Around 8 p.m. on a recent weeknight, a station spent a promotional break telling viewers the city vote on the stadium deal was in, with the result at 11 p.m. The vote had been public since 6 p.m., on the council’s own stream, on three news apps and in a PUSH notification already buzzing in every pocket in the DMA. The station was promoting a product its audience had consumed two hours earlier, then asking them to wait three more hours to consume it again.
That is not a programming error. That is an opportunity missed.
Every commodity market behaves the same way. When supply is unlimited and distribution is free, price collapses to zero. Breaking news crossed that line years ago. The fact itself, the vote count, the score, the name of the person arrested, has no scarcity value left. A newsroom that builds its promotion around holding a fact hostage until 11 p.m. is selling sand in the desert at a premium, and the audience is valuing it accordingly.
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