Television News In The Valley

[Towntalk]

What should anger all of us is the fact that corporate heads in Los Angeles are going to decide what we will or will not have here in Youngstown, Ohio, without any input from us.

Certainly a staffed news department is a big expense for any television station, but is it in the public interest for these stations to decide that they will no longer have any local newscasts, that in emergencies that they will have no one to keep the public updated (Weather emergencies).

Time Warner does not have a wide range of area stations that we can fall back on because of the rule that if there are local ABC - CBS - NBC affiliates in the market, they do not include stations outside the market.

Given the fact that the Akron/Canton market now has to depend on Cleveland for local news, to add the Youngstown/Warren market to that list would be a disaster.

Now if one of the radio stations were to expand their news departments to take up the slack, say an all news station such as they have in other markets, that wouldn't be too bad, but the question is, are we a large enough market to support an all news station. Certainly there are enough radio stations here (14 at last count), but could any one of them survive as an all news station. It would have to be one of the stations that has at least 1000 watts of power which would eliminate stations such as WGFT, and it would have to be an AM station as opposed to FM.

The one station that comes to mind as having expanded news coverage would be WKBN - AM, since they already have an award winning news team.

[Mary]

OK thanks for clarifying that. We do not have cable or anything so i rely on the broadcast channels.

[Towntalk]

http://www.woub.org/tv/video-akrontv-doc.html

I hardly think that 27 and 33 would cut their network affiliation completely, but who knows. We're between two major markets and since most people are either on cable or satellite the argument could be made that one or both stations could go independent. But based on the article, only news would be affected.

[Mary]

Ok could some one clarify this for me. Does that mean would would not be able to get ABC or CBS stations at all or we would lose the new's coverage only?
I don't think this seems like the best idea for the valley.

[Towntalk]

This news item does not look good for local news coverage: http://community.vindy.com/content_printstory.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vindy.com%2Fcontent%2Flocal_regional%2F312083871565378.php

It should be noted that i the Akron/Canton market, there is no TV local news and only one commercial TV station serving that market.

IF WYTV and WKBN cut back on local news that would only leave WFMJ, and if WYTV and WKBN cut network news, that would mean that we would lose ABC and CBS News.

Everything is still up in the air, but it doesn't look good.

In the Akron/Canton market the people there have to rely on Time-Warner Cable which has been doing local newscasts after the Akron station eliminated their news department.