Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, told attendees of the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas it’s up to local broadcasters to step into the role of local government watchdog with more newspapers folding, as reported by TVNewsCheck.

Schieffer was accepting the Distinguished Service Award from the NAB when he told the room, unless there is someone in the community, “that keeps an eye on local government, we are going to see corruption in this country in a way never seen before.”

“You cannot have a democracy unless people have that independently gathered version of events compared to what government is telling them,” Schieffer said. “More and more it’s going to be the broadcaster that is depended on for that accurate information.” Read more

By all accounts, this year’s Fox affiliates meeting at the NAB convention went significantly better than last year’s.

Last April’s meeting between Fox executives and affiliate representatives amounted to a retrains shakedown, with Fox demanding that affiliates share a significant portion of the revenue they generate from carriage deals.  At the meeting this week, the focus was on the positive.

“It was 180 degrees different. It was positive,” Jon Hookstratten, Fox executive VP of network distribution, told B&C.  “People are very excited about having live sports on Saturday nights. After what we went through last year, it feels good.” Read more

In a video produced by two professors–Scott Hodgson at  the University of Oklahoma and Chandra Clark at The University of Alabama–and their students, local meteorologist remember the devastating swarm of tornadoes that hit Alabama and Missouri last April (video above).

The short documentary, which was produced with help from the Broadcast Education Association and the NAB, emphasizes the important role that TV weathercasters play in the event of severe weather.  [Via TVNewsCheck]

John Baisley (right), executive vice president of Panasonic Solutions Co., stood on stage before TV industry insiders at NAB this week and assured the audience  that there would be no disruptions in the availability of P2 cards and tape stock as the Tokyo-based company works to rebound from the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last month.

While Baisley said that there would be no shortage of Panasonic media, he did mention that the company is having some problems in the production of its equipment.

“Although our factories came away from the disaster relatively unscathed, we are having issues with component suppliers that were located in the affected area of Japan,” he said. “We are still working on model by model impact, but suffice to say, we will experience some product availability issues in the short term.”

Baisley indirectly underscored the significance of the P2 announcement by announcing that worldwide sales of P2 HD had recently passed 200,000 units. [Via TVTechnology]