TV News 3.0: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running News Channels in the Digital Age

TV News 3.0

An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running News Channels in the Digital Age

Zafar Siddiqi

Austin Macauley Publishers

TV News 3.0

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgment

Introduction

Chapter 1 The TV News Industry Today

Chapter 2 Content’s New Golden Age

Chapter 3 Money Matters

Chapter 4 Creating a Winning Business Plan

Chapter 5 Delivering and Looking After Your Baby

Chapter 6 All Hail the Rainmaker

Chapter 7 People: Can’t Live Without Them…

Chapter 8 The Creative Heart – The Newsroom

Chapter 9 Let Me Show You a Story

Chapter 10 Are Your Arteries Operating?

Chapter 11 Gotta Love Your Specials

Chapter 12 Generation Z and the New Digital Order

Chapter 13 ‘You May Say I’m a Streamer… But I’m Not the Only One’

Chapter 14 Gazing Into My Crystal Ball

About the Author

Zafar Siddiqi was an accountant who was with KPMG for 18 years, initially as a partner and later as the managing director of one of its consultancy practices. He left the world of spreadsheets in the early 1990s, having spotted an opportunity to launch a TV production house in his native Pakistan, specializing in providing business programs to overseas broadcasters.

A few years later, he saw the chance to launch a CNBC business network across 18 countries in the Middle East, the first international brand to broadcast in Arabic. This was quickly followed by his establishing similar networks across 39 countries in Africa, and in Pakistan. Later, he launched Samaa TV in Karachi, which is a 24-hour news and current affairs channel.

He also established Forbes Africa, FM Stations in Pakistan and in education has partnerships with Curtin University in Dubai and Lancaster University in Ghana.

He still serves as Chairman of all the businesses he is involved with, spending much of his time on their strategic direction, not least in wresting with the challenges they face from the digital evolution that this book deals with.

Dedication

To my closest friend and loving wife, Seema; my wonderful children, Saba, Ayesha, Sarah, and Bilal, and my first grandchild, Anya, who will be a source of joy for years to come.

Copyright Information ©

Zafar Siddiqi (2020)

The right of Zafar Siddiqi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Federal Law No. (7) of UAE, Year 2002, Concerning Copyrights and Neighboring Rights.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to legal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In this spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

The age category suitable for the books’ contents has been classified and defined in accordance to the Age Classification System issued by the National Media Council.

ISBN – 9789948251606 – (Paperback)

ISBN – 9789948251613 – (E-Book)

Application Number: MC-10-01-5291842

Age Classification: E

First Published (2020)

AUSTIN MACAULEY PUBLISHERS FZE

Sharjah Publishing City

P.O. Box [519201]

Sharjah, UAE

www.austinmacauley.ae

+971 655 95 202

Acknowledgment

My gratitude goes to the teams at CNBC Africa and Samaa TV, and all my other colleagues and friends who have given their time and advice.

Thank you to all the above. Without them, this book would not have been possible. While I am extremely grateful for their support, it goes without saying that the responsibility for its contents – and any errors remaining in it – is mine alone.

Introduction

The world of television news is endlessly fascinating. From its origins when the entire family crowded together at a fixed time each evening to watch bulletins from one or two broadcasters to today’s intense 24/7, always-connected, multi-screen, multiple-provider world, news has never been more intense or more instant. In such a hyper-competitive environment, the battle to get breaking news on screens first means that the journalists who produce the content are under unremitting pressure.

Managing a TV news business in this day and age has never been more challenging.

In its first incarnation, TV news was a comparatively sedate affair; newsrooms were geared up to produce just one, or at most two, 30-minute programs a day. When Britain’s BBC launched its TV news in July 1954, the first bulletin did not even use moving film, but consisted of only a series of still photographs and maps – with the newsreader heard but not seen on screen. It was only the emergence of a rival service, Independent Television News (ITN), in 1955 that compelled the BBC to rethink its approach.

This cozy situation – where, in every country, a small handful of channels at best had a monopoly on TV news (BBC and ITN in Britain, three big networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – in America, and single, state-controlled channels almost everywhere else) continued until the 1970s when technological advances in cable and satellite delivery ushered in the world’s first 24-hour news channel, Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN) in America. At first, CNN was derided as Chicken Noodle News for its lack of resources and on-air gaffes, and conventional wisdom said it wouldn’t last six months. The then CBS News President, Bill Leonard, asked disdainfully, Why would anybody choose to watch a patched-together news operation that’s just starting against an organization like ours that’s been going for 50 years and spends $100 million to $150 million a year? The smugness began to wear off when, in January 1986, CNN was the only TV network to provide live coverage of the disastrous launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which abruptly disintegrated 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven crew members, including a female school teacher.

By the late Eighties, 24-hour news channels had sprung up across the world; this was the incarnation of the second era of TV news. In this iteration, there was round-the-clock coverage and much more choice for viewers, but all the expensive kit and large numbers of people required by way of resources meant that TV news remained the play thing of rich businessmen, state broadcasters, or established networks. Fifty years on from its first news bulletin, BBC News had grown to comprise 2,000 journalists and 41 overseas newsgathering bureaus, producing more than 45,000 hours of programming a year – an average of 120 hours of news broadcasting for every day of the year. A far cry from one 30-minute program a day.

Today, new technological advances – principally the ability to stream video over the internet, in the way that Netflix operates – has changed TV news again. It is much easier, and much cheaper, to launch a television news channel today, to reach audiences and to build a successful business on the back of it. This is the exciting revolution that is TV News 3.0.

My adventure in TV started in 1995 when I launched a production company in Pakistan called Telebiz. I was really a novice who knew nothing about the TV industry – an accountant by profession, I was a partner with KPMG in the Middle East – but had some experience of writing and a deep passion for news.

My only previous foray into the world of screens had come when I saw the 1981 adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, while I was in Buffalo in the US state of New York. We had supposed to have gone on a day visit to Niagara Falls, but it was postponed because of rain and we chose to go to the movies instead. I liked the film so much that I decided to purchase its distribution rights for Pakistan. Ordinarily, foreign films could only be distributed by the state, but United International Pictures (UIP), the owners of the film, invoked a contractual clause declaring the film special, which effectively gave the power to Steven Spielberg, as the producer, to appoint a consultant (in this case, me) to distribute the film, rather than the government agency.

When released in Pakistan, it ran for more than a year, breaking all the country’s box office records. An extra perk for me was that I was invited to the royal premieres of the Indiana Jones sequels in London. It was, indeed, a treat to be walking with the stars and royalty.

When launching my first production company, I was fortunate to have good people around who helped on all aspects of the TV business, particularly the systems side, as I knew nothing about that. Engineering was never my forte.

When I decided to launch my first TV news station, in the Middle East in 2003 (called CNBC Arabiya), and wanted to know the ins and outs of doing so, I searched in vain for a book that would suffice as a manual. I found publications that covered different aspects – operations, newsrooms, HR etc. – but nothing that encompassed all of how to launch and manage a TV station.

The purpose of this book is to try to fill that gap. I hope – indeed, believe – that TV News 3.0: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running News Channels in the Digital Age has everything that anyone already in the business, or those seeking to become involved in it, needs to know, from the entrepreneur who wishes to start or invest in a TV station to the media student hoping to work in the industry. I also think it may be of some interest to ordinary viewers seeking to understand more about how the news they see on their screens is put together. I feel that I owe this work to an industry which has been so good to me.

It’s been an extremely interesting and rewarding job. There have been joyous occasions over the years, such as when His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the opening of CNBC Arabiya in 2003, and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf launched CNBC Pakistan in 2005. A particular highlight for me was having the good fortune to meet Nelson Mandela just before we launched CNBC Africa in 2007. By that time, he had long retired from frontline politics, but was still mentally very alert and characteristically courteous and humorous. When I told him about our plans, he said: You have my blessing and it will be good for Africa. I was so lucky to have met him; he radiated warmth and affection, and was such a great man.

Regrettably, there have also been some very sad occasions along the way. Since we launched Samaa, our 24-hour news channel in Pakistan, we have had six members of staff, including three camera operators and a reporter, killed while doing their jobs. These deaths still weigh heavily on my mind. The day when you visit a family whose main breadwinner has died in the line of duty and see his wife and children in shock and bewilderment, leaves a lasting impact. These deaths happened in Pakistan during a terrible period between 2010 and 2013, when we endured many bombings, and our brave men and women in the TV industry covered it without fear. Thank God, that period is over but such violence still happens around the world, with terrorism, wars, and other forms of human tragedy. When you next watch TV news events of this nature, spare a thought not just for those suffering but also for those reporters and camera operators bringing you the stories and the pictures. They deserve our special prayers and thanks for their dedication and courage.

I was lucky enough to have ended up in a business for which I have a passion and enjoy every day of my involvement in it. In the TV news business, every day is an exciting new one: you never know what’s going to happen next.

The only advice I have ever given news directors, producers, and presenters in the newsroom is to keep their storytelling simple. Don’t complicate it for people; the last thing they want to see on their TV is something that does not provide them with understandable explanations and answers about what is happening and why it’s happening.

As I did my research for the book and consulted many of my friends and colleagues around the world, I was struck by two main themes. The first was how the digital revolution we are still going through has, alongside a lot of good things, a somewhat darker and more dangerous side. When I was writing the book’s final chapter looking at what the future of television news might consist of, I had the light-hearted idea of speaking to some clairvoyants and astrologists to get their predictions. One forecast, made by a British astrologer, was that sometime in the future someone bad will seize control of one or more of the technology giants and use them for nefarious means. She makes a valid point, but given how bad it is already today, I wonder just how much worse it could possibly become?

There has to be something profoundly wrong when we live in a society in which virtually anyone can set themselves up as a purveyor of news, where click-bait and fake news is deliberately concocted to suit political or personal agendas, where anonymous trollers can post vile abuse and threats on social media with impunity, and where terrorists can live-stream to the world their slaughter of innocent people. There is an urgent need, in my view, for the creation of an international body to regulate all of this, and for the platforms themselves to be held more responsible for their distribution of such evil material.

The other matter of concern for me is the race for ratings across the globe. In some countries, this has diluted content to the extent that sensationalism has become the norm, defeating the approach I espouse, which is to calmly present the news in a relatively serious manner. The use of salacious stories to grab people’s attention, the use of lurid words to attract and increase viewership, seems to have become a norm. I know that there are exceptions to this race to the bottom, and, at the end of the day, the viewer now has many choices; he or she can go to a station or a device that suits his or her appetite. But it is a worrying trend seen across both traditional and digital media. Can it be corrected? I doubt it, as the beast is already out. No longer are there agreed boundaries as to what can and cannot be published. The role of traditional broadcasters and publishers as gatekeepers of news has blurred, if it still exists at all. It is troubling. I can only hope that the final prediction from the British astrologer mentioned earlier turns out to be correct: she went on to elaborate that good always defeats evil in the end.

In the TV business, as in all other aspects of life and commerce, it is teamwork that achieves success. A positive attitude in life is a must, as is respect for your colleagues. In writing this book, I was lucky to have some wonderful people helping me out, giving me guidance, and correcting some of my errors. First among those to thank is Richard Ellis, an experienced British newspaper executive who has worked tirelessly in suggesting structures and editing my words as we have moved forward with the project.

There are many others who have given their time and advice. Richard Tait, the former editor-in-chief of Britain’s ITN and an ex-BBC governor, graciously agreed to read the whole book and gave some extremely pertinent and useful insights. Another ex-ITN hand, Lesley Everett, the network’s former director of operations, really sharpened and shaped the operations chapter. Chris Birkett, a former executive editor of Sky News (2006–2013) and managing editor of BBC News 24 (1999–2000), was of particular help with the specials chapter, while David Hayward, the former head of the BBC Journalism Program and a BBC editor/reporter, was a great help with the newsroom chapter. Mahim Maher, the head of digital at Samaa TV, was as thorough as ever with her great work in helping out on the digital aspects of the book.

I have sought to make the book as accessible as possible by incorporating a few real-life experiences and humorous episodes from my 25 years in the business. I hope that it brings some enjoyment and enlightenment to some people somewhere.

London, 2019

Chapter 1

The TV News Industry Today

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.

Dr. Seuss

So you want to be in the TV news business? Perhaps it’s been an ambition since childhood, a dream driven by a desire to tell the world the truth about itself, to right wrongs and fight injustice, to make hard-hitting films and documentaries that change the course of human history. Or perhaps you just love the idea of being on camera, of being famous, of being fêted and recognized wherever you go.

Whatever your motivation, why not? The lure of a job in the TV industry is a potent one. Television is the most powerful form of mass media in the world. Some nine decades after it first emerged in our world, a small monochrome baby flickering and blinking in the corners of living rooms, it remains a dominant force despite recent challenges to its hegemony. Hundreds of millions of us switch it on every day, to be entertained, informed, educated, and amused, and to absorb messages from advertisers keen to promote their wares. Billions of us still tune in at the same time to watch live broadcasts of world-changing events or sporting clashes; on the list of the world’s most-watched live events, sports occupies the first 25 places, with the London and Rio Olympics sharing the top spot, each having attracted 3.6 billion viewers.

Television has played a key role in the coverage of the world’s most momentous news events over the decades. The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The 2006 capture, trial and execution of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The explosion of the Challenger spacecraft in 1986. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Man’s first step on the Moon in 1969. Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom from prison in 1990 in South Africa. The tanks rolling in to free Kuwait in 1991. The final Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and its continuing impact on Pakistan in the form of terrorism. The list is endless. Those of us who were privileged enough to watch those moments as they happened still feel as if we had ringside seats to history; that is the power of television.

The news that broadcasters transmit 24 hours a day, seven days a week continues to have a deep influence on people around the globe, to affect the policies and directions taken by business and political leaders, nationally and internationally, and to shape the destinies of countries. When politicians have something important to say to their people, it is their go-to medium of choice.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something as important as that? To be even a small cog in the wheel of an industry that affects the direction and fortunes of whole peoples and continents is to be part of something monumental. It’s a fascinating, captivating industry full of interested, talented individuals doing interesting and talented things, most of them passionate and highly driven by what they do, and by their mission to inform and educate. It is also true that some of them are obsessive, narcissistic, power-obsessed prima donnas, preoccupied by the way they look on screen and the ratings they attract. When I think about working in TV news, I am sometimes reminded of that passage from the still very watchable 1987 Hollywood movie Broadcast News, when the station manager says to a conceited, superstar producer who has challenged his decision, It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room, and she replies in a horrified whisper, without a trace of irony, No. It’s awful.

We live in extremely intriguing and exciting times. Television may still be the world’s dominant medium, but is part of a landscape that is being relentlessly challenged by the digital revolution and the changes in the way in which people consume media: no longer just from a fixed-point screen in their homes, but via a small one that travels with them everywhere, is always on, always available, and always demanding attention. Each smartphone in our pockets has more computing power than all of NASA had when it first sent those astronauts to the Moon. And, as others have said, so a part of us have they become, they are like extensions of ourselves.

Although many people still look at a TV when big news events break, if you project 10 or 20 years from now, it will be very different. Print is a (barely) living example of how the digital transformation can cause potentially fatal disruption to traditional media players. Vibrant, forceful, and vastly profitable for decades, most newspapers, particularly in the developed world but also a substantial number in the developing world, are now on life-support and fading fast. Many, if not all, are losing money, some are closing down or desperately trying to reinvent themselves as digital brands. Will traditional TV news channels face a similar fate? Perhaps. They certainly need to radically adapt themselves to the new world, if they, too, are to avoid becoming irrelevant. Or, indeed, extinct.

But the broadcast news business has always been good at evolution. TV news around the world has changed dramatically since the first programs in the 1940s and 1950s. The changes have been driven by technology, regulation, and by audience expectations. For the first 30 years, the bulletin was king – millions tuned in to their favorite channel at the same time every night to see the news. The main newscasters became household names; for many, they were the face of the channel. The bulletin was restricted to 20 minutes or half an hour on a general channel that offered other programming, such as entertainment, drama, and sport, but the evening news was seen as an appointment to view – one of the key moments in the daily schedule. Terrestrial broadcasting technology meant that there were only a few channels to choose from, thus ensuring that audiences were vast.

Revolutionary changes in broadcast technology in the 1970s and 1980s transformed the creation and distribution of television news around the world. Two terms described the revolution in coverage – ENG and SNG. With Electronic News Gathering (ENG), stories could be shot and edited on tape, not film, making the production process much faster. In Satellite News Gathering (SNG), stories could be beamed immediately back to base and presenters could report live into the program from almost anywhere in the world. Sir David Nicholas, the former editor-in-chief of the UK’s Independent Television News (ITN), once described the advent of this (virtually) no limits technology as almost every week you could do something new which you couldn’t have done the week before.

At the same time, the arrival of cable and satellite distribution systems made room for hundreds of channels, not just a few, dominant, general ones. Enterprising broadcasters realized that there could be a market for specialist channels focusing on one genre – movies, entertainment, sport, or news. Appointment to view news became always on news.

In 1980, Ted Turner, a visionary US broadcast executive, launched the Cable News Network (CNN), the first 24-hour news channel. He boasted: We won’t be signing off till the world ends. Initially, rivals sneered at the low-cost Atlanta-based operation as Chicken Noodle News and the White House refused it press credentials. Turner lost $250 million before the channel broke even and claimed to have slept on a couch in his office for the first 10 years. But by the time of the first Gulf War in 1990, it was clear that the 24-hour news channel had come of age with its live coverage of the conflict. Its reporters stood on rooftops watching missile battles over Jerusalem and tracked US cruise missiles flying into Baghdad. The White House and politicians and diplomats around the world began to talk about the CNN Effect – the ability of images and stories on CNN and other news channels to shift public policy as viewers reacted to what they were seeing.

Turner was joined in not always friendly rivalry by another larger than life character. Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-born newspaper tycoon, launched two very different channels – Sky News in Europe in 1989 and Fox News in the USA in 1996. Sky and Fox quickly became household brands, helping Murdoch to build a global broadcast and entertainment empire which, together with his newspapers, gave him enormous political influence on both sides of the Atlantic.

The two interlopers faced fierce competition from one of the traditional broadcasters – NBC – which launched a business channel (CNBC) in 1989, and a general news channel (MSNBC) in 1996. In Europe, the main broadcasters, too, had to react. The BBC launched World Service Television (later BBC World) in 1991, followed by European public service broadcasters launching Euronews in 1993, and a whole host of national channels across the Continent.

In the North American market at least, news channels have become a colossal business. The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2017 the three main news channels – Fox, CNN, and MSNBC – had revenues of $5 billion, with more than half of that profit. In contrast, the main evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC, the channels that had once dominated the world of TV news, achieved revenues of less than $600 million. Turner and Murdoch had turned the world upside down.