North American newsroom staff spend 75% of time on technical busywork

The high technical overhead poses an existential threat to traditional broadcasters as they struggle to compete with digital-first competitors. By spending the vast majority of their time on manual tasks, newsrooms lose the velocity required to maintain local relevance across streaming and social platforms. This technical debt forces a strategic pivot toward software orchestration and unified asset views to automate distribution. The industry's survival now depends on moving away from a 'linear-first' model to one that creates for all platforms simultaneously. Watch for a rise in newsroom investments specifically targeting orchestration layers that sit above legacy MAM systems to bridge the efficiency gap without full hardware overhauls.

The operational strain identified by Caretta Research aligns with broader industry data showing a contraction in broadcast resources. Per a 2024 survey from RTDNA and the Newhouse School, full-time local TV news employment fell 2.9% to roughly 27,000 positions, forcing remaining staff to adopt multi-functional roles spanning camera work, editing, and reporting. This pressure is compounded by the fact that US news consumption shifted significantly in 2025; per the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, social media and video networks surpassed television as the primary news source for Americans, with 54% of audiences accessing news via digital platforms compared to 50% for TV.

To address these bottlenecks, newsrooms are increasingly piloting generative AI and cloud-based orchestration. According to a 2025 Digiday and Arc XP report, 94% of broadcasters and publishers now prioritize AI for workflow efficiency, while 82% use it to automate content scheduling and distribution. Despite this focus, integration remains a primary hurdle. A 2026 Stonebranch report found that while 64% of IT professionals are investing in cloud automation, many organizations still struggle with fragmented data pipelines that prevent automation from being embedded end-to-end across the content lifecycle.

Major broadcast vendors such as Sony, Grass Valley, and Ross Video are responding by focusing on metadata-driven workflows and IP-based infrastructure to support this multi-platform mandate. Industry experts noted during the 2025 IBC show that the conversation has shifted from 'if' broadcasters should migrate to the cloud to 'how' they can create unified hybrid environments. The goal is to establish a 'single pane of glass' for asset management, which some firms estimate can achieve nearly 10% in annual operational savings by reducing the manual file-wrangling currently slowing down North American newsrooms.