A few years ago, I reported on a record haul for local TV stations from political advertising. In the wake of Citizens United, Seattle's broadcast news providers were finding themselves awash in political cash, with KING 5 alone bringing in $14 million from political ads during the 2010 election season.

Presented with this data, David Domke, a journalism professor at the University of Washington, said:

My challenge to the broadcast news organizations would be: What are they going to do for the civic good with all of this money?

One response came in 2012, when KING 5 cancelled Up Front with Robert Mak—even though it was the only show dedicated to public affairs at any commercial television station in Seattle, and even thought Mak had been the only full-time political reporter at any commercial television station in this city.

And now we hear that in 2013, KING 5 will be expanding its local news coverage because:

During a time of shrinking local coverage in daily newspapers, expanding TV coverage is the right move.

Sounds good, but of course it depends on the quality of that coverage. When I sat and watched Seattle's three biggest local TV news broadcasts in the wake of 2010's record take from political ads, the political coverage pretty much sucked. I haven't heard or seen anything to create a different impression, and so with this year shaping up to be another lucrative one for local TV stations—a lot of the $4.6 million that Monsanto just dumped into the No on 522 campaign will end up in KING 5's coffers—Domke's question remains just as relevant: "What are they going to do for the civic good with all of this money?"

Hopefully, as they set out on this new expansion of local news programming, KING 5's executives will provide a more satisfying answer than they have over the past few years. (And—UPDATE—as one Slog reader points out, if KING 5 is looking for a competitor to emulate, it should check out all the airtime and resources that Q13 has lately been putting behind C.R. Douglas.)