How FAST, Free Sports And New Formats Are Remaking Local TV

Local television’s traditional model is under pressure. Newsroom employment continues to decline, regional sports networks are collapsing, and even late-night programming is being forced to rethink its economics.

But the industry isn’t standing still.

In Episode 27 of In the Vicinity, Tim Hanlon looks at the experiments pointing toward local media’s next act — from Local Now’s expanding collection of local FAST channels and KPRC Houston’s reimagined nightly newscast to new sports partnerships involving Amazon, DAZN and Miami’s WPLG.

Listen to the full In the Vicinity podcast above or get it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Tim Hanlon: Hey you, buddy, over there you're In the Vicinity. How are you doing? My name's Tim Hanlon. I'm your humble and congenial host, the founder and the CEO of the Vertere Group here in Chicago, where we consultatively advise and counsel various companies in the media and technology spaces. Thanks for joining us and for finding us, and for hopefully telling some friends about what we do around here.

And this week, it's just yours truly. I'm gonna kinda take a little tour around just some various interesting little news nuggets that are just curious. Not necessarily all positive or negative, some of them very much in between. Perhaps you just may have missed some of these things, and I just thought I'd bring this to your attention because they portend each of them very interesting things and are worth keeping tabs on, which is what we try to do around here, to keep you topical, and salient points here in all things local media.

I'll start with perhaps the biggest downer of them all, the Radio Television Digital News Association, the RTDNA. It's been around since 1946. I think it was called the Radio and Television News Directors Association or something like that back in the day.

But they are pretty much the voice of electronic journalism out there. And one of their ongoing reportings is their annual assessment of employment for local television news, people in the trade coming out of college and doing the small market thing and then climbing the larger markets and all that kind of stuff.

And probably to no surprise to people who listen to this show it is that the employment numbers continue to decline, and it's disconcerting. But it's also perhaps telling of today's times where consolidation, which we've talked about on many occasions, continues somewhat unabated at the local station level as LMAs and SSAs and JSAs and the the alphabet soup of not fully owned stations become fully owned as the FCC continues to loosen regulations.

Regionally, station groups taking stations in geographies that are relatively close perhaps statewide, that kind of stuff, and harmonizing newsrooms and consolidating operations on that front. And of course we can't ignore the national deals that have been put in front of the FCC and have been essentially blessed, maybe to come, so to speak, still. Nexstar, Tegna being probably prime among them, where you've got many hundreds of stations that look to be potentially duplicative. And it's sad. If you're in journalism now, you're in a mass communications or journalism program in college and you're still thinking about a career, it looks grim, frankly, when every year, I think, this year according to the RTDNA in conjunction with the Newhouse School at Syracuse, they think that they saw this year about a 2.2% drop in full-time employees at the local news television and radio realm, which comes on the back of the year before 2024, down almost 3%.

But in some respects too this is not just a consolidation number, but also perhaps the beginnings of what the advent and the embrace of, quote-unquote, AI technologies and approaches may be bringing to news operations. So it'll be interesting to see what the spin of this is and what the real story is about these declining employment figures.

And to see, number one, if they stabilize, and/or number two if they are representative of the largely negative effects of consolidation or maybe and/or reflective of the economies of scale and scope of news production and gathering that things like AI and other technologies are finally bringing to an historically messy business and proposition that is television and radio news gathering at the local level. We shall see. But on a macro level, it is not encouraging.

But let's move into some other maybe somewhat encouraging things. You may have missed the news a couple of days ago. The streaming service called Local Now, which Byron Allen's Allen Media Group purchased about three years ago or so. I don't know its origin story, to be honest. But it has quietly become the largest purveyor, provider, distributor of, among other things, free ad-supported television content, FAST channels. But most interestingly, it is now with the acquisition or the agreement with Gray Television stations, all of them, all 111 channels, if you will of the local television FAST channels space.

What I'm trying to say is that Local Now is the biggest center of local television FAST channel stream offerings. So literally just about, not all, but just about every local television station that has a streaming product, a FAST channel. And again, remember, that's largely the news that's either simulcast or repeated and filled in with other stuff in the other hours because these station streams cannot bring to you network affiliated programming or syndicated programming and that kind of stuff, or sports generally.

But literally, if you wanna see the three or four or five stations of news in a particular market, and usually without geofencing restrictions. You can go to Local Now, the Allen Media streaming service, and literally access all of those FAST channels to your heart's desire. And I think it's a really interesting sort of hidden bonus, if you will, of Local Now.

So if you don't have it, you haven't downloaded it and put it on your smart TV system and stuff, again, if you're into local news and let's say you travel on a regular basis and you wanna check in with what's going on in your hometown as you as you do that traveling. The first place you should check, I think, is Local Now which continues to just broaden its local FAST channel news offerings more so than any other platform that we've seen out there. Check 'em out. Very interesting.

Another story which I thought was extremely interesting coming out of Houston, a guy named Mike McGuff, mikemcgruff.com. He's been online covering lots of news about local media in the Houston market. He did an excellent story about something that's a really interesting experiment that's going on with the Graham Media station there in Houston.

It's KPRC channel two there. It's the NBC affiliate, if I'm not mistaken. And they are doing something noble and radical and I guess indicative of entrepreneurial thinking as local news becomes increasingly challenged. And what they're doing is they're doing away with their legacy 10 o'clock local newscast which has been top rated for quite some time.

And they are essentially doing two things. KPRC is taking what would have been their signature 10 o'clock, it's Central Time, of course, so it's the 10 o'clock newscast after NBC's national program and before the Tonight Show with with Jimmy Fallon and the rest of the late night programming, and they are moving that to a stream-only endeavor at nine o'clock.

So literally, the local newscast that would have been on at 10 o'clock at night on channel two there in Houston is now going to be a streaming-only endeavor at 9:00 p.m. And what will replace it on the linear channel at 10 o'clock, a half-hour show, 35 minutes I think, is something new called Enough.

Now, what is Enough? Enough is going to be, or is, it just debuted a couple of days ago, a bunch of different things, but it's gonna tackle mostly investigative accountability and journalism, right? So taking bigger stories that require a little bit more time a little bit more sleuthing that might be part of a bigger dynamic.

It's almost like a Houston version of 60 Minutes to a certain extent. Of course, it's not 60 Minutes. It's only about 30 minutes or so, right? But it's literally going to dispense with the local newscast with sports and weather and the various sorts of live shots and breaking news.

That's gonna be on the 9:00 stream. But at 10:00, it'll probably be live or live-ish. It's gonna be devoted to more substantive stories. It might be one major story with an investigative hook to it. It might be a handful of stories that are all somewhat related. But again, think about it as investigative and accountability journalism.

And literally it's gonna be a, I won't call it a news magazine, because it's not really that either. It's more of a deeper focus on one or a small set of stories that are worthy of more time and intensive coverage. And it'll be very interesting to see how this affects not only ratings of the linear and ratings of the stream but also frankly, how the market takes to it.

If you're a journalist on staff there at Channel 2 in Houston, you're probably more than excited about it because it gets you out of the habit trail, if you will, or the rotating mouse wheel of doing just daily newscasts and the grind of that.

It allows you to be more expansive and more focused on a longer story that perhaps has more impact or resonates with a larger audience. So very interesting to watch what happens with this experiment called Enough in Houston. That's KPRC Channel 2 there. And again, you could go to Local Now and make sure you can access the streaming channel for KPRC, and you'll be able to see for yourself or wherever Channel 2's stream is available, of course.

So that's on the news front. Let's segue a little bit into some entertainment conversation. I was just flabbergasted to see our friends at Late Nighter, which is a great website, latenighter.com, which essentially covers, if you will, all things late night. Bill Carter and his friends there.

It had an article that called out the fact that speaking of Byron Allen as we all know, the late night programming at CBS essentially is being outsourced at least for a year or two since the demise of the of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Late Show afterwards is being outsourced to Byron Allen and his Allen Media Group.

That two-hour block now consists of two one-hour wheels, if you will. An hour of a show called Comics Unleashed, which is basically a panel roundtable of four stand-up comics with Byron Allen. How can I best describe this? Truly setting them up. They're not really questions or conversations, but it's just a quick setup and then boom, away these comedians go.

And then Funny You Should Ask, which is the other hour afterwards. Two episodes of that, which is more of a panel game show kind of dynamic. The story though that's really interesting is that two weeks ago, a couple of the episodes of the first run of Comics Unleashed, the format is there's a fresh episode and then there is a repeat episode from 10, even 20 years ago.

That's how long Comics Unleashed has been a syndicated show out there in television land. Sure enough, as Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel were on vacation, okay, so repeats on those shows. And I think in the case of Jimmy Kimmel, actually, there were new shows, but with guest hosts.

A 2006, that is 20 years ago, episode of Comics Unleashed, a repeat from 20 years ago, and outdid both Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show, both I think were in repeats. That show, the Comics Unleashed repeat from 2006, actually won in the demos among adults 18 to 49 Now, the bigger shows on ABC and NBC in total viewers it was still no match.

But in the demo, the 12:05 episode of Comics Unleashed, that is the repeat episode, not the newer one, featured people like Cedric the Entertainer and Jon Lovitz and a 12-year past David Brenner. That show outdid repeats of Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show in the key demo, which is adults 18 to 49.

Now, that said, it's essentially nibbling at the feet of these traditional late-night shows. And again, asterisks. These shows were in repeats, okay? And there's no question that if you've seen those shows, sampling Comics Unleashed may indeed be something people do. But it does speak to a bunch of different things.

Number one, Byron Allen's on the hook for really inexpensive programming to fill in that time period, and it looks pretty darn good when stories like this pop up, right? Number two, yes, those NBC and ABC shows were in repeats, but it does also speak to the massive erosion that's happened in that late-night time slot, right?

So we can debate and argue about, did Colbert's appearance on CBS and CBS network truly decide to end that proposition because of economics? Case in point, and again albeit very compromised, right? Not sort of apples to apples comparison. To see a situation where a show from 20 years ago, a half-hour interview comic show outdid something that was much more recent and fresh in the key demo, at least for a couple of different episodes, it kinda makes you wonder.

So I'm not saying this is a trend. I'm not saying that this is a full validation of hollowing out two hours and having it out externally syndicated. But and repeats at that, like old repeats at that, that CBS is saved and Byron Allen's making a mint. But it does bear watching, right?

To see as Messrs. Kimmel and Fallon come back to their full-fledged programming to see just how well Byron Allen's two-hour blocks continue to hold up. And again, even if it's competitive, not even having to beat those audiences in the demo, it may be mission accomplished for both CBS and Allen Media Group.

So let's keep an eye on that, because it's really interesting. All right, let's finish up with sports, because everything always comes back to sports, it seems. A lot of drama has happened in the last couple of weeks that you may have not been keeping up with, but it's important to keep at the forefront.

You may know that one of the streaming providers out there for live local sports, a company called Victory+, actually it was called Victory+, is a unit of another company called Apparent Media. It kinda went belly up, and it took a bunch of different teams and leagues by surprise.

Their anchor tenant was the NHL's Dallas Stars. But Victory+ had built up a pretty significant stable of WNBA and NWSL teams, a couple of other NHL teams and even I think Major League Baseball teams, too, with Texas Rangers. All of that has basically gone kaput and has also, frankly, added to the drama around this collapsing of RSNs and only augmenting the need for local broadcast or some other replacement for these local rights.

And the unique part of Victory+ was that it was streaming, yes, but it was also completely free to consumers and ad-supported that might have had something to do with the economics involved and having to front dollars to the teams and try to replicate the rights that historically have been paid by RSNs.

Not a cheap proposition nor for the faint of heart when you have to front that kind of money and then hope to make it on the back end. But it's very interesting to see what's happened in the weeks since not necessarily just because of that, but the NHL and the NBA have been very busy, and you're noticing some new dance partners lining up.

For example, six, as we record this, NHL teams, I think it's seven now if you include the Seattle Kraken, are now essentially putting all their local rights through the Prime Video platform on Amazon. Now, some of them are gonna be free, if you will, if you're a Prime subscriber, Prime Video subscriber.

I think one or two may not require a Prime subscription, but if you go to the Prime Video app and you're not a Prime Video subscriber or a Prime subscriber, you'll still have access. But it's interesting that seven now NHL franchises will be offering their local games through the Prime Video platform.

So in some respects, that's gonna be essentially free. Prime has zillions of subscribers already. And one last sort of hurdle for folks to watch their local games. It'll be geo-fenced, of course. But still, the ability to relatively simply and straightforwardly access the local games of your NHL franchise on Prime is a big deal.

The NBA, not to be outdone doing essentially the same thing with DAZN. Never heard of DAZN before, D-A-Z-N. DAZN is a major player and getting to become more in Europe and a little bit here in the United States. They've been aggressively partnering with a number of NBA teams to pick up some packages as well, some of them in concert with broadcasters.

But DAZN is gonna be a place too. Now, to be determined as to whether there's gonna be a subscription price embedded there as well, or there'll be also some free tastes or offerings as well. But it's really interesting to see how both the NHL and a number of NBA teams have essentially taken their packages whether with broadcasters or not, and put them on these two fledgling local regional sports network replacement streaming platforms, if you will, in the manner of Amazon Prime and DAZN.

So let's keep an eye on that as well. And I want to end with this one last one, because this one's a real interesting outlier. And that combines the stuff we talked about with the local FAST channels that TV stations are putting out there with their news as well as the regional sports thing.

And that's an interesting situation that's brewing in Miami With Channel 10 there in Miami, that's WPLG. That is the only owned station of Berkshire Hathaway. And it's an independent station. It was affiliated with ABC until fairly recently. And there's a whole bunch of story behind as to why Berkshire Hathaway owns this one station, and only one station, and in this market, and all that stuff. But a really interesting dynamic that just came to my attention, and I missed it a couple of weeks ago when it was announced.

The Miami Heat and WPLG, you probably know, have done a deal for the '26-'27 season for the Miami Heat, with an option for '27-'28, where, like a bunch of other stations WPLG is going to step up and offer all over-the-air, free over-the-air local games of the Miami Heat, right? So that is not the national broadcast, but that local package that used to be in whatever this RSN was there in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area, is going to be on WPLG.

Which is terrific. And, I, again it's another case of a local TV station or station group, in this case, Berkshire Hathaway's one station group, stepping up and filling in arguably short term, as we will see as the NBA and the NHL and certainly Major League Baseball, as they redo their television and streaming rights.

We'll see how long local broadcasters stick to that. But here's the interesting wrinkle, which we'll leave with you to ponder. Not only is every game gonna be live on WPLG local Channel 10, but it's also going to be free on WPLG's local 10 platinum streaming service, i.e. their FAST channel, WPLG's streaming FAST channel, which you can download directly or find in places like Local Now and these other places that aggregate all these local channels.

Within the region, if you're in the geo-fence of the Miami metropolitan area and WPLG's signal, you will be able to get not only over-the-air WPLG or through your cable or satellite provider, but you won't even need no stinking cable or television or satellite provider or even over-the-air antenna for that matter, because you can just get it live and streaming on their app, which is fascinating to me.

It's also fascinating I found out since it's, essentially, although not completely, but I think mostly, a simulcast of the entire TV channel, including, wait for it, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, which are syndicated. Which on most local television streams is not available because network programming from an affiliate relationship and syndicated program, those rights have not been cleared usually by an affiliated station for their streams.

That's why you see them fully devoted to simulcasts of their local news, repeats of that local news and other filler news-related type stuff, right? So it's an ap- approximation of the local station, certainly not a simulcast or anything resembling that, aside from news. But in this case, WPLG's Local 10 app will be live simulcasting these Miami Heat games for free.

Now, that took money. It took WPLG and Berkshire a bit of dough to front to the Miami Heat, and we'll see how well they do in recouping that advertising. But again, across over-the-air television as well as the live free stream, one will be able to watch Miami Heat games, the local versions of such, this coming season.

Fascinating stuff, and let's see if that has any kind of effect on the models that perhaps other TV stations might do with their FAST channel streams. Perhaps this is unique because Berkshire Hathaway is only a one horse company, if you will, when it comes to television just with the one signal as well as the fact that it's an independent station.

Maybe perhaps there are other independent stations that could mimic this model too. We shall see. All right, that's a lot to digest. Hopefully some nuggets there. If you were not aware of them before, you are now. And look forward to great conversations coming up in the weeks ahead.

I can't reveal the guests but we've got some really good ones coming up. I appreciate you listening to me fumbling for all this time this week. I appreciate you all listening to the show generally and telling your friends. And until next week, we will see you here In the Vicinity.