Branch Rickey was a visionary long before introducing America to Jackie Robinson. Prior to taking over the Brooklyn Dodgers, he ran the St. Louis Cardinals, where he wanted to find new ways to cultivate young talent without spending much money.
So he decided to create a series of teams that would play each other in smaller markets. They’d play for peanuts (sometimes literally). The best performers on those teams, already under contract, could play their way onto the Cardinals.
It was the beginning of baseball’s farm system. Throughout the country, young players and those hoping to resurrect lost careers played in small towns and rickety old ballparks, often taking 8 – hour bus rides to the next day’s doubleheader.
Local television stations have largely served the same purpose. The chick flick “Up Close and Personal” (starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer) describes how a young, gum snapping female reporter in Miami finds her way to the anchor desk at a fictitious television network.
Historically, local television stations have given their viewers much more. Before Fox, the CW and UPN, any station that wasn’t a network affiliate was considered “independent”. Indies, as they were known, ran reruns of anything and everything. You could find “The Odd Couple”, followed by “The Honeymooners” and “The Three Stooges”. No news, either. Often, they carried the local baseball team, whether major or minor league, all sorts of local events and parades and advertising for those who couldn’t afford more.
Local network affiliates had news people that were on the air for years, decades sometimes, with enormous credibility. They produced a variety of local programs, from talk and variety shows to public affairs.
“American Bandstand”, for example, started on Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV in 1952 and ran for 5 years before finding its way to ABC. Dick Clark and his teenagers were regular weekend guests on the network until 1989.
There are a host of other examples. Now, however, the local television station is showing its age.
Outside of the top markets, local stations now exist simply to run the programs of their parent networks. The only substantial investment local station owners make is in their local 6 and 11pm newscasts. Even there, the desire to do less is more evident. In many markets, joint partnership agreements between competing stations make one smaller news staff out of two larger ones.
A number of years ago, General Motors’ Oldsmobile division sought to attract new buyers to its redesigned cars. Knowing that Olds was perceived as “stodgy”, “old” and “uncool” buy the younger customers they targeted, the ad campaign said “It’s not your Father’s Oldsmobile”. Olds went as far as using the sons and daughters of famous actors to act as spokespeople. Here’s a sample:
Television stations have the exact same problem, except far worse. The call letters for local stations – W-this, K-that, Channel Whatever have no meaning to a generation that’s grown up getting their television from a cable box. To those weaned on dvr’s and laptops, television channels are red numbers on a gizmo connected with a wire. The concept of a signal coming through a transmitter directly into their home is as foreign to them as an egg cream to a Texan.
Like their radio executive counterparts, owners and executives of local television stations are doing their best to work against the tidal wave of change in media consumption habits.
Some local stations have adapted newscasts to a digital age, incorporating Twitter comments and social network or blog posts into the 6 and 11. But there’s little new programming.
There’s no attempt at rebranding, either. Stations need to create an identity for themselves with consumers that could care less about their dial position. In a time where digital and/or Internet television networks are proliferating, stations need to create a need and position for themselves with increasingly mobile consumers.
If not, they will truly become just another farm team. Playing for peanuts.
