This news broke last week on Oregon Media Central, but KOHD made it official: KTVZ will be the only game in town for local TV news broadcasts, as KOHD is going to be rebroadcasting KEZI news out of Eugene, with a few packages created by a few Bend-based reporters. KOHD will still exist as a station, but they won’t have a local news broadcast. This comment sums it all up nicely.
Honestly, I liked the look/feel of the KOHD broadcast, and felt they did have some good people, but their Web site absolutely sucked. While KTVZ’s is full of ads (they have to pay the bills), at least there is useful content and conversation there. For those of us who aren’t able to be in front of a TV when the news actually is broadcast on TV, online local news is important to me. Thanks to Barney’s inability to ever stop working (I don’t think that dude sleeps), KTVZ has the best online local news content. (The Bulletin’s might be good, too, but it’s mostly hidden behind a paywall.) KOHDs site was usually riddled with typos, layout errors, and ugly grammatical errors, and I never considered it a useful place for online news.
That being said, competition in a market is always good. But it appears KTVZ doesn’t have any now, since KOHD and KBNZ are both just broadcasting sister-station content (and KTVZ-parent company NPG also owns the local Fox affiliate, so that eliminates the other major network).
Update: Forgot to even check, but Jon at HackBend is all over this, too. I knew about the news a few days ago as well, but with Band concerts and other family functions and work projects, this is the first I’ve been able to post anything.