Media meltdown - the other shoe drops

Please accept my apologies in advance for a bit of a rant...

It's always hard to see hard times hit home. It's especially hard when such moves are driven by ignorance and shortsightedness.

Today's news is not good. 'A' Morning, the morning show that I've been occasionally appearing on under the Tech Talk banner, was abruptly cancelled this morning. Staff were informed in a hastily called meeting just after the show went off the air. No goodbyes, no advance notice...just sliced, just like that. This is a time-honored tradition in media, and something that's happening with increasing frequency on both sides of the border as the economic downturn's grip tightens its grip on already-suffocating conventional media organizations.

This comes a day after I spoke on national television (click here for video) about how conventional broadcasters have done themselves no favors by maintaining the status quo long after the Internet made their old strategies obsolete. They've kept their heads in the sand for so long that I wonder if they still know how to connect with today's audiences and advertisers.

In the morning show's place, they will now be running six back-to-back reruns of the half-hour news package from the night before. Yup, they'll serve their local community by running multiple repeats of old news. Please excuse my lack of enthusiasm for what's clearly a deliberate gutting of whatever's left of the station's business model. Can you see advertisers going for this? Um, not so much.

I'm selfishly sad because I really enjoyed doing Tech Talk with 'A' Morning host Cheryl Weedmark. But I'm massively more upset for the folks who devoted their entire careers to the station and the show. Cheryl and the morning team are some of the brightest, most focused people you'll ever meet in media. It blows my mind that they can be swept out the door without so much as a thank you.

I know the economy sucks. I know these stations have struggled under their national chain ownership. We've heard time and again that the model is broken, but no one in conventional media's ivory tower seems willing to break with conventional business practices to build a broadcast/narrowcast/Internet-embracing means of connecting with audiences and advertisers no matter where they are. They've let the online world take their lunch, and instead of fighting back they're choosing to walk away. Wimps.

Interestingly, CHCH just down the road from me in Hamilton, Ontario also finds itself under the gun. Newscaster Donna Skelly is spearheading a campaign in the community to get the station's license transferred from its current owners to a community-based board. Maybe it's time to turn back the clock on media conglomerates and return ownership and stewardship of local media resources to the communities that know them best. Maybe it no longer makes sense for leaders in glass-walled offices in distant cities to be making pivotal decisions about servicing regions they've likely never visited. Maybe it's time for folks who understand new media to take over from those who don't.

Just sayin'...

Your turn: Something tells me this discussion is only just beginning. Where do you stand on today's imploding world of media? How does it affect you?

This just in: I'll be speaking with Kathleen Petty on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:15 ET. I'm also chatting about it on my Twitter stream, and on Facebook.