Debut of South Florida Live

As of this writing, it's roughly three hours until "South Florida Live" debuts on the web and on the Miami-area airwaves. It's essentially a joint production of Tribune-owned WSFL-TV and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Give Sam Zell credit for conducting the boldest TV/print "synergy" experiment so far, after witnessing a long line of synergistic non-starters and outright failures.

The idea here is to create an unconventional newscast using the newsgathering resources of the Sun-Sentinel paper, as opposed to an independent assignment desk. It's also to look as flashy as possible for as cheaply as possible.

A "SFL" rehearsal was released on the web. Of course, it's a work in progress, and it's easy to criticize any venture like this when it's in such a nascent stage. Inauspicious debuts are quite normal for TV, although Tribune set a high bar for on-air disasters during the hurried launch of Fox5 San Diego's "unconventional" newscast (huge map of San Diego in the parking lot, anybody?).

There are several things to like about SFL. The graphics actually manage to be (somewhat) innovative, informative, and (yes) flashy at the same time. The hosts have personality and appear perfectly comfortable on camera. The set in the center of the Sun-Sentinel newsroom seems to work. There's a feature reporter who was actually live somewhere. The Zellian dream of doing the weather using the newspaper's weather map was apparently scrapped in favor of modern, conventional weather graphics.

For all the flash and relative polish, there was one thing conspicuously missing: news. Sure there was a bunch of yapping. And some actual weather forecasting (no traffic, but that's not a mortal sin). But where was the news? Where was the point where they actually presented topical information of interest to their specific local viewing audience? Perhaps that detail is being left out of the rehearsals, but if not I forecast stormy seas for SFL.

Okay, there was a lengthy feature about US-Cuba relations. Presented with the ultra-compelling visual accompaniment of a small image of a web story. The story was introduced in a lackadaisical, time-consuming manner that reverses the conventional wisdom that viewers want more information, faster. Other than the shaky camera work during the sound bite, this is the antithesis of MTV (so much for Lee Abrams' rock n' roll thinking).

Contrary to brain-dead media management belief, people don't want to watch a bunch of people sitting around talking about nothing. The key to maintaining (and even building) a broadcast news audience in the internet age is to present relevant content in a timely manner. This isn't rocket science.

The bottom line is that this could work. Relying on a newspaper for broadcast newsgathering is certainly unconventional, in that it potentially de-emphasizes crashes, shootings and other shallow "breaking" news. This could result in smarter, more enterprise-driven stories making it to air (think: NPR on TV). But in this format, an ounce of smart news will likely be lost in a gallon of meaningless drivel.