May 5, 1986 news story list:
- Factions of Narragansett Indians fight over tribal issues
- A public opinion poll on issues to be discussed by the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention
- The ongoing celebration of the country’s 350th anniversary
- The amazing real estate explosion: a standard three bedroom cape in one of Rhode Island’s poorer communities which sold for $79,000 a year earlier, is now worth $160,000 in a red hot market.
On the day the “debut” edition of the Providence Business News hit the streets, the above-listed news items were the big stories over at the newspaper’s “competition”: the-then 30 minute long TV news broadcast called “Newswatch 10 at Sunrise.” The program had premiered nine months before PBN was first published, and the broadcast included something unique for television news: a full daily segment of business and financial news. This was long before the daily barrage of 24-hour business news on cable; CNBC and many of the other current all-news cable channels were not even in existence then. The segment allowed us to examine news items like the above-listed real estate explosion in some depth–something the other newscasts were not equipped to do.
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The daily business report was an immediate hit with the audience, which consisted of businessmen and women who were up early getting ready for another day at the office, factory or other work site. The many guests offering investing and financial planning advice, profiles of successful business people or companies, reports on business trends, business lobbying at the State House, and debates on how to deal with the changing economy became one of the most popular elements of the newscast as the program grew from 30 minutes, to an hour, to its current 90 minute length.
Within a few months of its debut publication, the Providence Business News became an integral part of the “Sunrise” business report. Beginning with the late Dan Hackett, the paper’s original editor, all of the editors and managing editors of the newspaper have been regular guests in the business segment, outlining issues of importance to the business community that the paper has uncovered and reported.
Through the years, we have been able to focus on the concerns of the business community. Our topics have served as a mirror of the changing and evolving priorities of the business community – from the real estate “boom” and subsequent “bust” as the 1980s became the 1990s, to the recession of the early 1990’s and the resulting hardship to Southern New England residents and businesses, to the long-sought-after reform of the workers’ compensation system of the early 1990s, to the explosion of mega-mergers and acquisitions in virtually every industry, to the decline and subsequent resurgence of manufacturing alongside the growing service and high-tech industries, to the health insurance crisis that ended the decade.
As the new century gets older, that forum for business priorities still serves as a sounding board for issues the business community deems important: from diversification in the workplace, to the lack of diversification in certain segments of the business community, to the pros and cons of the container port proposed for Quonset Point. I’m gratified by the continued support of the business community, whose members compliment me by asking to be part of this forum through personal appearances on the business report and suggestions of issues to explore.
It’s an understatement to say technology that drives the workplace has changed drastically in the last 15 years. That technology change is certainly most evident in my industry, the news media. Those news stories we aired on May 5, 1986 were written on electronic typewriters. Computers did not arrive in our newsroom until mid-1991. My expertise regarding “those dastardly computers” is quite limited, but I think the original newsroom computers used the “DOS” operating system. They have since been replaced by a Windows-based system which is much more comprehensive in its functions.
Along with the computerization of everything, the television industry has been revolutionized by satellite technology, which has allowed TV stations easy access to people and news stories all around the world. That, in turn, has led to the expansion of the amount of time in any broadcast day devoted to news programming on weekdays: a half-hour each in the morning, at noon, six and 11. On weekends, one hour of local news was offered each day. Today, two hours of local news on weekdays has become four and a half-hours, and on weekends, the nightly local newscasts have been supplemented by two hours of morning local newscast each day.
That growth at the local TV level is a microcosm of what has happened in the industry nationally. From the creation of numerous all-news network cable channels, to the prime-time newsmagazines on good old-fashioned “broadcast television networks,” the amount and variety of news information available to the public has increased exponentially.
And then there’s the Internet. The overwhelming amount of news and information available on the World Wide Web has already begun to change the way the television industry operates. Virtually all televisions news operations now have a “Web” division, with responsibilities that involve the dissemination of news and information on the Internet. Sometimes, that information is a rehash of what has already appeared on the television forum, but increasingly, the Web divisions are generating “new” information that can only be obtained from the computer.
With technological advances being made almost on a daily basis, it’s impossible to predict the degree of changes affecting the TV industry, and the business community in general, in the next 15 years. We look forward to chronicling those changes on our morning business forum, and to reading about them in the Providence Business News in the years ahead.
