What Is "Local" Anymore

Broadcasters are said to be preparing to fight any new rules which may come out of current FCC study of how much real local news and content local stations are producing.

With most local broadcast stations owned by the existing Big 4 (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox), Viacom's UPN, Time Warner's WB or a handful of other national broadcast groups, the traditional public interest notion of "localsim" has increasingly lost out to the owner's need to remain competitive on a national level. With syndicated programming long dominating daytime and early primetime (e.g., Oprah, Jeopardy, Judge Judy) and station owners looking to produce and/or license programming as efficiently as possible and support it through national ad sales, there is little except for early morning Sunday shows and news that is truly local anymore.

With many-to-most Americans receiving programming via cable or satellite, and the internet increasingly becoming the source of news and information, the traditional assumptions of the importance of local broadcast to the community of license probably does need to be looked at in a new media marketplace.

Here's a link to a brief article.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA477631.html