Local television does not have a shortage of ideas about its future. If anything, it may have more competing visions for the future than at any point I can remember. Across the industry, companies are making very different bets about what comes next. Some are leaning harder into technology, AI and new ways of producing
Local TV Has a Strategy for Everything Except the Talent Read More »
Spend enough time around local television stations and you start to notice something interesting about the people responsible for the people. At the station level, they may be called a Business Office Manager, Human Resources Manager or HR Business Partner. Sometimes they are responsible for HR along with payroll, benefits, accounting, compliance and whatever else
Local Television Doesn’t Have an HR Problem. It Might Have a Utilization Problem. Read More »
There is a phrase I hear constantly in media recruiting: “There just aren’t any candidates.” Sometimes that’s true. Certain talent pools have unquestionably gotten smaller. Experienced broadcast engineers are becoming harder to find. Newsroom leadership pipelines have thinned. Sales management benches aren’t what they once were. Consolidation, downsizing, retirements and people simply leaving the business
You Don’t Have a Candidate Shortage. You Have a Job Design Problem. Read More »
There is a fundamental mistake I see companies make when they talk about recruiting. They confuse the applicant pool with the talent market. They are not the same thing. A position opens. The company posts it. The job goes on LinkedIn, the corporate career site and maybe a few industry boards. Applications start coming in.
Your Best Candidate Isn’t Looking for You Read More »
For decades, local television executives looked at newspapers the way a healthy person looks at someone else’s diagnosis: unfortunate, but not contagious. Print publishers got flattened by Craigslist, Google, Facebook, and the internet’s dismantling of classified advertising. Television stations, meanwhile, sat behind a protected moat of retransmission fees, political advertising, cable bundles, and weather coverage
America’s Local TV Industry Has a Newspaper Problem Read More »
There is one question I ask almost every candidate I talk to. “Tell me your story.” It sounds casual. It is not. I’m not asking because I need you to read your résumé to me. I already have it. I’m not particularly interested in where you went to high school, the first job you had
Tell Me Your Story. Just Not All of It. Read More »
CARVER CORNER: What station managers can do now to attract, develop, and keep the people who will determine what local television becomes next. Let’s be honest: most television stations do not have a talent shortage. They have a talent-retention problem, a compensation problem, a leadership problem, or a reputation problem. In some cases, they have
The TV Talent Shortage: What Station Managers Can Control Read More »
Carver Corner By Ty Carver Every industry has business models that make perfect sense, and then there are a few that leave you wondering how they’ve survived for decades without anyone seriously questioning them. One that has always fascinated me is the traditional television talent agent model. Before anyone misunderstands where I’m going with this,
Is It Time to Rethink the Television Talent Agent Business Model? Read More »
The New Broadcast Talent Playbook: Recruiting Across Four Generations Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth. Most hiring managers say they want diversity of thought, and then they hire someone who thinks exactly like they do. The General Manager who came up through sales wants another sales-minded leader. The News Director wants someone who came up
Stop Hiring Mini-Me’s: The Television Industry’s Biggest Recruiting Mistake Read More »
Walk into any television station in America and you’ll find something fascinating. The newsroom assignment desk may be staffed by someone who remembers editing tape with a razor blade, sitting next to someone who has never owned a DVD player. The General Manager might still remember when newspaper revenue was king. The Digital Sales Manager
