Here’s why.  It appears that the economic theory of creative destruction is about to wipe out local TV stations and, as a result, local TV news.

Making predictions on the media is not easy.  Technology is changing.  Various news markets have different needs and will consume news in different ways.  And media consolidation has created a powerful lobby that will try to stop innovation.

Still, the news is not good for local TV stations.

Just this week Senator John McCain introduced legislation to try to keep cable and satellite fees down.  The bill would allow cable and satellite customers to pay from a la carte menus.  In other words, you pay only for the stations you watch – not the 500 channel universe.

That could crush local TV stations.

People will probably choose only one local station.  It will be based on either what local news they like or what network prime time show they watch.

But that means the majority of TV stations in each market will lose retransmission fees paid by cable outlets.  And in today’s TV world, most TV news stations rely on cable retransmission fees for half of their revenues.  Not many businesses can survive when half their gross revenues are cut.

Granted, there is a good chance that McCain’s bill won’t pass or even get a vote.  The broadcasters and the major TV networks are big campaign donors and lobbyists.  They aren’t going to give up their profits and control of distribution and content.

But there are other problems for TV stations.

Aereo is a new disruptive company that offers subscribers local TV programming on their computers, tablets, or smart phones for $12 a month.  But Aereo doesn’t have to pay retransmission fees to local TV stations to use their programs.

And the courts are siding with Aereo.  A number of courts have ruled that Aereo is no different than a VCR.  Previous court decisions allowed people to record a show on VCR and not pay rights to the station or network.  So, as long as Aereo is recording local TV stations off the public airwaves then it’s OK.  Technically, Aereo is just giving its customers a VCR-like copy of shows except over a computer, tablet, or smart phone.

As Aereo spreads to more cities, more cable outlets will refuse to pay those retransmission fees to TV stations.  Why would cable companies pay those fees when a company like Aereo is airing the same content and not paying anything?

Ironically, it was Aereo’s court successes that led to the broadcast networks threatening to move all of their programming to cable or pay-per-view.  In turn, that threat from broadcasters led to McCain’s a la carte bill.

Already, local TV stations are in trouble.  Advertisers are not interested in expensive 30-second spots that fail to target or give the advertiser enough feedback from customers.  Local newscasts are losing viewers to the Internet and other sources – even for breaking news.  Many stations rely too much on paid programming.  And others are outright political partisans without any regard for a good portion of their audience.

So if the McCain bill becomes law, if the Aereo model spreads to more cities, and if networks pull their primetime program breaks then there is a good chance the majority of TV stations will go bankrupt or will be forced into agreements with other local news outlets.  The problem is so many of these TV stations are owned by conglomerates that have had to finance the old and more expensive broadcast technology.

Either way, the local stations that survive will have to produce good local programming that pertains directly to their audiences.  And those audiences might not be categorized as cities but neighborhoods.  Whatever the model will be most of the old technology stations will not exist or will look totally different from today.

The TV stations that survive will do so by cutting costs.  The big costs are employees.  Already, older and more expensive journalists are no longer in the business.  As a result, journalists will probably become independent contractors selling their stories and segments back to TV stations.

That’s where local journalists can take advantage of a community’s need for credible news and information.  Again, it is hard to predict what will happen in each local market.  But these things are certain.

Each market will need strong investigative journalism to stand up and question elected officials and those in power.

Each market needs video content to accompany good journalism.

Each market needs journalists who will interact with the public and use content from the public that will be overflowing as communications technology improves.

Right now, journalists have the technology to undercut what local TV stations do.  Take a look at Tim Poole, a new age journalist who has covered events like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations with smart phones by streaming them to computers and tablets LIVE.

What many citizen and entrepreneurial journalists don’t have is someone with technology protecting them.  Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, of Google fame, have penned a new book that future journalists should read.  One of their suggestions for journalists: find someone who can encrypt your site and protect your sources from governments and criminal enterprises.

Now it’s your turn.  What do you see and what do you want in this new media age?

Local news isn’t just reported by the local press. For example, compelling local stories appear in news services like The Atlantic Cities, Colorlines, Public News Service and Investigative News Network that are intended for their national readers — but may not reach the local readership where it has the most immediate impact. By necessity, news services need to cater and appeal to the broader national readership in order to achieve the traffic required for monetization. The hurdle is developing and maintaining the syndication channels that get investigative news reports in Cincinnati, Ohio to Cincinnati readers. I’m betting very few consumers recognize the networks named above, one reason is simply their brands are not distributed to local levels. Kevin Davis, CEO of Investigative News Network notes: “The new investigative news publishers, many of whom are nonprofit and in our network, need to be exposed to target and local readers across a variety of platforms. We work together with them to make sure their content is not siloed, but networked broadly across various channels that provide the consumer multiple opportunities to be informed. This is especially applicable for publishers reporting on diversity issues and underserved communities.”

(Above paragraph an excerpt from my article In the Era of Networked Journalism, Everybody can Contribute on Street Fight.)

We’ve been working together with The Media Consortium and Investigative News Network, with 63 and 83 news services respectively, to amplify their news services’ stories down to the local level. Most news happens at a location. The Breaking News Network’s networked journalism mission is to simply make sure that news is delivered to those who can best use or appreciate it based on locality.

Related: The Breaking News Network supports Public Interest News Syndication

Here’s an example of how the BNN has helped indie filmmaker Stephen Silha with the local marketing of his film Big Joy, The Adventures of James Broughton, last month’s winner of best documentary at the Florida Film Festival. We’ve authorized the Twitter account @BigJoyProject to have specific tweets retweeted through @BreakingNYCNews when Stephen adds the hashtag #NYC to the tweet.

TODAY: Final #BigJoy screening at @tribecafilmfest ~ Noon Saturday April 27th ~ Get your tickets here: ow.ly/kt52u #TFF2013 #NYC

— Big Joy (@BigJoyProject) April 27, 2013

@BreakingNYCNews automatically retweets @BigJoyProject whenever it uses the city hashtag. It does not retweet it if the hashtag does not appear.

via @bigjoyproject: TODAY: Final #BigJoy screening at @tribecafilmfest ~ Noon Saturday April 27th ~ Get your tickets here: t.co/uXlp

— Breaking NYC News (@breakingnycnews) April 27, 2013

We authorize your Twitter account for every city in your run. Let us know who you are:

This is the first of many media network collaborations for The Breaking News Network.

The Breaking News Network Partners with Public News Service to Support Local Syndication of Public Interest Articles

The Breaking News Network (“TheBNN”) and Public News Service (“PNS”), a member-supported news service that advocates journalism in the public interest, today announced a media collaboration that expands PNS’s local news distribution. The collaboration aims to insure that PNS’s regional and local public service news reaches the communities most affected by its coverage by syndication across TheBNN’s media network of 350 cities.

Lark Corbeil, Founder of PNS, says, “Creating media that serves the public is critical. And just as important is bringing that news to readers. Our collaboration with TheBNN will deliver our public interest content to local readers where it will have the most tangible impact.”

The Breaking News Network curates and publishes the most interesting local media and blog feeds in 350 cities worldwide. One of its main mission is to provide a non-commercial local media voice to journalists working in the public interest in the communities it serves. According to Patrick Kitano, administrator of TheBNN, “We’ve long supported local media institutions by automatically sharing their updates via what we call our Media Amplification Program. With PNS, we’re accomplishing our mission to syndicate their news directly to the communities they serve”.

About Public News Service

Currently reaching an audience of over 24 million weekly through 8,000 other outlets, PNS was launched in 1996 to promote public dialogue in a rapidly changing media environment. PNS examines the effects of policy on areas that receive too little coverage, lifting up often marginalized voices and making greater journalistic breadth available to broadcasters and publishers on any platform. Support comes from non-profit organizations, foundations, individuals and businesses for social responsibility.

About The Breaking News Network

Started in 2009, The BNN curates the most interesting media and blog feeds (avoiding car crashes and mundane crime reports) in 350 cities worldwide to create a real-time ticker tape of social media-sourced news in each city. The noncommercial network is unique in supporting each city’s civic groups, politicians, arts organizations, educators and causes by providing them with a free media voice to connect with their community. The Network now has, in aggregate, over 400,000 dedicated followers in part because they will never encounter a banner ad on the sites.

Contacts:

Public News Service – Lark Corbeil; 303-448-9105; Lark@publicnewsservice.org

TheBNN – Patrick Kitano; 415.573.2481; thebreakingnewsnetwork@gmail.com

Thursday morning, a group of University of Denver journalism students attended the conference. We immediately offered them access to our Media Amplification Program so they can use Twitter to distribute their community news stories to over 12,000 followers of our 14 Denver area Twitter feeds. For journalism students, this instant access to relevant community media extends their study outside the classroom into the real world.

Next we worked together with two of their instructors, Lynn Clark and Andrew Matranga to set up a new Breaking News platform for the University of Denver called DUBreakingNews.com, with associated Twitter and Facebook feeds. Our admin team, experienced in curating media and blog sources for University of Denver put this system together in 3 hours, just in time to unveil at the conference’s closing. With the DUBreakingNews platform, journalism students can easily post DU news and information using social media sources and see it published instantly. We believe giving students the power of media access creates engagement; with our Media Amplification Program, students now can interact with 12,000 readers in their community and get real time feedback no classroom can provide. And with the assistance and oversight of their instructors, this facility makes their study of journalism instantly practical.

We’ve built Breaking News for colleges before with MizzouBreakingNews.com for the University of Missouri Columbia. Now after our enthusiastic conversations yesterday with journalism educators and their students at DU, we’ve decided to open up Breaking News for colleges and, in particular, their journalism departments. DU’s Professor Clark also works with high schools to develop their media capabilities, and we’ll support her efforts to bring Breaking News as laboratories to high schools too. If you’re interested in helping us build more college breaking news, please contact us at thebreakingnewsnetwork@gmail.com

Related article: How we give teens who support DoSomething.org instant media access to help their communities

DoSomething.org, the largest organization for young people and social change in the US, and The Breaking News Network (“TheBNN”) today announced a media collaboration that supports DoSomething’s cause based campaigns by expanding their reach into local communities. The collaboration aims to maximize grassroots participation in DoSomething’s campaigns by amplifying the social media feeds of DoSomething’s advocate base through The BNN’s media network of 300+ US cities.

Naomi Hirabayashi, DoSomething’s CMO has leveraged the power of media to build DoSomething’s brand nationally, and believes it’s important to attach local faces to growing the grassroots effort. “Being local is critical for getting the word out at DoSomething. We know that the one of the best ways for young people to easily participate in our campaigns is through word of mouth. Yet, most teens don’t have the media connections to reach their immediate communities as effectively as they can. With access to The BNN’s local media feeds, our members not only can talk about DoSomething, but also contribute news about and ideas for their community”.

The Breaking News Network curates and publishes the most interesting local media and blog feeds in each of its 350 cities. Its main mission is to provide a non-commercial media voice to local institutions in the communities it serves. According to Patrick Kitano, administrator of The BNN, “We’ve long supported causes getting their messages out to their community by automatically sharing their updates via what we call our Media Amplification Program. With DoSomething, we’re giving their teen advocates the means to tell their stories through our network’s social media. It’s often the first opportunity a teen has to be given media access. We’re unique in personalizing advocacy and building advocate networks that are locally focused. It makes the work of giving and helping out the community much easier when a real live local face asks for participation”.

In addition to sharing DoSomething’s advocates tweets and status updates to The BNN’s readers, The BNN will also create a web presence across its cities that documents DoSomething’s local and national activities in real time. The presentation, shown here localized for San Francisco, is designed in the tile format popularized by Pinterest and is deployed in partnership with Rebelmouse.

About DoSomething.org

We love teens. They are creative, active, wired…and frustrated that our world is so messed up. DoSomething.org harnesses that awesome energy and unleashes it on causes teens care about. Almost every week, we launch a new national campaign. The call to action is always something that has a real impact and doesn’t require money, an adult, or a car. With a goal of 5 million active members by 2015, DoSomething.org is one of the largest organizations in the US for teens and social change. Join us at www.DoSomething.org.

About The Breaking News Network

Started in 2009, the Breaking News Network curates the most interesting media and blog feeds (avoiding car crashes and mundane crime reports) in 350 cities worldwide to create a real-time ticker tape of social media sourced news in each city. The noncommercial network is unique in supporting each city’s civic groups, politicians, arts organizations and causes by providing them with a free media voice to connect with their community. The Network now has, in aggregate, over 400,000 dedicated followers in part because they will never encounter a banner ad on the sites.

The Breaking News Network advocates for the sustainability of local media. Yes, we’re local media ourselves because we pride ourselves in curating the most interesting media and blog feeds in each of the 400 cities we cover. However, we’re different because we’re non-commercial, we only want to share curated media with our communities and link back to original source. Think of us as similar to the PBS model of community service media. We simply want to make sure our community is always informed, and we don’t ask for a cent in return.

We created Local Politics news pages that report real time Twitter based updates from the mayor, city council and assembly in 47 cities. We’re simply amplifying the tweets of politicians to our readers using our Community Retweet Program. Now, we’re expanding our Retweet Program to amplify the Twitter updates of local TV newscasters and journalists. Why TV? Newscasters are visible hubs of our communities, they often lend their crowd appeal to events and causes.

Kristen Sze, anchor for San Francisco’s KGO morning news, has been a part of our Retweet program since August, 2012. @BreakingSFNews retweets her great community contributions automatically when she adds the hashtag #SF (for San Francisco):

Seconds later, @BreakingSFNews reposts:

Kristen Sze says:

I love your concept… such a great way to aggregate local news!

I find what you retweet with the #SF hashtag interesting and relevant… I have both contributed stories and gotten stories using your community. So I give it a thumbs up!

In fact, my colleague who anchors the abc7 11am news with me, Cheryl Jennings, is just now learning about it and is looking forward to being part of this twitter community as well.

That’s why I’ve cc’d her.

We love it when our Community Retweet Program gets referrals to others who can use it to contribute to our communities.

Are you part of the local media in one of the 400 cities in The Breaking News Network? If so, apply and we’ll add you to our Community Retweet Program, and RT your best tweets directly to the local audience who wants to hear them.

We’ve got local politics covered in 47 cities and adding more. Most of our politicians are on Twitter to broadcast information to their constituency  (NBC News says almost all of Congress are on Twitter) Every time the mayor, an elected official like a congressman or city council member, or any organization associated with the local politics tweets, we post/retweet them real time on our respective city Twitter feeds. Not all their tweets, only the ones with the city hashtag, like #SF for San Francisco. We let the politicians know that we’ll repost their tweets when they use the hashtag (you can see the directory of hashtags we use at our City Directory page). For example, when Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco tweets with our #SF hashtag,

Our corresponding Twitter feed @breakingsfnews retweets the tweet instantly and automatically:

Making sure our politicians’ voices are heard locally is a key mission of The Breaking News Network. If you’re in politics or cover local politics as the media, and want to participate in our Community Retweet Program, sign up at the link, and we’ll add you to our Program.

City Politics pages by City:

Albuquerque
Atlanta
Austin
Baltimore
Buffalo
Calgary
Charlotte
Chicago
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
DC
Detroit
Dallas Fort Worth
Edmonton
Houston
Jacksonville
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Louisville
Memphis
Miami
Milwaukee
Montreal
Nashville
New Orleans
New York City
Omaha
Ottawa
Phoenix
Pittsburgh
Providence
Richmond
Sacramento
Salt Lake City
San Antonio
San Diego
San Francisco
Seattle
St Louis
Tampa
Toronto
Tulsa
Twin Cities
Vancouver

Pre-Internet, there were four reasons to create a flyer: 1) to publicize an event or party, 2) to sell something, 3) to advertise a sale or coupon, and 4) to display real estate. This table illustrates the new ways flyers are being replaced by today’s apps.

One industry is still hooked on flyers. According to Aaron Sperling, CEO of VFlyer, real estate still comprises 80% of his flyer business. Why has a cottage industry evolved around developing flyers for real estate listings? For a real estate agent, building a portfolio of professional looking real estate flyers becomes a body of work analogous to a photographer’s portfolio. They directly reflect on the agent’s marketing capabilities, and act as their calling card. Moreover, syndicating listings nationally across real estate search engines like Trulia and Zillow amplify agent reach to a consumer in the market. Flyers work for real estate because they visually present and convey the essence of a home far more effectively than text.  The same dynamic fuels the rise of Pinterest and the infographic, demonstrating that the masses gravitate towards eye catching visual media.

However, one thing missing from the current hyperlocal landscape is a simple billboard where locals can “pin” their flyers. Michael Greenspon and his team founded FlyersUp.com to do just that. “We’ve created a mobile bulletin board that spans online and in-person communities.  Simplicity is the key, and we’ve made the upload process as easy as pinning up a flyer at a local food store. Once uploaded, we’ve developed online strategies to expose these flyers to relevant communities and support local conversation and action around their content. It’s a finer grained approach than mere broadcast syndication.” Sharing flyer content to reach the relevant local online community is indeed a key challenge. Flyer content may target too granular or esoteric an audience to warrant media consideration.

Yes, one can upload of a flyer to a Facebook group or syndicate across national portals like Oodle or Craigslist, but neither method distribute their message well through local media. We’re facilitating the presentation of flyers uploaded onto FlyersUp by creating pages under the Things to Do tabs in our cities, like Hawaii Breaking News. Go to FlyersUp and upload your flyer, and the Breaking News Network city you’re in will showcase it on our Local News sections.

Things to Do tab on HawaiiBreakingNews.com

Check out Friday’s article by Lisa Skube of Journalism Accelerator that describes the evolution of The Breaking News Network. We added the following comment:

Curation of the community is more than just local news, it’s curation of the content the community creates. We’re focused on promoting the civic institutions creating content that enriches lives, so one of our projects is to expose the real time activities of museums, performing arts and the local politicians. (We’re big Rebelmouse fans because we use their visual Pinterest-style display platform that enhances the artistic nature of these organizations). We also aim to bring the messages of national causes like DoSomething.org down to the local level by amplifying their local advocacy in every city.