Fox and NBC Stations to Pool Video News Gathering

By BILL CARTER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: November 13, 2008

In a move intended to save money in the economically pressed business of local television news, two stations in Philadelphia owned by NBC and Fox are combining some of their video operations with a plan to provide the service to all the stations owned by each company.

Executives from NBC and Fox compared the arrangement, announced Thursday, to the pool coverage that news outlets use to report on certain events, or to what wire services provide to newspapers.

“It’s really taking pool coverage and expanding it to day-to-day news coverage,” said Jack Abernethy, the chief executive of Fox Television Stations. He said stations could save significantly in such an arrangement, adding that individual stations would not have to each send out “a truck that costs $250,000 or a crew with lights and tripods that cost $40,000 to $50,000.”

Local television stations have experienced sharp decreases in their profit margins as the Internet has cut into their reach with local viewers and many reliable local advertisers, like auto dealers, have been in a severe downturn.

“It’s a tough operating environment,” said John Wallace, the president of NBC Local Media, “This is about cost savings, but it’s also about being smart about local television news.”

The stations involved, NBC’s WCAU and Fox’s WTXF, entered into a pilot arrangement last summer. The idea, Mr. Wallace said, was to create what he called “an independent news gathering group” that would provide video footage to the stations over which they would have editorial control.

The stations will write their own news copy to accompany the pool footage and edit it as they choose, Mr. Wallace said. He added, “It will free up the stations to do more enterprise reporting.”

But it will also enable the stations to cut some staff and curtail other costs. For example, the news service will have its own helicopter, meaning stations will not necessarily have one of their own. “The capital savings will be significant,” Mr. Abernethy said.

The plan is for the service to begin operations in Philadelphia by January and then to expand it to other cities where both companies have stations, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Washington.

Mr. Abernethy said the idea has already attracted interest from competing stations. “We expect to have a template that we could roll out nationally,” Mr. Abernethy said. “Take what we learn in Philadelphia and begin a business around the country.”

Mr. Wallace added, “We see no downside on this.”

Al Primo, a news director in the early days of Eyewitness News at WABC in New York and who now consults on local television issues, said, “I think this is inevitable. It’s a sea change.”

He said that such pool coverage would probably mean a reduction in certain kinds of additional reporting on events that might have the same visuals, like a mayor’s news conference. A station would not be able to add to the pool coverage of the mayor’s comments by interviewing an aide at the scene without also sending a separate truck and crew, which would undermine the cost-savings strategy.

“It’s not ideal,” Mr. Primo said, “but it’s the new reality.”