TV continues to give away the future.
A year ago, I wrote an essay on the topic of local television stations and the Internet that was published in trades and in several languages around the world. “Is TV Giving Away The Future?” honestly looked at the relationship between local television and companies like Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS) and Worldnow, which provide Websites for over 200 stations. As I told an angry IBS executive over the phone in the wake of the article, I wrote it, because it is an essential issue in the discussion of moving broadcasters to a multimedia business model.

That’s why I’m gratified to find the discussion is continuing — and in places that get a lot of attention. Cory Bergman and Steve Safran have opened a forum for the discussion in The Lost Remote and that has spawned a fairly complete article on the subject in the Online Journalism Review (OJR).

Local TV stations have a love/hate relationship with the Web, wanting desperately to have a presence online but not wanting to do heavy lifting. Have they erred by relying on outsourcing Web sites, including editorial content?

…As viewership drops for local TV broadcasts, and many younger folks go online for news, it’s only a matter of time before TV executives realize that their Web presence isn’t just “cool” but essential to the bottom line. But then what? More original online content? Better design? Time will tell whether they can do it in-house or must continue to rely on outsourcers who know the online business better.