Production of local newscasts in HD is becoming commonplace in the nation’s top 50 TV markets, and stations in smaller markets, although slower to adopt HD for local news, are adding HD, according to this year’s RTDNA/Hofstra survey.
Fully 66 percent of stations in the top 50 markets are producing their local news in HD, said Bob Papper, professor and chairman of journalism at Hofstra University. In all other market sizes, on average, one in four stations produce local HD newscasts, the survey found.
Twenty-five percent of stations reporting that they do not currently produce local newscasts in HD said they planned to do so this year. Of the news directors in the top 25 markets who said they currently are not producing local news in HD, 40 percent said they planned to do so this year.
However, of the smaller-market stations that aren’t doing local HD news, 15 percent plan to begin doing so this year, the survey found.
