Enjoying a lazy afternoon lunch on the Connecticut shore, a friend turns to me and says, “network news has become a Tic Toc platform.”
With a smirk he adds, “How is an octopus attaching itself to a swimmer’s face a story on the network news?” Knowing I spent my career as a television news reporter, he adds, “I get much more information from local news.”
My buddy is a neurologist in the Philadelphia area with wide interests including local issues, politics and especially sports. He’s not wrong about network news.
Snap on the evening newscast for ABC, NBC, or CBS and your likely to get a smattering of competent reporting from the White House, Justice Department or Supreme Court followed by cascades of video of flooding, damaging winds, and heavy rain from across the county without a mention of why the atmosphere is so vicious spawning heavy storms or bone dry conditions.
The words climate change are seemly banned from the newscasts especially out of the mouths of meteorologists standing along the Hudson River, just outside New York City , to preview the wild weather sure to come.
The remainder of the newscasts is easily predictable. A picture of a young girl bitten by a barracuda requiring stiches while on vacation. A shark bite of a man swimming in tropical waters causing minor injuries. A fiery crash of a small plane into a home in which no one is injured. All these images are dramatic if not important. And, yes, the frightened octopus with bad aim attaching itself to a fisherman before being pulled off and tossed away.
All of this presents a gaping hole for local television news to rumble through if station owners, now free to corral as many local stations as they can scoop up, are bold enough to do it.
Local television newsrooms can be staffed with reporters, editors and photographers who know the community and are committed to tell their stories. They have contacts and know the context of how past events impact daily stories. In Connecticut, during the recent primary election, the local TV stations competently covered the dramatic win by Luke Bronin in the First Congressional District over 28-year incumbent John Larson. WTNH, ABC in New Haven, offered not one but two debates for both the congressional race and the Democratic primary for governor won by Ned Lamont over challenger Josh Elliot. Proving strong local journalism can be done but it takes effort and a commitment of money.
Unfortunately, the trends don’t look good. Industry observers report a drop in local tv employment in 2025 a trend continuing in 2026 as fewer ownership groups merge to control more tv outlets and others impose wholesale layoffs in a push to streaming and centralized production of news for multiple communities. Some newsrooms are replacing full time, experienced journalists with part-time, less experienced staff earning far lower wages with no benefits.
There is a way out.
The popularity of podcasts clearly shows audiences want smart, deep-dive content. Local TV news can provide that with robust, experienced staff and a full commitment by management to smart, aggressive, fearless coverage.
It can work.
If you want to see where it doesn’t, turn to network news in its present form and the octopus. It’s not a fearful creature from the deep, just a scared mollusk hanging on for dear life.
Jeffrey Cole of Madison is a former news anchor for WFSB in Hartford and more recently retired as an investigative reporter at Fox 29 in Philadelphia.