Thirty years after this taken photos once again look like this. But will the kind of local content these kids grew up with return as well?
This past winter I was visiting my parents. One evening we were all sitting around the dining room table, having coffee and tea, each of us tuned into our own digital devices. I had my MacBook out and was working on some Swift code. My mom had her tablet out and was busy texting and scoffing at the days Facebook drama. And my dad had a small laptop out and was busy watching a stream of the local evening news.
That moment really stuck with me, for a few reasons. To start with my parents are not cord cutters or techno-nerds. I still remember the years of resistance my dad put up before he finally replaced our BetaMax video cassette player with a VHS one (which was by then only a few years before DVD’s would hit the market). It is not that they are luddites, but they have always, even when they were younger, had a resistance to new technologies. They would never adopt it until it was absolutely necessary. That they had seemingly overnight begun to drop a lot of their traditional television viewing for time in front of their tablets and laptops was a clear sign the true mainstreaming of digital distribution was beginning.
But what was perhaps even more striking about the moment was what my dad was watching. It wasn’t a YouTube video or Netflix or some other media that grew up out of the internet. It was the cultural staple that is, or perhaps was at this point, the local newscast.
For decades the local newscast existed untouched. Television up until the 80’s was distributed over the air to tall antennas attached to the side of your house, or to a set of rabbit ears on top of your television. It helped create collective moments for communities large and small and was a primary source of news for many people.
In the 80’s this started to change slowly as cable grew in Canada’s urban areas. As more people controlled their tv through cable boxes instead of VHF and UHF dials the choice of channels grew and local CBC or CTV affiliates were no longer the clearest (in the literal sense) choice. Instead they were one of dozens, and eventually hundreds of choices.
It wouldn’t be until the late 90’s and early 2000’s that local channels would start to really be overshadowed and completely marginalized. As the channel lineups grew it went from dozens of choices, to a hundred, to several hundred, or whatever it is at this point. Channels became more niche, targeting very specific demographics. Whatever your “lifestyle” was there was now a channel for you (assuming your lifestyle had money to spend and advertisers to attract of course). Then there was the internet, which would first have an impact of print media and journalism, cutting traditional advertising revenues of once proud papers, forcing them to downsize, get more of their content from newswires, cut local coverage, and in its latest iteration, become little more then click-bait sites.
What kept many of these local channels and newscast alive was the fact that there were still many rural and small communities in Canada that did not have access to Broadband internet or reasonably priced satellite service (cable was never an option for many of these places). They remained a culturally relevant staple out of necessity. But in recent years this has changed. There are internet providers specializing in rural broadband services and just as important is the rise of broadband cellular data which allows any equipped phone or tablet to access a world of digital content.
Now that the final group of Canadians are going to be able to tune into to a fully digital world, what will happen to those local newscast and channels people like my parents, and other people in their community, still watch nightly?
I don’t have an answer, nor am I even going to try to predict what will happen. Maybe they will become the video equivalent of click bait. Perhaps they just shift over to digital streaming with little change. Or maybe they disappear completely in their current form and are replaced by something that is filled with user generated content, or based on participatory journalism. It is at a junction where anything can happen.
Personally, I do not have a real nostalgic feeling about the local television channel. It certainly had value, but technology and society changes, and as a result, so too does it media. But for many people it is a valuable resource. If you are someone who believes that then you should be preparing to fight for its survival right now. But for others this might be an opportunity to rethink how communities and towns and cities distribute local news and content. With all the changes to technology and distribution and the plummeting cost of producing video content (though the cost of researching good journalism is still there), there is a new space emerging for developers, media types, and those active in the community to enter. Whether you are an observer or participant the change to local news and content is coming. It will impact everyone to some degree or another and it is worth taking at least a moment to think about how it will impact you, and how you want it to change.
As always can find me on Twitter @third_beach or if you just want to know when new posts are up here you can follow @manitobaninja.
Manitoba Ninja 