NEW YORK — NBC Universal's plan to reorganize its news operations as part of a companywide streamlining serves as a vivid indication that the technological forces squeezing newspapers have spread to TV.
By consolidating units of its cable and broadcast news divisions and paring its staff, NBC hopes to free resources to devote to serving viewers who have embraced the Internet as a source of information.
"All the trends indicate that we need to realign," said NBC News President Steve Capus.
The widespread migration of news consumers to the Web has triggered painful adjustments in the industry in recent years, particularly on the print side, where newspapers coping with declining circulations and stagnant advertising revenue have cut staff and newsprint.
Thursday brought another reminder of those challenges as Tribune Co. -- parent of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and other newspapers and TV stations nationwide -- reported a larger-than-expected decline in third-quarter advertising revenue. New York Times Co. on Thursday also reported lower quarterly revenue and profit.
Although broadcast television networks have scaled back their news operations in recent years, particularly in foreign bureaus, they have largely avoided the kind of extensive layoffs that have plagued their print brethren. In the meantime, network news divisions have moved aggressively to package their content for online and mobile viewing, hoping to hold on to its audience with Net casts, podcasts and blogs.
"Everybody is going in the same direction, which is to cut people on the traditional broadcast front and to try to expand on the digital front," said Richard Wald, a former NBC News president and ABC News vice president who teaches at Columbia University. "How well they do it is the real question."
NBC executives said they hoped that honing their news-gathering operations would help ward off the dour economic climate that had settled over the newspaper industry. Their aim: to free resources for new digital products and eventually expand their reach.
"This means an investment in news coverage," Capus said. "All of the models are under attack, whether here or the Tribune Co. or AOL or Disney. Everyone is seeing it for what it is and everyone is responding. We're doing it on our terms, and while we're in a leadership position."
