Network News at a Crossroads

[Joanne98]

By BRIAN STELTER and BILL CARTER
ABC News is making no secret about what is behind the sweeping staff cuts it now faces: raw survival instinct.

“I just looked out at the next five years and was concerned that we could not sustain doing what we were doing,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News, as he explained the decision last week to jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff, in the coming months.

The same compelling motive already instigated strategic retrenchment at ABC’s broadcast competitors. NBC, the one network with a cable news channel, MSNBC — and, not coincidentally, the only network in a sound position of profitability — has drastically pared down its operations over the last few years. So has CBS, which is losing money already and has cut about 70 jobs this year.

But with news available more places than ever, on cable channels and Internet sites, and with revenue challenged by heavy dependence on shrinking advertising dollars, the future for the news divisions at ABC and CBS remains deeply insecure.

“Long term, it’s going to get harder for these guys to exist as they are currently constructed, with the exception of NBC because it can offload the costs on MSNBC,” Michael Nathanson, an industry analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said.

Continued>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01network.html?ref=business

[ixion]

1. perhaps if they'd have stuck to journalism, rather than infotainment

but since they decided to become entertainers, rather than journalists, I really have no pity for them.

Such is the life of an entertainer.

[Joanne98]

2. Amen to that.

[bemildred]

3. Mega-dittoes.

It's one thing to be a propaganda outlet, and another thing entirely to expect to get paid well for it by the propagandized.

[Bitwit1234]

4. I agree one hundred per cent...When

people turn on the news that don't want to know that Britanny wears no underwear. That Paris made a sex tape and the run a way bride ran away. They want to know what is going on this their health care, their jobs, energy and all the stuff that interests them. They should put stuff like that on Inside Edition and hire a O'Reilly look alike to spew it again.