Regional News Across The Pond

And the consolidation of news operations is happening in Great Britain
as well. According to Broadcastnow, ITV and the BBC have published a roadmap for a regional news partnership.

Broadcast Sweatshops

As broadcast news attempts to reinvent itself with "produce once, run
everywhere" utilizing the same or smaller staffs, it suddenly dawned on
me that some of creature comforts that once graced our crazy business
have fallen by the wayside: edit cubicles that once turned into edit
rooms have returned to being cubicles; hourly-paid staff jobs have
become flat rate daily-hire freelancers and dinner reimbursements for
non-union workers have all but disappeared.

Young people entering the business today are working in a sweatshop,
it’s just that sewing machines have been replaced with computers. There
is nothing wrong with expecting somone to produce content for all the
news platforms, there is only something wrong asking them to do it for
60 hours a week without throwing in a free dinner here or there.

New York Nonstop

WNBC launched NY
Nonstop yesterday (3-09-09) on its digital tier and on Cablevision
(Ch 109) & Time Warner (Ch 161).

Billed as being "geared toward a city-minded audience", I had it on most
of the day in my office (and I have it on as I write). It’s definitely
geared toward an under-30 audience and I’m not impressed.(B&C
says it’s pushing itself to be "relevant with those much more familiar
with Chuck D than star anchor Chuck Scarborough".)

Over-30 me would rather watch NY1.