Local journalism isn't dying. It's been too expensive. That is about to change.

Opinion piece by Aaron Nuytemans, CRO at Cuez

For a long time, the argument against hyperlocal news was very simple: the costs never added up. To make local news, you need a reporter, a camera operator, an editor, a producer. You also need a studio and a playout chain. Local stories about a neighborhood dispute rarely justified the heavy technology infrastructure needed to create it.

Automation and software changed the production math over the last decade. AI is accelerating it.

The real problem was never the demand

The question was never about the demand - audiences have always wanted local news. Local news from their street, their school, the local market - this is what resonates with them, this is what they know. Disinterest isn’t the culprit. The cost of production relative to the size of the audience is.

Global news was never cheaper. Its costs were always higher than those of local. However, they had scale on their side; a single big story simply reached millions, so the cost spread across a huge audience. Local never had that scale to absorb it. But breaking news is slowly losing the point - it has become a race to be first. The same story, replicated hundreds of times with a different headline.

The news noise is what's wearing viewers down. The infinite choice of what essentially is the same thing became a problem in itself — the viewers are overwhelmed with the choices out there, but they trust and stay loyal to local.

Depth over breadth

If we look at the next decade, the goal isn’t to offer everything to everyone. The winners of this race will stand for something specific. And this is what a TV channel used to be: someone you trusted to tell you what mattered.

Here I am in 2026 telling you to curate again. This is how you build your brand - through hyper-personal and hyper-local content.

And local is where it makes the most sense. No global outlet will compete with you for the story in your neighborhood. This is where you make a difference. The world needs better local coverage; it needs to be sustained.

This is where automation (and AI) actually help

We all get the ‘AI scares’. Funnily enough, AI is not making journalists obsolete. It is making certain vendors obsolete.

Studio automation and AI-assisted production will not replace journalists, but reduce the production overhead around journalists. Allowing them to focus on what really matters.

Some broadcasters are already experimenting with this and are finding that hyperlocal doesn't just serve audiences better. It serves advertisers better, too.

Hyperlocal audiences are more engaged, more loyal, and more commercially valuable than passive national audiences. Dynamic ad insertion tied to location and behaviour makes it commercially viable at scale.

The ones who recognise it and build production infrastructure that can serve local audiences efficiently will be in a very strong position.

See how Cuez helps broadcasters produce more local content