Word: station
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Affiliation with a network no longer offers the protection from local competition it once did. To stand out amid increasingly stiff competition, many local stations are turning to expanded news programs. Journalism is local television's biggest money spinner, typically accounting for at least a third of a station's revenues and an even higher share of profits...
Cable's growth has made it harder for local stations to win viewers as well. The affiliates are especially hard hit, since they must take 21 hours a week of increasingly unwatched prime-time network programming. They are reluctant to give up that burden, since they receive at least $140 million a year each from the networks for shouldering it. Independent stations have somewhat more latitude, but both groups are hungry for programming that sets them apart from cable and from each other. Among their alternatives are better movies and syndicated reruns of popular network sitcoms like Cosby, Cheers...
...news coverage is just about the most profitable thing a station can do, in part because production costs typically are less than half those of entertainment shows. And since news stories can be used repeatedly on broadcasts throughout the day, stations can sell more advertising time a minute of material, further increasing their profit margins. Moreover, many advertisers will pay premium rates to run their commercials during news shows because such programs generally attract consumers with higher average incomes...
...affiliate WCVB in Boston, news shows accounted for 39.5% of the station's revenues last year. WCVB boasts that it has the largest news staff of any U.S. station -- 350 reporters, producers, anchors and technicians -- as well as two trucks equipped with satellite uplinks to beam stories back to the station from remote locations. News departments at dozens of U.S. stations today own their own satellite-transmitting trucks, up from only a handful five years...
...bolster the reputation of their profitable newscasts, local stations send their anchors scurrying all over the world to report major international news stories that were once the domain of network reporters. California anchors fly off to Central America, Beijing and Tokyo. When East Germany began to break / down the Berlin Wall two weeks ago, dozens of local U.S. news teams headed to Berlin from markets as big as Seattle and as small as Manchester, N.H. Says John Spinola, general manager of Westinghouse-owned station WBZ in Boston: "Every time I look around, we've got someone out of the country...