The Local aims to reinvent TV news in four states, and beyond

Across the country, the kinds of budget cuts that have decimated newspapers over the years are now slicing into local TV news stations.

A trend of TV news layoffs “is only just the beginning,” one broadcast trade publication warned in a recent headline.

Amid the bleedout, a company has been seeking to reimagine local news in the cord-cutting era of streaming TV. Those behind it are in conversations with potential funders about launching in four states and eventually spreading across the nation.

This isn’t the new initiative founded by Chuck Todd, the former Meet the Press moderator and NBC journalist who is on a reported $2 billion quest to break into local news. Rather, it’s something called The Local, founded by Todd Landfried and Hitesh Patel of N2 Media.

Landfried, who developed the concept of The Local, has a background in tech, politics, and media, and is based in California; Patel was an early executive at Current TV and is based in the U.K.

The company is envisioning — eventually — a network of news bureaus in every state with an entirely new business model to support it. The Local wants a break from the traditional format and conventions of local TV news. Those behind it believe they have a solution for the funding side that isn’t based solely on advertising but instead on content contracts with streaming platforms.

The goal is not to become another TV network or round-the-clock news channel.

“We’re not trying to retrofit the legacy model into a new funding stream,” Landfried said. “We’re building everything from scratch.”

The development is an example of the ways in which some in the news business are rethinking local broadcast TV at a time of disruption. While local TV remains a trusted medium, there is evidence of audience decline and stations are squeezed by financial pressure. Under the Trump administration, it is also not a stretch to expect waves of deregulation that could lead to massive consolidation and even more layoffs. Meanwhile, more and more American eyeballs are moving to streaming services for all sorts of content, including sports and live events.

“Local news is in serious distress right now and it needs to be completely reinvented,” Landfried said in an interview. “So, what we’ve been working on for the last couple of years is a model that does exactly that. We reinvented how local news is going to be reported, funded, and distributed.”

The founders and team imagine a nightly newscast in each state that could run up to an hour long and would be heavy on public service journalism, with multiple deeply reported stories. They have plans to launch in Colorado and then roll out in California, Georgia, and Kansas over the course of a year or sooner.

Without commercial breaks or a top-of-the-hour time crunch, segments on The Local could be several minutes or longer to provide necessary nuance and context. Regional stories would follow, then more local and hyperlocal segments targeted by a viewer’s ZIP code.

What makes the product more unique is that viewers would find The Local on a streaming platform like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Roku, or Max. In other words, it would be where TV watchers have been migrating for years and within an industry where those paying for programming are coughing up big bucks for content.

“We need more approaches”

In publicity materials pitched to potential investors, N2 Media, a holding company based in Delaware, makes plenty of hay about the disappearance of local newspapers. The retrenchment has led to news deserts and ghost papers in communities across the country.

“At the same time, streaming platforms are spending billions on content but have no scalable source for original, high-quality local news,” reads part of an N2 Media pitch deck.

To mitigate that, The Local would do something that — so far — no one has either tried to do or has succeeded in doing: putting local news on the TV screens of a subscription-video-on-demand service that the platform itself paid to produce. If that happens, viewers could eventually find the latest news from their state capitol or city council next to episodes of Black Mirror or Severance.

Money from a content production contract with just one streaming service, the company believes, could fund an entire 50-state network with a newscast each day and still cost a streaming platform less than it might pay for a single 10-episode historical drama or true crime documentary. Because it’s local content, the streamer could sell local advertising against it — money they are likely currently leaving on the table.

Streamers are spending massive amounts of money to buy content, Landfried said, adding that while estimates vary, “it’s around $250 billion they’re going to spend on content acquisitions this year. And none of it is on news.”

There might be a reason for that.

While streaming services, also known as OTT for “over the top” or SVOD for “subscription video on demand,” are leaning into more same-day programming, streaming platforms have typically been places for viewers to catch up on things, not watch in real time. Younger cord-cutters or streaming natives are used to their news online, and likely have zero connection to local TV news.

“Everybody is working on OTT content, but the question is, how much does anybody want it?” said Al Tompkins, a TV industry vet and the Poynter Institute’s senior faculty member for broadcast and online. “That content tends to be timeless and the nature of local news mostly is news happening now.”

There actually is copious amounts of news — including local news — available on streaming services, but that’s largely because traditional local TV stations have been making deals to get on those platforms. People who care enough to learn about what’s happening in their state or city can find those broadcasts, but they have to look.

“The market is so saturated with available newscasts from all over the place,” said Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck. “If you’re really somebody who is committed to an area — or several if you’re a big news junkie — you can à la carte this stuff yourself, for free, with stuff that’s already out there.”

Tim Hanlon, who is based in Chicago, said he was initially skeptical when someone from N2 Media reached out after he’d published a December column for the publication TVREV headlined “The Road To Reinvention: Why Local TV News Needs Upheaval To Move Forward.” The executive, who specializes in the convergence of TV and digital video, has been around long enough to have seen plenty of efforts to “save local news” sputter out.

Now he’s a board advisor to N2 Media’s The Local.

“I think we need more approaches, rethinks — at bats, if you will — on how to rethink, reinvent, and inject more vitality into local news and reporting,” he said. “To me, this seemed like a confluence of good ideas.”

Hanlon acknowledges the concept is daunting, particularly at a time when journalism is facing substantial headwinds from politics to culture.

“This would be tough enough six months ago or 10 years ago,” he said, but is all the more difficult now because of what he called “regulatory and performative political BS” that disincentivizes reporting more than welcomes it.

What encourages him, though, is thinking about what could happen in local news rather than simply trying to “manage decline,” which is how he sees the current strategy of the local TV business.

Besides, he said, it will only take “one yes” to make The Local happen.

“Whatever the story needs”

All of this, while ambitious, is thus far aspirational. 

A team of 10 volunteer board members is looking for investors to fund pilot episodes in four inaugural states they chose for geographic and demographic reasons.

After that, “we have the scalability to be in 50 states very quickly,” said Patel, who is N2 Media’s co-founder and CFO.

“We don’t need heavy anchors, we don’t need the newsrooms,” he added. “I just want to do something that is at a cost-effective level.”

Assembling a first-rate news team, of course, has its own challenges, though there are plenty of local journalists looking for work these days.

Carol Wood, who oversees news operations for N2 Media, is at work building a newsroom of about 15 for a Colorado pilot. She’s scouting for an editor-in-chief and has created a spreadsheet with the names of local journalists she might recruit for other positions.

“You don’t have to have a TV background,” said Wood, who is based in Colorado and specializes in sustainability for local news. “Most of the people on that list do not have a TV background. I see an opportunity to build an absolute local and national dream team.”

Providing local news on a streaming platform would mean higher-quality coverage, too, Wood said. Longer-form stories would depart from the traditional quick-hit format of local commercial TV segments that are “sandwiched” between weather, sports, and commercials.

“The concept is that if there’s a story that deserves four minutes or six minutes of coverage for depth and context in a visual setting — whatever the reporter or the editor thinks that that story needs — we can do that,” Wood said. “There’s not going to be a mandate that it’s a 15-second spot or a 30-second spot and you have to fit that peg into that hole. It’s whatever the story needs.”

The Local would not have anchors, TV studios, satellite trucks, or do opinion journalism, those behind it say — just straight local news reporting with no national or international coverage. To provide hyperlocal content, The Local would seek to contract with community newsrooms across a state, including far-flung rural locales, and pay those newsrooms up to $1,500 per story for their work.

In that sense, the thinking goes, a deep-pocketed streaming service could be giving back to local newsrooms that have been battered by Big Tech.

Bronagh Hanley, who was communications director of Netflix in the early 2000s, got involved with N2 Media and The Local because she felt the streaming and social media platforms have a responsibility to provide a news function since that’s where people are increasingly getting their news and information.

While the folks at N2 Media are hesitant to say exactly what funders and streamers they’re talking to, one challenge they’ve encountered is a question of “Who’s your big name?”

“That completely misses the point,” Hanley said. “The point is there are news deserts, right now, that need to be addressed in this country, and we are under threat as a democracy, and they can actually make money doing this.”

Matthew Keys, who runs The Desk out of Northern California where he closely covers the broadcasting and streaming industries, said N2 Media’s strategy sounded like a novel idea if they can make it happen.

As someone who has tracked recent layoffs at local TV news stations and efforts at some newsrooms to consolidate, pull programming, or even close, he is keenly aware of the current state of the industry.

“If you’re going to reinvent it, you need to bring to market a product that is going to blow people away. And that’s going to be a really, really, really tough thing to do,” he said. “I’m not skeptical that they can pull it off — I’m actually really hopeful — because if they can do this they will set an example that others can follow, and that will make our industry stronger.”