Friday 3rd November: Finding a market for 24/7 local news streams

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther. Just a little note that I’m really looking forward to giving the closing remarks at newsrewired in Canary Wharf in a few weeks - if you’re planning to go too, drop me a line and say hello!

The latest issue of The Grub Street Journal asks: Why won’t print just lie down and die? Answers from industry insiders were less about zombie print, more about making print work as a valuable part of the modern media mix.

We hear a lot about how local news as a business is in decline. So it was fascinating to speak to NBCUniversal this week about why they’ve launched 15 new news channels dedicated to 24/7 local news on nine streaming platforms over in the US.

This piece mainly focused on the tools and tech the team employed to help collaboration across the different local news teams. But there was one point I thought was especially interesting when talking to the execs at NBCU: the fact that these local news channels, when initially launched, had significant out-of-market, out-of-city viewership.

They put this down to people with friends, family or ties to other states tuning in to keep up with what was going on. But they also speculated that when a major event like a marathon or a hurricane was ongoing, people would turn to the area’s local news channel as a sort of ‘insider’s’ view of what was going on.

When we covered GB News as part of last year’s Media Moments report, it was really struggling to find both an audience and revenue. Whatever your view of its political stance and the various controversies it has found itself embroiled in this year, the fact the PM chose the channel above Sky News as one of his net-zero speech broadcasters in September says a lot. This is a good (and neutral) look at where and how GB News is booming.

Some useful points here from the ever-excellent FT Strategies, including the reminder that “AI cannot create anything new, it can only recreate what already exists.” I’d also cheekily suggest that if you’d like more on this, come to Mx3 AI - the publisher-focused AI event we’re running with Media Makers Meet in London at the beginning of December.

The Kyiv Independent’s startup story has the usual chapters of tech stack pivots, reader revenue challenges, and operational lessons. The underlying difference is that they are building the organisation during the biggest conventional war in Europe since WWII. “Planning and strategising get much harder when rockets are flying above your head and you are not sure how the next month or even week will look,” they write."

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