-by Mike Schneider, by permission
Good evening. Local TV news is dead. It died today when the FCC overturned a decades-old rule requiring TV & radio stations to operate studios in the cities they served.
Old friends say Local News has been ailing for years, a victim of corporate consolidation and the rise of new technology. In fact, corporations are now free to use the tech they control to close down operations in smaller, less profitable locales, and ship in “Local News” programming from hundreds of thousands of miles away.
While not accusing the corporations of murder, friends of “Local News” believe some broadcasting groups turned a blind eye to their old mainstay, staving off competition with increasingly sensational story selections and gimmicks. 
But other “Local News” relatives are convinced it was killed by some greedy beneficiaries.
Funeral arrangements for “Local News” have not yet been made public. But, when they are, don’t be surprised to hear it from somebody who is in a studio hundreds of miles from your home, talking about leaders they’ll never meet, events they’ll never witness, occurring on streets they’ll never visit.
And that’s the way it is…..