Learn from the Weatherman

James Spann's day job is the chief meteorologist at the ABC/Fox station in Birmingham, Ala. He's also one of the best forward thinkers on network media. Huh?

He's been running WeatherBrains, a podcast on weather and the business behind it, for years, and a statewide weather blog. Spann also has a standing presentation he's been giving at Mississippi State's annual storm conference entitled, Surviving as a Broadcast Meteorologist in a Post-Broadcast World. The gist of it: the single-tasking anchor, the teeth and hair TV days are done. He's dropped that presentation for a new one, and he went over the highlights on Episode 169. I'd highly recommend it. Search and replace the word "weather" for "sports information."

Spann's pretty blunt: “If you can’t see it now, you’re blind as a bat and you’ve got no business being in this business.”

The new talk is focused on the “exciting new beginning” in broadcast media. His analogy is the people in the horse and buggy business were huge around the turn of the century. They’re gone. Their business was destroyed by technology. The people that were in the transportation business thrived. One hundred years later, you can’t be in the automobile business. Their companies are dying.

This quote was near and dear to my heart: “Broadcasting can no longer be one way; it is now a conversation.”

On Twitter: “I know more about what’s happens in this town on breaking news than my news department because of Twitter.”

He adds compelling points on the need for targeted advertising, but that finding a new advertising vehicle won't save the industry because supply and demand no longer functions. Hadn't thought about it like that, but the 6 O'Clock news 30 second spot had value when there was a finite number on the top Arbitron book station. Now, there are an infinite number of ads available. "Advertisers are not looking for quantity, but quality and engagement."

Spann continues that local organizations will need to merge into single new media entities for efficiency. He predicts 30-35 percent of the current players gone through consideration. Local TV will need to abandon network and channel. First the numbers don’t mean anything with cable and digital broadcast. Soon, the networks and the studios are about to stream straight to the set-top box. The affiliation model is going away, and network news operations are soon dead. Local stations need to define a local brand sooner than later.

He closed the business part with an interesting prediction:
Once we get the really high speed bandwidth into everyone’s house, and they have the set top box and watch it on their big television and it’s just a click away, that’s when it gets really interesting. That’s about five years away.

I'm going to gently disagree. Moore's Law comes to bandwidth -- my prediction is two years, and if you are not ready in one, you will be behind.

A bonus quote, only because I can see myself saying something very similar to the students in my public relations for college athletics class last spring. This is James, but on this one we're in complete sync:
I got up in their faces. Very few of you will be able to handle the demands of keeping the old model alive for a while, which we have to do, and building the new model. Are you willing to go without sleep? Not make a lot of money? Have some pretty harsh working conditions? At the same time, you’re going to invent a model that will be the ride of your life.

As we head to CoSIDA for convention in San Antonio -- Words to live by.