Why no Milw news in HD yet?

[Mags]

Let's consider the SG&A of the business, in other words the day to day expenses to operate. That includes utilities, payroll, health insurance, Gas for all those remote trucks, ($$$$) Repairs to those trucks, Maintenance on those trucks, paper, pens, pencils, PC's, heating, cooling, building maintenance, That includes the new roofs that were just installed over the broadcast studios. ($$$$$$)

This is all well and good, but Tampa (a very similiarly sized market) has had 2 channels doing their news in HD for quite a while now... while Milwaukee has none still.

I guess the costs of a station must be much lower here in Tampa.

[ArgMeMatey]

1.  As previously mentioned, tencom may win the argument at the bar, where everybody is fueled by alcohol, but serious debate runs on facts and citations, and tencom has neither.  

2.  Long-term, mass media is screwed.  What in local news is worth watching in HD?  How much longer local TV can survive on news profits is an open question.  They are getting squeezed more each year by declining viewership.  You can see the desperation as news gets more and more sensational and focused on crises, fear, sex and weather.  

3.  Lack of profitability in local operations notwithstanding, there is a place for subsidized public broadcasting for the time being.  There will always be bias one way or another, but I want news from around the world and around the country.  My for-profit choices are limited and do not match the breadth or depth available from Lehrer, NPR, the BBC and the like.  

As a kid in the 1970s most of what I knew about the world came from CBS radio news and CBS, NBC and ABC TV News.  As those operations have become less profitable they have cut back and public broadcasting, which does not have the same money-making pressures, has filled the gap.  

There could be some chicken-and-egg questions but it's been a slow slide into the abyss of mediocrity and less money for for-profit mass media.  Eventually maybe we will all be reporting and listening to some kind of mass-pseudo-edited digest of world news reported by YouTube videos and blogs.  Some conglomeration of what Malcolm Gladwell discusses in The Tipping Point and Blink.  

4.  Others have stated that the current licensing of OTA broadcast rights are essentially subsidizing broadcaster profits, because broadcasters do not pay any significant royalties or fees for ongoing use.  They should pay some percentage of their profits just like a manufacturer pays for raw materials, but since their profits will probably continue to decline, there's going to be little appetite for changing this and of course industry lobbyists will work hard to shoot down any such legislation.  It's more likely that as conventional OTA television (and radio) continue to decline in audience numbers and profits, frequencies will once again be reallocated to more profitable uses.

[Talos4]

After all is done, commercial television still keep for themselves, most of the money
As MICHAEL DREW former television columnist for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL, once said  "Owning a television station is like printing money"  And RUBERT MURDOCH
Head man with FOX BROADCASTING and  most lately owner of DIRECT TV said the reason he got into television is because "it's easy money" Why do you think  when purchasing,  a new auromobile your paying well over a thousand dollars  to cover the cost of advertising. And you tie my beliefs, as political which I deny as political it's making broadcasters, more responsible in the use of the public airwaves. Aren't you concerned about the  low quality of commercial television, that might be having a negative effect,  on American culture.

Mike Drew?! When Mike was a daily columnist the television landscape looked nothing like it does today.

If you read his columns a couple years prior to his retirement in 06, he decried the the direction of OTA television had taken, Among his reasons, the explosion of technology.

from his Column 08/04/05

What a diverse and tech-savvy group reads this newspaper.

After I asked in this column how many readers used the Internet as a principal news source, a wide range of respondents mentioned a remarkable list of sources.

Every e-mailer cited newspapers - primarily this one - and some read them online only. Many take advantage of podcasts, using an iPod to timeshift their consumption of audio news, often while multitasking.

Others are deep into satellite radio, XM or Sirius. Satellite fans love that the services provide dozens more news sources than traditional radio, including audio feeds of television channels, as well as CNN, the Weather Channel, C-Span, etc. Plus resurrecting NPR's deposed Bob Edwards, with Howard Stern, unshackled, only months away.

Most who wrote dismissed television news as yesterday's medium...

So what's a local news operation to do? Sex, Shootings, and Storm teams.

If you took the same poll here I think you'd find the same result.

I do not rely on the local TV for local news. Because there is none. It's all headlines all the time. No meat, no investigation, Just reporters holding up pinwheels, throwing snowballs and standing in front of salt piles.  

When Rupert Murdoch started Fox again the landscape was much different. In 1985-86 what did the internet do for you? What about your cell phone, Satellite radio?

In 1986 I bought my first PC, an 80286 with a 20 meg hard drive and 640 K of RAM. and a 14.4 modem that didn't connect to much on what passed for the internet.

Of course TV was a money maker!! there wasn't anywhere else except the local fish wrap and Ask Your Neighbor to get your information from.

As far as the political leanings, I said my piece on that and I'm stepping aside on the discussion.

Negative effect on American Culture? are you serious?

The same effect Elvis, the Beatles, Bonanza, M*A*S*H and most recently American Idol and Britney Spears (now she's hard hitting news isn't she)  have had.

[jjallou]

This is all well and good, but Tampa (a very similiarly sized market) has had 2 channels doing their news in HD for quite a while now... while Milwaukee has none still.

I guess the costs of a station must be much lower here in Tampa.

Huh?
Tampa area is tv market 13 vs. Milwaukee tv market 33. Major tv owners typically will convert higher market stations first.

[Mags]

Huh?
Tampa area is tv market 13 vs. Milwaukee tv market 33. Major tv owners typically will convert higher market stations first.

close enough.. they both end in 3!  (13 vs. 33)

OK, just give us one HD news station then, not 2!

[foxeng]

For someone who has worked my whole adult life in broadcasting, I am here to tell you that broadcasters DO NOT print money. There was a time when you only had 3 or 4 stations in a market, 13 channels of cable and no VHS or DVD players or Internet, yes, broadcasting was easy money.

But because of the reasons I just stated, it isn't easy money anymore and I have YET to find a newspaper person who writes for TV who HAS worked in TV and they have NO credit with me. As a matter of fact papers are in WORSE shape than the broadcasting industry and that is self admitted. It would be the same as me writing about the print media, an industry I have NEVER worked in, would not even begin to know where to start and saying I know the print business because broadcasters compete with many of the same clients for dollars and oh yes, I just HAPPEN to read newspapers too, would be an OUTRIGHT LIE. It isn't the same animal and I just laugh when these "paper people" pontificate that they know the "in's and out's" of broadcasting because they clearly don't.