By Lee Abrams, Co-Founder & Chief Content Officer of TouchVision

Given the ongoing decline in viewership for cable news, I have to think the end is near for television anchors as we generally watch and listen to them today. Personality will always be a component, but the anchor is on life support. 

Here’s why:

Anchors today are generally just pretty faces behind snappy desks with a fake picture of the skyline in the backdrop reading Teleprompters while bobbing their heads and pretending to be best pals with the folks on either side of them.

So what’s wrong with that? Younger audiences want information from more authentic sources (or at least sources they consider to be more authentic than mainstream news outlets) such as non-broadcast bloggers like Ezra Klein and credible experts who live the topic on social media or who have experienced firsthand the news they’re delivering. Who was more compelling during the Afghanistan conflict: Military leaders on the ground or a local news reader telling the story? For the most part, however, television continues to invest in generic faces, believe in the anchor-as-the-center-of-the-universe, and carry on a never-ending race for expensive sets.

The burden for change isn’t on the anchors themselves; they’re trying to earn a living. It’s the system itself that’s locked into a certain style. The real stars of TV are pictures and the sound that goes with them. Executing new approaches to storytelling is what can reconnect the new mainstream to information on screen. But generic anchors and reporters, presumably at the direction of their producers, do just about everything possible to block out the essential magic of television with light commentary such as “What a tragic situation for that town….”

The style of classic television news is fuel for parody. That’s why The ONION and The Spoof are hot comedy brands and why SNL‘s most popular and longest running sketch is Weekend Update. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart present themselves as parodies of news anchors, yet they have credibility and appeal to viewers.  They “get it”…and the public gets that they get it. Traditional TV often does not. News presentation to younger viewers isn’t unlike music. Would a 20-something gravitate toward the attitude and message of their parents’ music? Generally not…for the same reasons they don’t accept their parents’ news style which we STILL have.

For the record, producing more engaging news is NOT about increasing  costs…it’s about finding different ways of producing the news. Expensive sets, old-school marketing in the social era and staffing are among the expenses based on an outdated model. Economic re-thinking goes hand in hand with content re-thinking. Once there’s acceptance that the anchor-behind-the-desk era is over, TV could focus on what’s really engaging—

1) Compelling personalities who are willing to skirt the lines of “political correctness” and experts who can tell a story far better than talking heads…and not just on the topics of weather and sports. Imagine if every station had a local Crime Bureau, just like a Weather Center. Since so many of the top stories are crime-related, that would make sense. Compartmentalizing by subject seems like a better approach than a generic reading of topics.

2) Telling stories with stunning photography and sound (both of which are available at little to no cost). Pulling out every source of audio and video would make for compelling viewing, instead of relying on a one-dimensional reporter.

3) Mass appeal intellect. To use a newspaper analogy: There can be a happy medium between a tabloid at the grocery checkout and The Financial Times in terms of meeting the intellectual levels of your audience. There’s nothing wrong with either end of the spectrum as long as it’s done well. What’s missing, in my opinion, is a news product like local TV that’s in the intellectual middle range. The point is that this is another way of creating content and designing for the target.  Similar to psychographic profiling, but better aimed at how the product is focused .  Not elite and inaccessible to masses, but not lowered to material for parody.

This isn’t rocket science: this is opportunity. As long as TV is locked into the dying anchor era, it’ll continue to give THE ONION, the Jon Stewarts, the Stephen Colberts, the Tina Feys and the Amy Poehlers of the world a wealth of material.

Lee Abrams, Co-Founder, Chief Content Officer of TouchVision, created top-rated radio formats on broadcast and satellite platforms (including co-founder of XM) and has been a creative advisor for such media companies as MTV, Rolling Stone and TNT Network.

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