Well I'm Moving On Up

Blogger's great, but I'm making a change. 

I use WordPress at work and I've really learned to like it.   So I hope you'll follow me to localmediareboot.com.

I'm leaving the old posts here, for now, but I've moved them to the new site.  I've already added a couple of new postings to the new site, as well.  I'll probably delete this site in early 2015.  Or maybe I'll forget. 

As the name implies, the focus of the new blog is changes in local media.  But I also have a category called "Odds & Ends.  Mostly Odds."  It sounds kind of random, and it is. 

I'm going to plan to write a lot more often, particuarly about television. Come along for the ride, and feel free to post a comment about anything I write!

Mark

Don't believe everything you read, Number 1

I get a lot of email from people who mean well. They find what looks like it would be useful to others, and they pass it on. Sometimes it's household tips. Sometimes it's a warning.

Some of those emails are true. Some are not. Usually a quick search will determine whether the email is valid.

Like this one I got recently:

GOOD FACTS TO KNOW: 1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair 2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish 3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes 4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair 5. Elmer's Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any 6. Shiny Hair - use brewed Lipton Tea 7. Sunburn - empty a large jar of Nestea into your bath water 8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste 9. Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it! 10. Arthritis? WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too 11 Bee stings - meat tenderizer 12. Chigger bite - Preparation H 13. Puffy eyes - Preparation H 14. Paper cut - crazy glue or chap stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals) 15. Stinky feet - Jello ! 16. Athletes feet - cornstarch 17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub 18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff) 19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won't hurt them if they eat it! 20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD's! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper 21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray 22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands! Keep a can in your garage for your hubby 23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls 24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on 25. Heavy dandruff - pour on the vinegar ! 26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice! 27 Tie Dye T-shirt - mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak 28. Preserving a newspaper clipping - large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia , soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last for many years! 29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD's! 30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste 31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt. 32. To remove wax - Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel. 33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter! 34. Baked on food - fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the Bounce towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets , soak overnight! 35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it! 36. Dirty grout - Listerine 37. Stains on clothes - Colgate toothpaste 38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup 39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola , it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries! 40. Fleas in your carpet? 20 Mule Team Borax- sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again. 41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox , or 2 Bayer aspirin , or just use 7-up instead of water. 42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you 'squeeze' for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are: Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red Friday = White Saturday = Yellow. So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue- Green - Red - White - Yellow, Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting. I looked in the grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping. Don't forget Gatorade for Migraine Headaches. PowerAde won't work. Pass this information on to friends so they can be informed.

I immediately focused on number 10: using WD-40 to treat arthritis or insect stings. Most of the others I read seemed relatively harmless, but this one struck me as something that could be dangerous. I was right.

This article from about.com finds that the treatment is ineffective and potentially dangerous.

One dangerous item like this is enough to tell me to disregard the whole list. Besides, who wants to try to peanut butter off of a CD?

And Prep-H for puffy eyes? If it works, I don't care. I know where it's supposed to go.

Got an email you want me to check out? Send it to blog@newsmark.net. And let me know if you'd prefer not to be identified in the blog!

TV Station Fire Sale

A bunch of companies are getting out of the local TV business.

The New York Times recently sold its stations to a private equity firm. Clear Channel and LIN are selling their stations across the country. Nexstar is considering the sale of some or all of its stations in small markets. Stockholders are pressuring Gannett to sell its stations as well.

All of this activity makes it a bad time to sell TV stations. Supply goes up, prices go down.

Note to someone with money: this is a great time to buy TV stations. They're still not cheap, but this may be the best time in years to get into this industry.

But before you buy, you need to look at why so many companies are selling.

The conventional wisdom is there's one tried-and-true way to run a TV station.

(1) Affiliate with one of the big three major networks. The network will fill up most of your broadcast day. You get to sell a minute (give or take) of commercials every half hour.

(2) Program local news during a few traditional time periods, hiring as few people as possible and fill most of that newscast with stories from your network feed, consultant driven stories and whatever your small staff can cover from the police scanner and the newspaper.

(3) Program the remaining time slots with programs you buy from syndicators. You pay the syndicators for their programs and they also take some of the commercial time during those shows.

There's a slight adjustment to this formula for affiliates of Fox and other "second-tier" networks. Your network will only fill 2-4 hours of your broadcast day. You may have a very small news department, and you'll need many more syndicated programs to fill up the day.

Stations began operating this way because it allowed them to spend the least money up front and have the smallest payrolls. This formula has worked fairly well for more than 30 years.

It won't work much longer.

If you've read my other blog entries, or watched television, you already know why. Most of the "second tier" stations already look a lot like cable channels. From a viewer's standpoint, what's the difference between watching Seinfeld on your local station and Seinfeld on TBS? As much as local stations don't want to admit it, there is no difference.

Network affiliates look a lot like cable channels for much of their broadcast day as well, but they face another challenge: networks no longer need local affiliates. They send programs directly to viewers online and through video on demand and on cable channels.

All of this happens as technology allows stations to offer multiple streams of programming on one digital signal.

The situation creates a big black hole in the schedules for local TV stations. It also presents a big opportunity.

Local TV stations need to take charge of their own programming. There will be a new "conventional wisdom" for local broadcasters:

(1) Strengthen your news department. It's time for TV stations to add employees to news. Think in terms of newspaper staffing rather than traditional TV station staffing. These people can generate hours of LOCAL programming that's unlike anything on the dial now: traditional newscasts, specialty newscasts, an all-local news channel, an all-local weather channel.

(2) Create news/information programs: A court show. Current events phone-in shows. Sports talk. Ask the doctor. Ask the gardener. Ask the veterinarian. Ask the computer geek.

(3) Get back in the production business. There are sporting events and entertainment venues near you that would make great television.

(4) Beef up and retrain your sales staff. Encourage them to be creative. Your local programs will be unique in your market and advertising time will be in demand. Charge a premium for ads that run in an less-cluttered environment. Sell sponsorships for shows with limited (or no) commercial interruption. Sell ads on your digital subchannels to local businesses who've never been able to afford television. Let viewers upload their photos and type in their copy for video classifieds.

Within a few years, many local TV stations will operate like this. The ones who start now will be the leaders. The rest will play catchup. Which will you be?

TV Takeover

This is an open letter to anyone buying, or considering buying, one or more TV stations, particularly if you are part of a private equity group. This can be a moneymaking venture for you.

Full disclosure: I work for a company that has been the target of buyout offers from private equity firms. As of this writing it appears those offers will be turned down.

I don't know much about private equity firms, but the prevailing fear is that they simply want to buy something, cut costs to a bare minimum to make the bottom line look good, then sell it, either whole or in pieces. The problem with that approach is that most local TV stations are lean operations already. Anything you cut could hurt the value of your station.

If you want to make money via financial tools, local TV is probably not the business for you. If you want to make money operating TV stations, you should know it is a changing business and that change creates opportunity.

I'm sure there are many ways to make a lot of money by investing in local TV. Here's one of them:

Buy a group of underperforming (ratings-wise) stations in the same region, in small to medium markets.

There may actually be a few ways to cut costs, but in general, you'll need to spend money. Provide these stations the infrastructure to create and produce good local programs. News is one of those programs, but there are many other programs waiting to be created.

The stations may be able to share some elements of their programs. Or better yet, create a program at one station. If it works, use that program as a blueprint for other stations.

One goal should be to reduce or eliminate syndicated programming in favor of locally-created programs.

There's a good fiscal reason to do this: for every syndicated program on your air, you pay thousands of dollars to the syndicator. You also give up much of the advertising time to that syndicator. For every local program you produce, you save the syndication fee and get to sell all of your advertising time. A local show with moderate ratings can be as financially successful as a syndication hit--and let's face it, there aren't many new syndication hits.

The other reason is exclusivity. Many syndicated shows also appear on cable or satellite. Your potential audience with those shows is immediately reduced. You could also spend years and lots of money building an audience for that syndicated program, only to have another station outbid you for it next year and take that audience from you.

Now if you're in the lucky position of owning the rights to syndicated hits like Oprah or Wheel of Fortune, I'm not saying you should dump them. Stick with what works. But don't buy any new shows.

It's much smarter at this stage of the game to control your own destiny with your own programs. You'll create a new identity for a struggling station. You'll build a great reputation in the local community. And you'll make a lot of money. There are risks, but the rewards are much greater.

My Christmas wreath is for the bird

As I went home the other night, I stuck my key in the lock and something moved in my Christmas wreath. A small bird had apparently decided my fake wreath looked like a good home, until some non-flying creature came along and opened the door.

The first time it happened, I was merely surprised. It happened again last night, and I won't go into details about how much it startled me. The evidence of how much the bird was started, however, remains on my door.

I should really wash that off.

But while we're on the subject, I have a word of warning for the health-conscious among you: don't buy sugar-free peppermint, thinking you can have all you want, since it's sugar-free.

Large amounts of sucralose (Splenda) apparently have a side effect. Without going into details, I'll just say that I fully expected the Coast Guard to show up asking who was setting off the foghorn. I was setting records for decibel level and hang time.

You should also know that many sugar free cough drops contain Sorbitol, which can also cause the storm within.

Out, damned spots

Now's a really good time for me to tell you that most of what I write is not based on research or polls. If I'm basing something on specific research, I'll certainly tell you.

Most of the TV-related subjects I write about here are based on:

(1) my own observations and experience
(2) what viewers, friends and relatives tell me, and
(3) what seems like common sense to me.

What I'm about to say fits into all three categories: TV stations run too many commercials.

That thud you just heard was a TV salesperson hitting the floor after fainting.

A consultant (yes, they do sometimes offer valid information) told me years ago that, in the case of a newscast, people see signposts telling them that commercials are coming. Viewers know that a commercial break could be anywhere from 2 minutes to nearly 5 minutes. In those days, people would start flipping channels when they knew a break was coming. Now, many people hit fast-forward. We've trained them well.

But what if we made breaks much shorter? Some could be as short as 30 seconds or a minute. Maybe the longest breaks could be 90 seconds. Viewers would quickly learn they can't start flipping channels because they'll miss something. And it wouldn't be worth the effort to fast-forward through such a short break.

The ripple effect could be tremendous. Less commercial clutter could make a station much more enjoyable to watch. Viewers who don't have a strong preference for one station's newscast will start to choose the station that gives them more content and fewer commercials. What happens when a station has more viewers? The cost of commercials goes up.

Then, figure in the law of supply and demand. If fewer commercials are available, the demand goes up and the rates go up even more. If it's done properly, a TV station could actually make more money, not less, by selling fewer commercials. The other stations will notice the trend and cut their own commercial time. That increases the demand even more.

I don't see any losers here. Viewers get more content. Advertisers get a more attentive audience and don't have to fight as much clutter. Stations get more money.

So why isn't anyone doing this? No one wants to tell the sales folks they have less time to sell, even if it means making more money.

Less is more!

Have you ever noticed?

When someone says "to make a long story short," it's already too late to achieve that goal.