FEED: Broadcasters have so much expertise, infrastructure and cultural clout. Is there more they could be doing?
HOWARD HOMONOFF: It’s amazing that so many people still watch broadcasts, given all the options they have. Some of that is inertia, and the audience is ageing. But everybody knows ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. Obviously, the BBC is ubiquitous – you can say the same thing about Canal Plus. Broadcasters have a lot of legacy strengths to support them, but they will need more than this to win the day.
“IT’SAMAZINGTHAT SO MANY PEOPLE STILL WATCH BROADCASTS”
FEED: Have new technologies helped niche and local interests? There are so many options, but are things like quality local news still drying up?
HOWARD HOMONOFF: There are green shoots around local media, where you sometimes have local partnerships between public media and private enterprise. American public media has some of the most powerful local presences –WNET in NewYork orWGBH in Boston have always been very influential. I think a public-private partnership is the future. In the States, they have been trying to deliver local news.Their business is meant to be a community resource, providing groups with a way of sharing information. That was a big problem with Covid-19.You would hear from a friend’s mother’s sister,
‘Hey, you can get tested at such-and-such a place. Or I heard they have masks at this drugstore.’ I don’t know if that qualifies as news or not, but it is a local resource. And it’s probably even more important to have today, as we’ve seen with issues of public safety – think Black Lives Matter and the climate emergencies. The challenge is that in a capitalist economy, to keep growing requires greater scale. If you go to Roku, there are 10,000 streaming apps, but there aren’t 10,000 successful businesses. Many will roll up with similar apps; some may be bought byWarner Bros, NBC, Amazon or another giant.
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