I was watching a YouTube video recently where the presenter traced the sorry state of TV journalism to a point when network execs decided that news departments had to turn a profit, instead of being viewed as a public service. When did this happen? Was it due to declining market share caused by the widespread adoption of cable? Were channels like CNN always aligned as a profit making venture? Was there a race to the bottom to crank out sensationalism, celebrity gossip and click bait?
I seem to remember something about early broadcast licensing that required a certain amount of time set aside for the public benefit and that was the basis for news programming. Seems a bit of a slippery slope. Lack of guidelines has you ending up the the Kardashians being “news.”
Early in the history of broadcast television part of the criteria for holding a broadcast license from the FCC was providing a certain amount of public service content, e.g. news, weather and hazard alerts, election information, et cetera regardless of revenue generated. Because of this, networks accepted this as an inevitable cost of business at the corporate level and there was prestige in having a high degree of perceived quality in newscasting and reporting. However, in local markets, competition and the inability to cover stories in as great a depth and duration as print outlets led to a lowering of standards and presentation of sensationalism and ‘fluff’ telejournalism starting with the era of ‘action’ and ‘eyewitness’ news, which slowly filtered back up to the corporate news, initially in morning and expose ‘news’ shows but by the 'Nineties being directly inserted into mainline evening news broadcasts. The competition from cable–not just news but all aspects insofar as cable channels would run entertainment programming which the network broadcasters all had simultaneous news broadcasts–forced networks to look at their bottom line in all programming, and thus, ‘infotainment’, based on cultivating manufactured outrage, subsumed any attempt at real newscasting. It’s hardly fair to blame the networks, though: they’re just responding to the popular demand for less content and more sensation. Monkey see, monkey do.
BTW, the Cable News Network (CNN) was originally an actual 24 hour hard news channel that had actual reporting and news that the major networks were missing. It was on the ground floor of reporting many of the breaking stories of the 'Eighties and early 'Nineties including the Iran-Contra affair, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, narcoterrorism, and of course, the 'round the clock coverage of the First Gulf War. At some point between then and the millenium (probably about the time MSNBC was launched) it turned from being hard news to a personality-based talking head channel that distinguishes itself from Fox News only by not featuring ads encouraging you to sell your investments and buy gold.
During the 1950s news was a money-loser. The network newscasts were only 15 minutes long. Most news shows - documentaries, opinion, talk, interviews - were slotted in the Sunday ghetto. Ratings were extremely low even for the more famous shows like See It Now. Sponsors hated controversy almost as much as they hated small audience and refused to put money into shows.
Two things changed that. The quiz show schedules and the 1960 election. The networks were desperate to wipe themselves clean of the scandal and heavy coverage of the election made that possible. Viewers tuned in for this first true television election. Conventions had been broadcast before, but the ones in 1960 were covered in force and in prime time. They got huge acclaim and huge audiences.
Networks started increasing their news budgets, huge increases, double, triple what was spent before. They covered that because sponsors became willing to put money into news. Huntley-Brinkley and Cronkite went to half-hour programs in 1962. Coverage of the space program made people think to turn to televisions for live news. Then everybody in the country watched after Kennedy’s assassination when all other broadcasting was suspended for four days.
Another change, really as important, was the development of smaller and more mobile video news cameras and satellite relays. For the first time live news meant live. Previously film had to be flown and processed, costing time and money. Television is images. The more live images it showed, the more viewers it attracted. Yes, this led to “if it bleeds, it leads” but it also made everything serious possible.
So news built over the decade of the 60s and became a force and also became expected to make money. But most of the important changes occurred well before the time Stranger is talking about.
Like everything else, it came in tiny little steps.
In the earliest days of TV, news was basically one guy reading a script, with still pictures taken from the wire, or reused newsreel files that were a week old. In 1953 the Today show premiered, was able to show a profit at a time when nobody even thought people would turn their sets on. All the network morning shows have since had periodic battles for ownership between the news and entertainment divisions.
But 60 Minutes was the first prime time news show to actually draw viewers on a regular basis. Network executives discovered news actually could get viewers and ratings, and even turn a profit in some circumstances. Then there were a series of deregulations starting in the mid-1970’s that had the effect of enabling networks to find more ways to make money. One of those ways to turn news into a profit center. (This was before cable was a real threat.)
And yes, CNN was always intended to make a profit, although it certainly did not in its first years. The early executives found unconventional ways to reduce the cost of news gathering, and Ted Turner was willing to give it time to make money.
HOWEVER. . .
It’s also been proven time after time that viewers don’t actually want to watch heavy duty news on TV (e.g., ratings for* PBS News Hour* are much lower than any of the three network newscasts) so it’s hard to blame network executives for not giving the public what it doesn’t want.
[QUOTE=Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC]
I think if you did a survey of the 300 million Americans, I think something like 50 million would tell you they want to read the complete works of William Shakespeare. They won’t.
[/Quote]
With the advent of cable came news as a stand-alone entity. Traditional network news could be carried by profits from entertainment programming, but CNN et al. didn’t have that option (at least not to the same extent).
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote, but I’ll just point out that up through the 'Eighties or early 'Nineties network news divisions were not expected to make money or at least be held to the kind of revenue generation that entertainment programs were. There was competition between networks for having the most highly rated program but that was largely a prestige metric; the amount of revenue generated during the half hour of news was dwarfed by both daytime and prime time television. It was really the advent of cable channels, which offered an alternative to the news programs that were shown simultaneously on all three networks, which forced networks to start competing on any entertainment basis, something which actual news programs are poorly suited to do. In fact, I don’t know a single person who regularly watches broadcast network news or regards it as a primary source of news.
The FCC required public interest program at 3 hours per week. So that was usually easily covered by half hour of news daily plus and “affair” program or “on the town” type of show.
I was recently talking to a couple of coworkers of different generations (by about a ten year gap); the older made a caustic comment along the lines of “Kids don’t go outside any play games any more, they just play games on their smartphones and watch MTV,” and the younger, in all seriousness, said, “What’s MTV?”
And I’m older than both of them by a good decade and change. Pretty soon, I"m going to be telling the youngsters about the quaint old days where we used to type on keyboards with our fingers and watch “films” featuring people playing pretend rather than computer-generated characters.
We still won’t have flying cars or luxury hotels in the rings of Saturn, though.
My dad worked for CBS in the sixties (not broadcast division). Bill Paley told him that news was a public service that was paid for by the entertainment division.
Most people don’t remember that the Today show was originally intended to be a soft news program. It mixed national news coverage with some lifestyle stories, but was intended to be a brief summary of the news in fifteen-minute blocks. Over time they realized that people actually watched for much longer periods so they started adding in feature-style programming. Even so, it was the Home show that Pat Weaver ran after Today that was more lifestyle oriented. So news heavy was Today that it had a continual battle with the nightly news shows over resources. Today stayed a major news program into the 1960s, with John Chancellor and Barbara Walters among the anchors.
Today was from almost the beginning a huge profit center, so much so that the other networks threw their news people against it. Walter Cronkite hosted the CBS Morning Show, e.g. The networks saw there was money in news early. And as I said earlier, it was the flood of sponsors into news that allowed the nightly news shows to be expanded.
One of the reasons that cable got into news is that it was already a money-maker for the networks. And the local stations. Local news expanded and expanded, with shows running two hours or more in late afternoons in most large cities. All this was happening by the early 1970s.
I definitely put the combination of news and money much earlier than the 80s and 90s. It started in the 50s, expanded in the 60s, and was institutionalized by the 70s. In some ways you reverse the timeline. It was in the 80s and 90s that the network execs started cutting network news divisions because of the competition and the realization that much more money could be made elsewhere, except for the morning shows.
I agree that Eyewitness News was the crucial change, but I disagree that this came from small markets and small stations that couldn’t afford real new. From Frank Rich:
Primo was the guy, even if New York wasn’t first - I think Philadelphia would have been earlier. But the stations that tried this format found their ratings increase, and the other stations had to follow.
The anchors have seemed to tone down the happy talk some, since they don’t seem comfortable with it, but in San Francisco it is all fires and car crashes and low quality “investigative” journalism. “Is there a Santa? The answer will surprise you.”