Digital disruption is coming quickly to TV news; how can broadcasters adapt and respond?

[Commentary] Television was supposed to be different, more resilient to digital disruption than print. For a long time, it was. It no longer is. Television today faces the full gales of creative destruction and digital disruption on a scale similar to what other media industries have faced. It is still an important medium, and will be so for years to come, but television will not remain the dominant force it was in the second half of the 20th century.

The implications for journalism are potentially profound. Even as newspapers waned and digital media waxed in the 1990s and early 2000s, television remained the single most important and most widely used platform for news in many countries, and both private and public television news providers invested serious money in journalism serving international, national, and local audiences. Both the reach and the revenue will decline in the years ahead. Because the environment is changing so rapidly right now, and because no clear set of best practices has been developed, the most important thing television news providers need to do to be in a position to respond effectively is to ensure that their organizations are capable of constant adaptation and change. Standard workflows and organizational forms can be very efficient, but they are rarely good at experimentation.

[Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics. Richard Sambrook is professor of journalism at Cardiff University and a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism]