TV Advised To Cooperate, Plan For Future

The days of TV stations going head-to-head in a battle for ratings should be laid to rest to make way for what should be broadcasters’ new goal of creating formidable brands in their markets that deliver content across platforms.

That, at least, is the way Fred Fourcher, president-CEO of Bitcentral, sees it. Speaking at the Kelsey/BIA Digital Strategies for Broadcasting conference in Jersey City, N.J., Fourcher -- whose company helps broadcasters such as NBC develop, produce and distribute content -- said broadcasters have to adopt new mindset to survive the onslaught of new media platforms -- a mindset that even includes pooling resources with competitors to promote the ultimate success of broadcast companies.

That’s particularly true for local news coverage, he said, since the real key to success is putting more people in the field, getting the best stories and distributing those stories in as streamlined a fashion as possible on the variety of platforms people use.

The No, 1 priority of consumers is getting news when and where they want it -- they care little about which broadcasters are reaping the bigger ratings number. It’s the onslaught of new media platforms on which TV stations should be more focused, Fourcher said.

“In the end, all these other things are really your competition,” he said. “The viewers don’t care how you rank with the other stations. They just want news any time and anywhere.”

That means that one of the tasks facing broadcasters is finding ways to produce more content while making it as easy to distribute across platforms as possible. Part of those efforts to streamline such processes could mean partnering with other stations -- a concept that simply doesn’t jibe with the industry mantra of airing content to win, he said.

“There’s a huge duplication of efforts in a market,” Fourcher said, adding that it behooves local stations to “cooperate, because as a category you are going to succeed if everyone is providing better news content.

Sam Matheny, GM of News Over Wireless, a new media division of the Capitol Broadcasting Co., said planning for the future -- the far future -- is another essential component of TV broadcasters’ ability to survive the continual changes in the marketplace.

“What we are doing now is something that we call 2020 vision -- looking at the year 2020 and hoping we have the clarity to see where we will be,” Matheny said.

Currently, 78 percent of individuals cite local TV news as their primary source of information, he said. “At a very basic level, we want to put ourselves in a position for us to be just as strong if not stronger in 10 years from now. “We’re not going to do that by doing what we’ve always done,” he said.

As a means of doing that, Matheny said he thinks iPhone apps are particularly worthwhile as a means for local stations to reach their viewers, especially if they use “push” notifications to alert users of breaking news or other reasons to access news content.

**In addition, mobile devices **give audiences the opportunity not only to consum the news but also to participate in breaking stories, reporting them as they see them happen, he said.

“You can start to see how some of this can work to really create value in terms of the services that the station offers and the way the audience can interact and participate,” Matheny said.

Internet-connected television is another technology that broadcasters should pay attention to, as consumers are expected to buy 6 million of them in 2013, versus the 400,000 they bought last year.

DTV widgets, through which stations can offer programming on Internet-connected TVs, will certainly be an attractive choice for viewers who want more control over content -- and a way for broadcasters to stay in the game, he said.