Local. Local. Local.

This has been the mantra for area TV stations since the '40s. Local television stations are able to thrive and survive on how well connected they are with the community they serve. Bottom lines are padded with the dollars advertisers are willing to pay to reach a station's audience.

As new technology becomes available, the trend that local TV management is afraid of is the dwindling amount of people who spend their free time watching local programming. A little less scary, yet still a concern, is the drop in hours a person is spending in front of the tube.

Here's a mouthful: we are getting into the world of reach and frequency and the amount of possible eyeballs in particular day parts within the designated marketing area. Station managers, advertising marketers and others spend hours poring over numbers generated by a mere few hundred households in the area meant to mathematically represent more than a million viewers.

Anyway, everyone in TV land is scared those numbers are falling. Nothing new there.

What is new, is what stations are doing to keep an audience engaged, and hopefully have remotes in hands later.

Welcome to the social media landscape in southeastern Wisconsin. All four local TV news operations have a presence, boasting of thousands likes, fans and followers. It is possible that open discussions in the social media space can cultivate simple likes into brand loyalists, in turn boosting local ratings.

WITI-TV Fox 6 holds the largest audience on Facebook, with more than 94,000 likes. Often conversations vary from breaking news of the moment, hot video on the web and questions on lighter feature stories. WDJT-TV CBS 58 is on the other end of the engagement spectrum with just over 2,400 likes and an automatic feed pushing headlines from its website.

WTMJ-TV 4 is on Facebook with 62,000 likes, and its individual reporters and anchors are known for their work connecting with audiences in the Twitter world. And WISN-TV 12 is at 33,000 on Facebook and like the other outlets, individual news staffers have their own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The stations' movement and growth on these two platforms matches what the industry is seeing on a national scale. However, there is some skepticism if this newly engaged audience will count where it matters most.

"Local broadcasters, through their social presence, can build large audiences, but it's difficult for local advertisers to cultivate audiences to news," Dunia Shive, president-CEO of Belo Corp. told reporters of Advertising Age during the 4A's Transformation Conference in held in Los Angeles this week.

What will be interesting to watch, when we eventually head outside of the presidential political cycle that this year brings, is what local TV stations will do next. There are plenty of opportunities in digital video and mobile that smart local broadcasters will tap into to stay ahead of the curve.

But what remains is the big question: can they leverage enough people through current programming and low-cost marketing that social media affords to maintain a high audience share?

NOTES

GET SOCIAL: GetGlue measures the popularity of TV shows based on the number of check-ins. Last week "WWE Wrestlemania" took the top spot with "Games Of Thrones" in second. You can see which shows rounded out the Top 10 here.

ON THE DESK: Wednesday marked the first official night anchoring for Craig McKee at WISN-TV Ch. 12. He has been reporting at the station for the last couple of weeks and worked on the station's election night coverage on Tuesday. You can see his bio here.

TABLET READING: A number of magazine publishers are working together to offer a subscription newsstand for tablet editions. In a Netflix-type manner, one flat rate could make a handful of electronic editions available at your fingertips. Better Homes and Gardens, ELLE, Esquire, Fortune, Glamour, Parents, People, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, Time and Vanity Fair are among the 32 titles offered by Next Issue Media.