Posted by KRM on August 24, 2009 at 19:58:57:
In Reply to: Re: A Look At The Chicago Local TV Newscast Battles posted by Annoyed on August 24, 2009 at 19:57:51:
It's a safe bet to say that CBS would never let their Chicago outlet give up local news in the third largest market. It would be a blow the network's ego. They will continue to experiment with news no matter how low the ratings go.
What surprises me is that Channel 32 does not have newscasts on co-owned Channel 50, just to give the station some local presense. They could do three minute newscasts on channel 50 on the hour and then tell viewers to tune in channel 32 newscasts for the rest of the story.
: There is so much Chicago news coverage to choose from, one has to wonder how much longer until we see some consolidation.
: For example, does WFLD having the most amount of news throughout the day really do much for them? Their 9 a.m. hour (where they are the only local news station, minus CLTV) is beat by everyone else except WBBM - it would be cheaper to throw an hour of I Love Lucy in that block, and would probably give them more ratings.
: It was discussed here recently, but how much longer can WBBM plow through with all their continued changes until they just give up? In this day and age, I think it is a safe bet that WLS is established as the news leader in Chicago, with WMAQ being the only serious challenger. Does it make sense to pay an entire news staff, production, etc.? Perhaps, WBBM still makes money off their newscast, but I do wonder what kind of return they get as a result of airing local news versus showing some other programming in its place.