You’re Only as Good as Your Last Act

We here at ThirdPipe usually write of the tech side of the transport biz. But it is useful from time to time to understand what is flowing thru those pipes — ie. the content and those providing it. Well this time its CBS, the stalwart legacy content provider.

The network of Edward R. Murrow has decided to outsource its reporting, according to the New York Times. CBS, which has never recovered from its insistence on airing phony documents regarding George Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard, has opened talks with Time Warner to have CNN provide most of its actual reporting. The deal would leave Katie Couric fronting the third-place CBS Evening News, but essentially presenting a CNN feed:

CBS, , the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.

Over the last decade, CNN has held intermittent talks with both ABC News and CBS News about various joint ventures. But during the last several months, talks with CBS have been revived and lately intensified, according to the executives who asked for anonymity because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.

Broadly speaking, the executives described conversations about reducing CBS’s news-gathering capacity while keeping its frontline personalities, like Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor, and paying a fee to CNN to buy the cable network’s news feeds.

Another possibility, these people said, would be for CBS to keep its correspondents in certain regions but pair them with CNN crews.

CBS in the heyday of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s was the gold standard of which other network content providers were measured. For a 30 year period they were ranked #1 by whatever measure could be pulled together - best staff, best production, best editorial content, etc. By the 80’s however the competition had caught up with them. When the Internet and blogging took hold they stayed with their stalwart format and did not adapt. The Document Fraud situation was just the unclothing of the emperor at that point.

The discussion of CBS ditching its own news gathering infrastructure is a reaction to fiscal stress of reduced revenues. There are no indications that CBS recognizes they dirtied their own nest and are reaping the whirlwind for it. But it does indicate that the structure of news origination is going to change over the next 5-10 years. Networks cannot continue to operate in the same way in the face of organizations like Briebart TV. Which in itself is a trap. CBS by looking for an outsourcing partner for the feed is preparing to do the samething that Briebart TV does. The problem for CBS is that they pay more for Katie Couric’s salary by more than 8x Briebart’s entire company which is a 2-3 person operation.

There will be some in certain blogging circles that will want to gloat. Personally that is a short sighted view. It also means that in order to stay relevant bloggers themselves are going to have to step up to the plate and fill in some of the gap that the receding network news types used to cover. A great deal of blogging is first person or political commentary. These people work in the physical world and have little time for data gathering. Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit a consistently rated blog, is a full time professor. Other than an occasional jaunt he lacks the time to do news gathering. So before we say ‘The king is dead. Long live the king.’ we best reflect as to where and who will do news gathering? Ponder this as well — politicians would salivate if they did not have to deal with news organizations and keep the populace in the dark as to their various mechanizations.

My suggestion for CBS — buy Briebart, rebrand it and fire everyone else.

Linky.