When did local TV start to decline? Was it the coming of cable? Or was it when it started expanding its hours into daytime; so that it lost its special treat status. So too much TV killed TV?
Or was it the proliferation of radio stations each nipping at the heels of TV, one viewer turned listener at a time. Then there were the heavyweights of the past few years; the keep fit craze that has lasted and the internet that is growing exponentially. More than a third of T&T are expected to have a Facebook account by end of next year. Teenagers are as comfortable with You Tube as they are with 2 and 1/2 men. Except they share the former and that makes them feel special.
And now comes 2 more cable companies to add to local TV’s woes. According to TATT, about 30% of the households in T&T have cable already. Will this reach 60% in a couple of years? And with Flow promising to be able to tell advertisers whose watching what programmes, if I were working at TV6 or CNC3 I would start thinking about where else I could use my skills. Plus we can expect Green Dot and TSTT to make the same promise.
What can local TV do ? Can it survive and thrive? It’s going to be very tough because mass marketing is losing some of its lustre even in emerging markets like ours.
Broadcasting is being replaced by narrowcasting to markets of one. And the internet is the major culprit. Newspapers all over the world were in denial and then they started closing down. TV needs to skip the denial stage and figure out how they stay tuned in. They need to upgrade their research capability and understand their viewers better than they have ever understood them. The truth is that none of them are investing in viewer research in any serious way. Local TV needs to become special again and if my theory of narrowcasting is right, then the last shall be first. There is only one local TV brand that’s differentiated and narrowly defined. I’m going to buy Gayelle stock.
Edit: Even local Canadian TV stations are confronting this problem
