Total posts : 45366
This is what Cheap Channel had at the station where I was, except we were the hub for 7 stations:
http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=35831
They have since added a couple more stations to the hub. They also tried running the news for a couple of stations out of the same studio, but that failed grossly. So they killed the news at one station, and fired all the staff.
The local Time Warner news had a local presence, but then they moved all the anchors out of town, there are still reporters that are local. They spent millions on an old unused building to repair/renovate, and then after the contracted tax break time, moved things out and cut back on staff. They often rely on interns to actually go out and get the news and operate the equipment. Good for the interns, poor for the economy of out of work TV people. Internships should be a guided hands on learning experience, not just free labor.
I’m not really sure where Cheap Channels radio is headed, and since all the radio and TV are for sale, who knows… Where they were going was something very much like XM or Sirius where there is one big building and the “jocks” voice track for many different stations from a central point. I can tell you that the CC computer network is large and vast, they were very close to having a central music storage point, and all songs would be called from that server to play out locally. Again the sale leaves all this unleveraged.
All in all, the end of being really local is coming, much of this is forced by the cost of digital upgrades, the other part is needing to continue to show the more than 3% increase in profits each year, instead of being happy with a few break even years.
