When WCVB Boston investigative reporter Mike Beaudet aired a two-part investigation into police officers who resigned before facing discipline, about 165,000 viewers watched the station’s top-rated 6 p.m. newscast.
The same reporting, reformatted as a native TikTok video, generated roughly 444,000 views.
For Beaudet — head of Northeastern’s Reinventing Local TV News project — the disparity wasn’t simply evidence that TikTok has become a bigger platform. It reflected something more fundamental: Local television news no longer controls where audiences first encounter its journalism.
“To me, those are the numbers I want to bang over people’s heads, because you’re missing a huge part of your audience,” Beaudet told TheWrap. “There’s a huge, missed opportunity — creating vertical video and doing it in a way that’s authentic to the platforms.”
That realization is driving strategic changes inside the country’s largest station groups, which are redesigning newsroom workflows around the new assumption that younger audiences increasingly discover journalism on social platforms before they ever encounter a traditional television newscast.
It’s forcing local broadcasters to rethink how stories are assigned, how reporters work, how success is measured and, ultimately, how trusted local journalism reaches the next generation of viewers. This is happening as the share of U.S. adults who regularly get news on TikTok has climbed from just 3% in 2020 to roughly 20% today.
For broadcasters, the stakes extend well beyond social media strategy. Local television remains one of the most trusted forms of journalism in America, but an aging core audience means ratings continue to erode. Executives increasingly see platforms like TikTok not simply as places to distribute clips but as critical entry points for introducing younger audiences to local news brands and where proper reported journalism has a chance to stand out.
The audience shift
Pew Research Center’s data suggests the transformation isn’t being driven by TikTok itself but by a broader shift in news discovery.
“A lot of social media news consumption is incidental,” Pew senior researcher Elisa Shearer told TheWrap.
Rather than opening TikTok intending to find local news, users encounter reporting while scrolling through entertainment, sports or creator content. It’s in the hands of the algorithm. That represents a dramatic departure from decades of local television, when stations relied on viewers intentionally tuning in to scheduled broadcasts.
That shift is exactly what executives at NBCUniversal Local and Hearst Television said they’re seeing reflected in their own audience data and newsroom planning.
“We want to create journalism and then distribute it to all of the places where our audiences consume content,” NBCUniversal Local Executive Vice President of Multiplatform Content Lora Dennis said.
Rebuilding the newsroom
The shift reaches well beyond distribution. It is changing newsroom workflows, reporter responsibilities and how editors think about stories before reporting even begins.
Dennis said editors now decide at the morning assignment meeting how reporting should appear across multiple platforms instead of producing a traditional television package first and adapting it later.
“We think about a story in the morning when it gets assigned and where does that story need to go and what does it need to look like for which platforms?” Dennis said.
NBCU Local formalized that philosophy through its “News Creator Initiative,” launched in early 2025 to train reporters to create video designed specifically for social platforms while maintaining the editorial standards used across its television stations. Dennis said the first cohort increased TikTok followings by 111% while more than doubling engagement, helping make TikTok the company’s fastest-growing social platform.
Those metrics mattered internally not simply because they produced larger audiences, executives said, but because they helped introduce younger viewers to NBC-owned local brands years before many become habitual television news consumers.
Beaudet said that requires reporters to think differently from the beginning of the reporting process, capturing vertical video in the field rather than treating social media as an afterthought once the television package is complete.
Hearst Television described a similar evolution.
“Reaching viewers with our trusted news and information is job one,” said Barbara Maushard, Hearst Television’s senior vice president of news. “TikTok, Instagram, [and] Facebook are all part of our strategy. We want to be everywhere the audience is.”
Maushard said social platforms give Hearst an opportunity to reach younger consumers who may never encounter its reporting through traditional television. “If we can be there with real, verified, fact-checked news, provide transparency, educate about our processes and do so with authenticity, we can extend our position as a trusted source for news and information,” she said.
Hearst also isn’t evaluating TikTok solely by whether it sends viewers back to the evening newscast.
“There is no evidence of direct pay-back from TikTok,” Maushard said. “Growth is more nuanced than that.”
The long-term focus comes amid economic pressures squeezing the local TV industry. Station groups have spent years contending with declining linear audiences, a soft ad market and industry consolidation as broadcasters pursue scale through acquisitions and cost-cutting. Against that backdrop, attracting younger audiences has become less about generating immediate revenue and more about ensuring local news brands remain strong as longtime television viewers age.
Neither Hearst nor NBCU Local specifically described TikTok as a direct revenue driver, and see it more of a long-term audience play. Although the two operate independently, both companies describe remarkably similar strategic changes: creating video specifically for social platforms is no longer a promotional exercise. It’s becoming part of how local journalism itself is produced and distributed.
Trust is the strategy
The companies also insisted TikTok isn’t changing their journalism; it’s changing where that journalism appears.
Pew’s research suggested that distinction may ultimately become local television’s competitive advantage. Americans continue to express substantially greater trust in local news organizations than in information encountered generally through social media.
Rather than competing with creators on entertainment value alone, broadcasters increasingly believe their opportunity lies in bringing professional reporting standards into environments where verified journalism often sits alongside influencers, commentary and algorithmically recommended content.
“Trust in information from social media overall is lower than trust in information from local organizations,” Shearer said.
For Maushard, reaching younger audiences and maintaining editorial standards are inseparable.
“Those things are not mutually exclusive,” she said. “They can’t be.”
Dennis echoed that philosophy.
“It’s really not a different approach,” she said. “It’s the same standards that we use across all of our platforms. It’s just the distribution that’s different.”
The implications extend well beyond TikTok.
For decades, local television measured success by how many viewers came to the evening newscast. Increasingly, station executives are measuring success by how effectively their journalism reaches audiences wherever they happen to be —whether that’s a television set, a smartphone or a social feed.
The strategy ultimately reflects a larger business challenge confronting local broadcasters. As linear audiences continue to age, executives increasingly view TikTok as the front door to the next generation of local news consumers.
Beaudet believes many newsrooms are still adjusting to that reality.
Stations that simply post television packages online are missing the point, he said. “Throwing a reporter package on digital — that’s not a strategy. Young people see right through that.”
“Trained journalists need to be in that space,” he said.
News organizations can no longer assume audiences will come to them. The next era of local television may instead be defined by which broadcasters successfully carry their credibility into the places where audiences now discover news.
For station executives, the question is no longer whether TikTok belongs in the newsroom workflow. It’s whether trusted local journalism can remain relevant without it.
