Comcast-NBCU Deal Condition May Help the Few Nonprofit Websites Big Enough to Benefit
A draft Comcast-NBC Universal FCC condition could help a growing group of websites specializing in local news and often staffed by journalists who left traditional media raise their profile and increase their funding from other sources, said broadcast and Internet executives and professors studying the issue that we interviewed. Part of the proposed order that commissioners are studying this week on Comcast’s agreement to buy control of NBC Universal would require an additional four NBC TV stations owned by the combined company to enter into news-sharing arrangements with nonprofit sites, agency officials said. Proposing conditions, which agency officials said the commission would require, Comcast and NBC Universal cited KNSD San Diego’s arrangement with VoiceofSanDiego.org.
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There appear to be only a handful of websites in other cities where NBC Universal owns affiliates of its flagship broadcast network that are large enough to enter into similar deals, said executives at other websites, professors and an executive at another San Diego TV station. That may limit Comcast-NBC Universal’s ability to replicate the Voice of San Diego deal, they said. That organization gets about $40,000 annually from KNSD, industry and FCC officials said. Representatives of the Media Bureau, which drafted the Comcast-NBC Universal order, and the two companies had no comment. The draft order contains other Internet conditions (CD Jan 7 p3).
"Across the country, the challenge will be” for Comcast’s NBC affiliates to “create the type of rapport which we've created here in our over five years of working with” KNSD, said Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis. The arrangement has “clearly helped” the website add to its visits, and “it’s also good for our funders to see we're working hard to extend our reach,” he said. “We try to do as much sharing of resources and ideas as possible,” Lewis said: Three weekly TV shows produced by Voice of San Diego air on KNSD, two in prime time, and the website’s reporters often appear on the station’s news shows. “It’s done a tremendous amount for our exposure, to be able to pair an investigative piece that we do with a broadcast version,” because some stories “are better told with a broadcast partner” that can put high-quality video to a news story, he said.
"It provides some cachet to the television station it’s attached to,” Managing Editor J.W. August of McGraw-Hill’s KGTV San Diego said of the Voice of San Diego deal. KGTV has narrower news arrangements with East County Magazine and the Watchdog Institute, he said. Those are other online nonprofits. “We're all looking for more content, good content, valuable content,” August said of TV stations’ hopes for local websites. But the arrangements can’t easily be replicated, he said. “I'm not quite sure you can do this like cookie cutter stuff."
A nonprofit Connecticut news website said it isn’t big enough to produce for WVIT New Britain, an NBC affiliate owned by NBC Universal, the extensive news that Voice of San Diego does for KNSD. Five full-time reporters are employed by CTMirror.org, along with several others part-time on a contract basis, said Editor Michael Regan. “If we had more staffing, it would certainly be welcome,” he said. “The Voice’s arrangement with the station in San Diego would probably be beyond our capacity now.” That type of arrangement “is terrific” and “exciting,” and “it would obviously help to have some financial support from any of our media partners,” he said. The site has relationships with 18 other news organizations, including Connecticut Public Broadcasting’s WNPR Norwich, Regan said. Where Comcast-NBC Universal tries to make deals with local news websites, “every one of those markets is going to have a different arrangement with a different entity, and things are going to work out differently,” he said. “Every one of these local online nonprofits has its own niche and its own needs and its own mission."
That each city’s website is different makes it hard to predict the shape that such deals would take, said Professor Stephen Lacy of Michigan State University, who has studied local media. “There simply are not all that many established news sites,” he said. “You have to be realistic in looking at how widely it’s going to help” such sites, he said of Comcast-NBC Universal’s plans. “San Diego may be an example, but that example may not exist in other markets.” Most local news websites reuse a great deal of material from other sources, said Professor Steve Wildman, also of Michigan State.
"It’s clearly good for a nonprofit site if they can get partners to pay them money,” said CEO Joel Kramer of MinnPost.com, a nonprofit news site in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Voice of San Diego “worked for years to be paid money” by KNSD, which wasn’t paying it at first, he said. All such sites “are looking for revenue to improve their business model,” Kramer said. Some of them think that having such arrangements can help get funding from foundations, “because you can say that your stories are reaching bigger audiences,” he said. MinnPost has a deal with Twin Cities Public Television under which no money is exchanged, he said. “You have to apply some resources to the work” for it to appear on TV, he said of deals like Voice of San Diego’s with KNSD. “If you're going to create material for some partner, that clearly costs time and money.”