When devastating wildfires began to ravage Los Angeles on January 7, frightened residents didn't turn to Netflix.
Local television news broadcasts were the go-to resource for residents seeking immediate information about the crisis ravaging 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 television news producer who worked for NBC News and CNN. “In the face of an incredible tragedy, they are informed and keep a cool head while covering what is happening in their neighborhoods.”
Traditional television viewing has steadily declined during the streaming era and now accounts for just half of all video consumption, according to recent data from Nielsen. But even with diminished ratings and profits, television stations have added hours of news coverage to their programming and streaming platforms. The trend prepared the Los Angeles media for a catastrophe that required a sustained flow of updated information.
The availability of local television news on digital platforms provided gruesome but compelling images of destruction to a global audience far beyond Los Angeles. Wald called the wildfires “the White Broncos' chase of natural disasters,” a reference to the police chase of OJ Simpson that paralyzed a nation of viewers in 1994.
Stations doubled and tripled viewership of their news programming during the first week of wildfire coverage, according to Nielsen data, with more than 1 million viewers in prime time on Jan. 7. Hundreds of millions of minutes have been broadcast across the station's digital platforms. .
Some journalism purists disdain local television news, which was once defined by stunts, stunts and lighthearted studio “happy talk.”
But in an era when mainstream media outlets have come under attack for their perceived bias, viewers still largely rely on local television news. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism released a report last year showing that 62% of Americans surveyed trusted local television news, far ahead of any network, cable or digital source.
Long-time local reporters and television anchors put down roots in the area. Their personal risks were laid bare when the inferno that swept through the region threatened their own families and friends.
“One of the things that makes local news powerful is that the people reporting it are experiencing the story themselves,” said Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News who currently consults for local television stations. “And viewers feel like they know them.”
Elex Michaelson, a veteran host for Fox's KTTV, said years of covering stories and hosting community events helps journalists make connections with audiences. It gives them credibility when they provide information and comfort in a crisis.
That's not always easy when covering up a mess in your backyard. Michaelson struggled to maintain his composure when he learned that Agoura Hills, his childhood neighborhood, was being evacuated.
“That's when I started crying,” Michaelson said in an interview. “When evacuation orders were issued and my sister's house was part of it, I thought about her taking her new baby and leaving, not knowing if the house would be there when they returned.”
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 away on 12- to 14-hour shifts while their mother watched their children. in Pasadena. They stared at each other in disbelief in the brief moments they passed each other 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 television reporter covering the wildfires has a story to tell about leaving their reporting role to help residents. Viel found a distraught Pasadena woman who saw flames approaching a chicken coop housing 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 sure to reset her live feed every 25 minutes and tell viewers the block number she is on so they can determine if they will be affected.
“There's nothing more frustrating than hearing on the news that something is happening in your neighborhood, but you don't know what street it is on,” he said.
National cable and broadcast networks have their own reporting teams on the ground covering wildfires. But many of the images used by those media come from local stations. CNN took live feeds from KABC, KCAL and Spectrum News Los Angeles. NewsNation, the cable network owned by Nexstar Media Group, used the parent company's KTLA for hours of live coverage.
Television networks ABC, CBS and NBC have also relied on their locally owned stations for coverage of the fire on television and their streaming news channels.
Providing sustained live coverage online is essential in the era of video on demand. Streams of news programming from television stations are widely available for free on platforms such as Amazon's Prime Video, Tubi, Pluto TV and Roku.
“People don't want to wait,” said Frank Cicha, executive vice president of Fox Television Stations. “Local television was famous for saying, 'We'll come back later with what you want to see,' and they got away with it.” Not anymore.
Fox Television Stations' streaming platform, LiveNOW, offers video from its 29 outlets nationwide. KTTV's fire coverage aired continuously on LiveNow for days, generating a 65% increase in traffic, according to Emily Stone, vice president of digital content at Fox.
“It gave people a chance to see local, live, breaking coverage of a story happening in a big American city that interests everyone,” Stone said.
Reaching viewers outside of Los Angeles has aided fundraising efforts for those displaced by the wildfire and spurred other acts of generosity. After KCAL's Jeff Nguyen interviewed a man whose home was destroyed, the owner of a vacant 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 fire. Viewers offered multiple bids to replace it. A woman watching from England told Graciette she was inspired to make a donation to a veterans group.
