Back in 2018, FTVLive wrote a story about TV stations that were spending time and money trying to get viewers to go to the station’s facebook page.

Some stations were even holding contests with major prizes to viewers that followed them on Facebook.

In January 2018, FTVLive wrote, “For some reason, TV stations and their newsrooms will spend a lot of money and a lot of time trying to get viewers to go to their Facebook page. The station does not own Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg does. Why are you spending the money and the time trying to get viewers to go to a digital property that you don't own, nor one that you have control over?” we wrote, adding, ”Why not put that time and effort into getting the viewers to come directly to your website? Spend the time and the money to get people to skip the middleman and come directly to your website. Something you own, something your sales department can sell.”

Last week, CNN did a story about how Facebook is now freezing out TV stations and not directing traffic from FB to the stations’ websites.

CNN writes, “Facebook is shunning the news business in the US. The Meta-owned company has quietly made changes in recent months that have dramatically reduced referral traffic to media outlets. The move has put considerable dents in the daily traffic publishers see, with the damage appearing to be more pronounced among those who publish more hard news-oriented content.

“If you’re a major publisher, you’ve gotten nicked,” an executive at a major media company…”

FTVLive has tried to warn stations and media groups for years that this was going to happen, and now it has.