Yes I have had that experience too Mari, I guess I will need to start checking the obituaries soon to see if I am still here.. @Mari North
"Local" news in Scotland is a bit strange in the sense that the two main TV channels that broadcast regional news (BBC and ITV) have programmes that cover all of Scotland, so my "local" news is, in fact, news for a whole country.
I don't have a TV but do watch some programmes on a tablet, but not local news, getting all the news I need on the BBC and Guardian apps. I live in a poor post code area for crime, but don't notice it because most it's always related to domestic violence or the discovery of the odd cannibis farm in someone's house. We may get the odd murder every decade but even then it's usually a family feud that got out of hand, and never involves guns as we don't have them, so I feel very safe.
My Mother never misses local news daily and I watch it with her. We have now the Eddy a surf meet with gigantic waves going on. I think it's important to keep up with what's happening in your neighborhood whether good or bad and see about weather forecast especially so you can keep safe. We get morning traffic reports too and if you commute it's good to know what's going on.
It is our wont to tune in to the 6:30 pm news every weekday. Although there are lots of crimes as always, I am amused by the segment of CCTV which is all about crimes caught in CCTV footages. And even if not all are arrested, at least there are follow up stories on what happened next. Most of those footages are robberies and snatchings. I believe that when the CCTV becomes ubiquitous and installed everywhere, crimes will be lesser since criminals know that they are being watched. Another amusing footages are those of road mishaps where we see the culprit on the steering wheel - recently there was the video that showed a van overtaking in a no-overtaking zone which hit an oncoming bicycle. Fortunately the bike rider was alive although confined in the hospital.