"What if there were a local newscast that wasn't about the latest accident, or the latest house fire, or shooting?" That's the question posed by Rob Curley president, and editor of greenspun Interactive. "What if it were fun and informative?" "That's 702.tv.
Curley and his staff manage a Las Vegas internet site dedicated to local information in Sin City. I checked out 702.tv. The site promises alternative stories about the community. However I found the site is doing long form human interest features in the area. What's missing are investigative reports, and enterprise stories on controversial local issues. It seems sites like these are poping up in cities across the country, the challenge for these operations is to do real news.
Where's the news, you click internet sites, or switch on the cable outlets like CNN, and you find pundits, and opinions, and little news. Andrew Heyward past president of CBS News during the Dan Rather days says, "There's more news coverage than ever today. Yet, you'd say there's a lot missing."
In an interview with TVNewsday contributing editor P.J. Bednarski, Heyward shared his views.
"I wonder and worry about where the original enterprise reporting of tomorrow is going to come from and how it's going to be funded. We have an interesting thing going on. You have your 60 Minutes, which this year had one of its best seasons in memory. It was in the top 10 many weeks, a fantastic season, very topical, very high quality, tremendous acceptance and more enthusiasm on the part of the audience. NPR, which also does in-depth original reporting has had very significant growth. All Things Considered and Morning Edition have 27 million listeners every week. That's an incredible scale of engagement. CBS Sunday Morning, again, highly successful, unique, high quality, very, very distinctive original programming. Look at NBC's Obama special. I mean NBC went behind the scenes at the White House, and conventional television [wisdom] was, well, who's going to watch that documentary? Well. guess what? It was a huge, huge hit."
I agree with Heyward, there is a big appetite for original news programming. "There's a market or this stuff. so we need to figure out how to create in a sustainable valuable way to take advantage of the act that people do want it." Heyward added. Good advise, and something hyperlocal websites like 702.tv should follow.
