The new broadcast news

The key hits:

• ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News are each stepping up their streaming news operations.
• The recent activity indicates how streaming is becoming more central to TV networks’ news organizations.
• The networks are also increasing their original programming efforts for streaming.

The news never stops, and increasingly it is streamed. While TV news networks like ABC News and CBS News stepped into streaming years ago, a recent flurry of activity indicates the central role that streaming is taking in the news organizations’ future.

“The idea of what does news on streaming look like is really starting to crystallize,” said Beth Hoppe, svp of longform at ABC News.

News networks race to streaming

“We all look at the landscape and see the numbers of more and more people leaving the linear space and going over to streaming,” said Justin Dial, senior executive producer at ABC News Live, of the recent streaming activity among TV news networks. “The model we take here at ABC and ABC News Live is we want to be the network people find when they come to streaming.”

As Dial’s and Hoppe’s comments indicate, though, the Disney-owned news organization is far from alone in its ambition to be streaming audiences’ news network of choice. CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News are similarly stepping up their streaming efforts.

ABC News plans to hire an svp of streaming and increase its streaming content production over the next year, per a memo sent to employees by ABC News president Kim Godwin on Sept. 2. “We continue to invest more in live programming and resources for ABC News Live and we’re exponentially growing our narrative non-fiction slate of original programs for Hulu,” said Godwin in an emailed statement.

CBS News plans to rename its news streaming service CBSN to CBS News later this year and will convert the former “CBS This Morning” studio into the organization’s streaming studio, according to a CBS News spokesperson. Neeraj Khemlani, president and co-head of the ViacomCBS-owned news organization, announced the upcoming name change during an internal CBS town hall on Sept. 14. The move is meant to reflect how CBS News is unifying its efforts across traditional TV and streaming as well as between its national and local coverage, with its CBSN local streams set to be similarly renamed (ex. from CBSN Los Angeles to CBS News Los Angeles).

“We’re not just seeing streaming growth nationally. CBS local news streaming is growing year-over-year as well. By unifying these organizations, we’re building on this momentum. When you bring together a highly relevant local streaming service with a national and even globally resonant CBS News streaming network — that’s where you really see the audience fully …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron