As the devastating wildfires began to sweep across Los Angeles on Jan. 7, frightened residents were not turning to Netflix.
Local TV news broadcasts were the video go-to for residents seeking immediate information on the crisis that engulfed the region. Anchors and correspondents have spent hours in the field and on the air providing life-saving details about evacuations and damage, along with a generous helping of emotional comfort.
“The performance of local stations has been phenomenal,” said Jonathan Wald, a veteran TV news producer who has worked for NBC News and CNN. “In the face of incredible tragedy, they are knowledgeable and keep their heads as they cover what’s happening in their neighborhoods.”
Traditional TV viewing has been in steady decline during the streaming era, now accounting for just half of all video consumption, according to recent Nielsen data. But even with diminished ratings and profits, TV stations have added hours of news coverage to their lineups and streaming platforms. The trend prepared Los Angeles outlets for a catastrophe that required a sustained flow of up-to-date information.
The availability of local TV news on digital platforms provided horrific yet compelling images of destruction to a global audience well beyond Los Angeles. Wald called the wildfires “the white Bronco chase of natural disasters,” referring to the police pursuit of O.J. Simpson that transfixed a nation of viewers in 1994.
Stations saw viewership double and triple for their news programming during the first week of wildfire coverage, according to Nielsen data, with more than 1 million watching in prime time on Jan. 7. Hundreds of millions of minutes have been streamed across the station’s digital platforms.
Some journalism purists look down their noses at local TV news, which was once defined by stunts, gimmicks, and breezy “happy talk” in the studio.
But in an era when mainstream media have been under attack for perceived bias, viewers still mostly trust local TV news. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism issued a report last year showing that local TV news was trusted by 62% of Americans surveyed, well ahead of any network, cable or digital source.
Long-tenured local TV reporters and anchors develop roots in the area. Their personal stakes were laid bare as the inferno that swept across the region threatened their own families and friends.
“One of the things that makes local news powerful is that the people reporting are experiencing the story themselves,” said Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president who currently consults local TV stations. “And viewers feel like they know them.”
Elex Michaelson, a veteran anchor at Fox’s KTTV, said years of covering stories and emceeing community events helps journalists build connections with the audience. It gives them credibility when they provide information and comfort in a crisis.
That’s not always easy while covering a disaster in your backyard. Michaelson struggled to stay composed when he learned that Agoura Hills, his childhood neighborhood, was being evacuated.
“That’s when I started to tear up,” Michaelson said in an interview. “When their evacuation orders went out and my sister’s house was a part of it, I thought of her grabbing their new baby and leaving, not knowing if the house was going to be there when they got back.”
For days, Jasmine Viel of CBS station KCAL and her husband Marc Cota-Robles, an Orange County native who reports for Disney-owned KABC, were out on 12- to 14-hour shifts while her mother watched their children in Pasadena. They stared at each other in disbelief in the brief moments they crossed paths at home during the first week of the disaster.
“We couldn’t even talk about it, because we didn’t even know what was going to happen next,” Viel told The Times.
Every local TV reporter covering the wildfires has a story to tell about stepping out of their journalistic role to help residents. Viel found a distraught Pasadena woman who saw flames approaching a coop that housed pet chickens and ducks behind her home on Altadena Drive. Viel’s camera operator John Schreiber, whose wife grew up on a farm, handled the birds as they were removed and rescued.
KTTV’s Gigi Graciette, a Hollywood native who has covered numerous wildfires, makes a point of resetting her live shot every 25 minutes and telling viewers the number of the block she‘s on so they can determine whether they will be affected.
“There is nothing more frustrating than to hear on the news that something is happening in your neighborhood, but you don’t know what street it’s on,” she said.
National cable and broadcast networks have their own reporting teams on the ground covering the wildfires. But many of the images those outlets use come from local stations. CNN took live shots from KABC, KCAL and Spectrum News Los Angeles. NewsNation, the cable network owned by Nexstar Media Group, utilized the parent company’s KTLA for hours of live coverage.
Broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC have also relied on their locally owned stations for network coverage of the fire on TV and their streaming news channels.
Providing sustained live coverage online is essential in the age of video on-demand. TV station streams of news programming are widely available for free on such platforms as Amazon’s Prime Video, Tubi, Pluto TV and Roku.
“People don’t want to wait,” said Frank Cicha, executive vice president for Fox Television Stations. “Local television was famous for, ‘We’ll be back later with what you want to see,’ and they were able to get away with it.” Not anymore.
Fox Television Stations’ streaming platform, LiveNOW, provides video from its 29 outlets across the country. KTTV’s fire coverage ran continuously on LiveNow for days, driving a 65% increase in traffic, according to Emily Stone, vice president of digital content for Fox.
“It gave people a chance to watch local, live up-to-the-minute coverage of a story happening in a huge U.S. city that everybody cares about,” Stone said.
Reaching viewers outside of Los Angeles has helped in fundraising efforts for those displaced by the wildfire and prompted other acts of generosity. After KCAL’s Jeff Nguyen interviewed a man whose home was destroyed, the owner of an empty residence in Laguna Beach offered it as temporary shelter.
Graciette told the story of an 81-year-old Navy veteran in Altadena who lost his electric wheelchair in the blaze. Multiple offers came from viewers to replace it. A woman watching in England told Graciette she was inspired to make a donation to a veterans group.
