re: Advocate reporting KATC (Lafayette) plans on ending live evening broadcast

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The article states they would do prerecorded broadcasts of news which sounds silly

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I want to say Fox 44 in Baton Rouge already does this... and does it even have a studio in BR or is it recorded elsewhere?

If there’s no local news when are the 10,000 campaign commercials going to play?

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New Iberia must be getting ready to jump into the broadcasting game

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Coming on the air "What y'all say there podnuh"

Signing off air "Later bitches"

Local TV news has to be a dying breed. People have access to news delivered to them directly all day. In the rare event I watch, I’m already aware of all the stories and happenings. Plus, the DEI push has made for some unsightly news people delivering news I’ve already heard.

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Local TV news has to be a dying breed.

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The local station where I grew up was fantastic. Then they were bought out, then slashed their local coverage, fired all their talent, and now the broadcast is mostly national stories filtered through a local anchor. Just sad. I don’t even think they do their cool community stories anymore, like breakfast at the local school or whatever.

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Gets to the end of the episode, ole rob comes on talking and showing off their new Doppler radar about weather in fricking lake Charles. Like, is that south Louisiana? Is that lafayette area? Didn’t get to see the end of the episode. People were pissed.

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Lake Charles at a time imported CBS and ABC affiliates on cable and satellite since there were not enough stations to take all those affiliations. Fast forward to digital TV and multicasting and satellite finally able to carry enough primary affiliates for all markets, ABC goes on a sub channel of the Fox affiliate and then CBS gets in bed with a low power station to close off the market on the satellite side of importing stations. The Fox/ABC affiliate is then sold to the NBC affiliate but sold to different management company that will use NBC affiliates resources as its operations.

Funny that is how News 15 and Lafayette got a NBC affiliation. Nexstar bought Fox 15 and added NBC to a sub channel and introduced news again on that station. A year later, Nexstar bought Media General and with the FCC rules at the time, they couldn’t own both stations in the same market or even do a joint sales agreement or shared services agreement. So Nexstar sold KADN and NBC subchannel to new entity Bayou City Broadcasting. Bayou City was eventually purchased by Byron Allen’s Media Group.

The crazy thing is with the medium dying a slow death mergers and acquisitions are leaving a mark on these properties. Scripps who owns KATC lost over 600 million dollars. That is part of the reason for the changes. I wonder if debt now with higher interest rates from previous mergers and acquisitions are starting to come due and causing ripples in the industry. Same is true with the regional sports channels. All those mega broadcast deals that worked just a few years ago are unsustainable with the newer avenues of media and content distribution.

Just look at the what went on in newspapers a decade ago where formerly Gatehouse Media now Gannett was buying up newspapers for their properties and then sold off the assets from their printing presses to their buildings. Now they are managed by regions and may have only one or 2 reporters in the field covering an entire area for a paper. Gone are the local copy editors, sales staff, printers, etc. The physical paper is printed a day in advance and trucked in.

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They are the best produced local news for sure. Something is definitely happening though. 2 evening anchors and 1 morning anchor? Weird. I’m sick of their liberal ABC/Scripps news. Liberal shite. Other local stations give more local news, but the production and talent are terrible.

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Out of habit every morning I put KATC on as background noise while I have coffee and get my day started, been doing so for probably 20 years now just to keep up with what's happening locally. The shift is quite obvious, less and less local stuff, more national canned stories, national politics, etc. things that have nothing to do with local news. Every so often they run a segment called Two Americas where they tell me how racist I am. They recently ran a feature on the struggles of a black owned coffee shop in Atlanta or something irrelevant to local happenings. I've started putting on KLFY in the mornings.

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Are things really that bad in Lafayette that they can’t support a TV station?

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To the contrary, I was impressed to learn Lafayette had its own TV networks.

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Just look at the what went on in newspapers a decade ago where formerly Gatehouse Media now Gannett was buying up newspapers for their properties and then sold off the assets from their printing presses to their buildings. Now they are managed by regions and may have only one or 2 reporters in the field covering an entire area for a paper. Gone are the local copy editors, sales staff, printers, etc. The physical paper is printed a day in advance and trucked in.

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Yes and this void has yet to be filled. Local newspapers usually had reporters doing their jobs to keep politicians somewhat honest (In Louisiana that's difficult at best). Now that Gannett owns all these papers it's verbatim garbage national stories and almost no local coverage. No local investigative reporting and no local sports, happenings, etc. Basically just some medical ads and obits. I don't know where this local watchdog role gets filled but it's missing right now in many of these local markets. Local TV stations follow suit and it will be up to small online pundits to do the job.

You are correct about KATC turning liberal and woke. It seemed to happen overnight and it makes sense to me now why all the good people left or were forced out. If they show up at KADN as rumored I will watch that channel.