"Don't Drop Sports from Local TV News"

"Instead, do it better," suggests Kevin Benz. He is the author of the article "Don't Drop Sports from Local TV News" from Poynter Online. Benz covered the recent problem that many local news stations are experiencing in that their viewers don't seem to be interested in the sports segments of their newscasts. To fix the problem, the stations dropped sports coverage all together because the cost of producing it was not worth it. This was the wrong solution, says Benz.

"Rather than dumping our sports department, we should change our sports philosophy," Benz wrote. "If viewers are not interested in your sportscast, it may be because your sportscast doesn't seem interested in your local viewers."

Benz understands that ESPN has a good control on the large, national sports stories and professional and college sports, and local news stations should understand this as well. That is why he thinks the way to overcome the problem is by offering more local news stories that are relevant to the local people. It's not that people don't want to know what's going on in sports, they just don't care about sports in Chicago if they live in Seattle. They want to know about what's going on in their local sports scene. If they want other stuff, they can turn to ESPN, and they will. You also wouldn't give a weather forcast for Seattle if your viewers live in Chicago.

"Make sports relevant to your audience every day, just like you make the news and weather relevant to your viewers every day," Benz writes.

I agree with Benz in that sports shouldn't be dropped all together because there are always people that want to know about what's going on, even if ratings don't relfect it.

Benz's philosophy is simple: Make sports segments appeal to soccer moms.