Image from NYTimes.com
According to a New York Times article yesterday, PBS’ The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer is adjusting to changes in the industry by bridging the digital divide The show has been on the air since 1975 under the name of The MacNeil /Lehrer Report. There are two major changes. There will be two anchors and the name of the show will change to the PBS NewsHour. The changes come as a result of research done last year and will be unveiled today at a meeting in Baltimore.
The program will not lay off workers and is actually looking for a new correspondent, one that can navigate between both the online world and television. The program receives $24 million in donations annually. With 500,000 unique visitors to its site, the broadcast has not been able to push viewers to the site. If The News Hour can get viewers to use the site as well, this would allow the show to increase advertisers and advertising rates. While the show ranks behind the number one, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams its numbers remain steady at 1.2 million. If they could move loyal viewers onto the site as well it could solve the advertising problem that most other television shows have.
There are other changes in the works as well. The PBS NewsHour is also thinking of partnering with public radio and creating a single web site with news aggregated from other PBS programs. Their goal is to create a more individualized experience. In April, chief executive officer of content, John Boland wrote in an internal email message “ We can hang together or hang separately. While our highly decentralized structure may make perfect sense to us, it is incomprehensible to our audiences and is contributing to fragmentation.” Jim Lehrer also says given the current state of newspapers and journalism, journalists have to do more.
I am anxious to see if the changes will work. It’s another example of how the rules have changed in the journalism industry.
