which on-air staff will continue with their respective stations after consolidation has yet to be determined, particularly after high salaries are considered.
The effect is much like the consolidation and pillaging of newspapers across the country, Frank said. Already, “the typical Colorado newsroom has only 1.35 people producing news content and one person doing everything else.”
Frank noted that “these companies have done this over and over again,” and cited buyout of the morning and evening newspapers in Rochester, N.Y., by Gannett—now Tegna—in the mid 90s, where in appearance they were there two separate newspapers, but they had the same reporting staff.
Vap said the FCC’s primary concern is about advertising and streaming content rather than news content. “The FCC wants to help these companies make more money,” Vap said.
Perhaps the biggest effect will be to the local fundraising outreach, Vap said, such as Next’s Word of Thanks micro-giving and the 9Cares Colorado Shares. It’s probable that such efforts would be either combined with Fox31’s fundraising campaigns or abolished.
The conversation also touched on positive trends in journalism, including journalists leaving network positions to become independent creators pursuing community-focused reporting and the potential for local news outlets to support these independent journalists and initiatives like COLab’s MATCH Lab program. MATCH Lab taps college media programs throughout the state to support community news organizations with research, reporting, marketing, design and other challenges.
Vap noted the public is consuming more news than ever before, but not on television. Instead, viewers are streaming stories in short bites fed to them by algorithms that predict their interests. The fastest-departing group from traditional platforms are those ages 65 plus, she added.
Frank said the challenge is to find the right medium to provide people with news that matters. “We know people care about things that impact them directly. We need to double down on helping local news outlets deliver what we’re coming to call civic information news.” She described COLab’s work with local partners on a “Build Your Own Ballot” program that allows voters to focus on issues relevant to them and on a simulator that can predict the impacts of tax changes in a specific community.
— Gay Porter DeNileon
To view the entire Zoom meeting, click this link.
