Bring It On-Line

[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Allison Romano]
Across the country, TV stations are taking on newspapers, Web sites and all comers online -- and challenging them with video and exclusive online newscasts. Indeed, many stations say they are just beginning to flex their broadband muscles, offering rich video clips of dramatic news and displaying real-time traffic reports and weather by a local meteorologist. The market for online news is exploding. Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they go online regularly for news, up from virtually zero a decade ago, according to the Pew Research Center. The migration has caused tectonic shifts across media sectors, shrinking the audience for TV news -- both national and local -- and sending shockwaves through the newspaper industry, which has seen readership tumble sharply in the past decade. According to the Pew study, 71% of adults 18-29 say they get their news online, yet only 46% say they regularly watch local TV news. In the early 1990s, 75% of Americans said they watched local news.
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