Word: networking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Cable's growth has made it harder for local stations to win viewers as well. The affiliates are especially hard hit, since they must take 21 hours a week of increasingly unwatched prime-time network programming. They are reluctant to give up that burden, since they receive at least $140 million a year each from the networks for shouldering it. Independent stations have somewhat more latitude, but both groups are hungry for programming that sets them apart from cable and from each other. Among their alternatives are better movies and syndicated reruns of popular network sitcoms like Cosby, Cheers...
...bolster the reputation of their profitable newscasts, local stations send their anchors scurrying all over the world to report major international news stories that were once the domain of network reporters. California anchors fly off to Central America, Beijing and Tokyo. When East Germany began to break / down the Berlin Wall two weeks ago, dozens of local U.S. news teams headed to Berlin from markets as big as Seattle and as small as Manchester, N.H. Says John Spinola, general manager of Westinghouse-owned station WBZ in Boston: "Every time I look around, we've got someone out of the country...
...broadcast stations, though, perhaps the most important new partnership is the one they have formed with CNN. Both KRON and WSB are among the 121 network affiliates that are CNN partners. The Atlanta-based cable network airs stories provided by its partners via satellite, and distributes the stories to other station partners for their use. Broadcasters believe local viewers who catch their news teams on cable may be more likely to tune in the station if they like what they see. Says Peter Herford, a former CBS News executive who directs the Benton Broadcast Fellowships at the University of Chicago...
Until now, the broadcast networks had not viewed the CNN partnerships as much of a threat, since most of the stories involved never ran on the networks anyway. Those days are gone. When NBC News delayed switching to live coverage the night of the California earthquake, for example, CNN effectively replaced the network for CNN's 45 NBC affiliates by feeding them the live coverage from KRON in San Francisco and KNBC in Los Angeles...
...local stations become increasingly aggressive, the networks are trying to reshape their own news products to offer affiliates something more than the day's headlines. All three networks, for example, run long special features during the regular evening newscasts and are experimenting with new concepts, such as 48 Hours on CBS and ABC's Primetime Live. Some news thinkers go so far as to wonder whether the network evening newscasts have a future. Says Andrew Stern, who teaches broadcast journalism at the University of California, Berkeley: "At some point you have to ask, What do the local stations need...