It’s all fear mongering, basically … stories about murders, car wrecks, and children in danger.
also stories about why we’re all fat.
What I say officially for publication: I watch the local news in the morning for the weather and the traffic reports, both of which all stations in town (Cleveland) repeat 3 or 4 times each half hour. For actual news I rely on listening to NPR while driving to and from work, and on The Daily Show.
Real answer: I put the local news on with the sound muted just to oogle the anchor babes!
Nah, the local news here (Atlanta) is pathetic. It’s usually A car crash of some kind followed by an old guy died in his home then a 3 minute scare-monger (“YOUR KIDS ARE DOING DRUGS!!! DRUGS!!!”), Sports, weather.
I get my news from Yahoo, MSNBC, the BBC, the Dope, Fark, and the Observer.
I don’t watch any TV news. I listen to NPR, and read the local paper on Sunday.
Well, you get to look at Denise Dufala. Hubba Hubba!!
Local TV here is… the same. I mean, it doesn’t vary much. Crimes, Crashes, Murders and Politics. I wish they’d start with Sports, go to Weather, then News so I could skip that part.
Thank you all for your responses. Let me share something with you. Many of you complained about the story choices in local news, specifically the crime stuff. There was an effort within the industry to heed these complaints a few years ago. It was called “family friendly” or “family sensitive” news. These stations tried to put on a newscast without all the violent stuff, thinking that those who didn’t like it would choose to watch them. It didn’t work. The ratings tanked. So it was back to stories requiring the words “shocking”, “tragic” or “brutal” in the lead stories. News these days is seen as a profit center by the companies that own the stations. For those of you who don’t know this, local stations only get a few minutes an hour of regular programming that they can sell as commercial time. However, within local news, every minute of commercial time goes into the stations pocket. Why do you think the trend of starting morning shows in larger markets at 5:00AM began? Most stations in large markets (in general if you have a professional sports team in your city, you are a large market) do two hours of a morning show, a noon show that’s at least 30 minutes long (I produced one that was an hour), then a 5:00, a 5:30, a 6:00 and a 10:00 (or 11:00). That’s five hours of news a day during the week. Most 30 minute shows have four two-minute commercial breaks. That’s eight breaks per hour. In five hours of news, that’s 80 minutes of commercial time a day. The overwhelming majority of TV commericals are 30 seconds long. That means each day, a station has about 160 commercials running in news alone.
Now we get to the good part.
The larger a stations audience is, the more they charge for a commercial. I worked in the 50th largest market in the country. At the time, the prime rate was about 300 dollars for 30 seconds. For arguments sake, I am going to say that 500 dollars a commercial is average for the top 50 markets, as I’m sure a 30 second commercial in New York will be closer to a thousand dollars. Remember our 160 commercials a day? That’s eighty thousand dollars a day, folks. But many advertisers buy in bulk, not paying top dollar. So just for the sake of argument, let’s cut our estimate to a paltry fifty thousand dollars a day. My guess is that the stations from New York (market number one) to at least St. Louis (around number 20) are bringing in this kind of cash.
Yes, Denise Dufala is mighty fine, but personally I’m more partial to Neki Mohan.
Remember, Evil One, I would guess that most of the people that watch the news, and most of the people in general are not like the odd bunch that makes up this board. So all of the well thought out, reasonable, and most importantly, the correct thoughts that have been presented here are not shared by the less than enlightened masses cluttering the streets.
Mm, yea, we’re not a random or representative sample. And some people (my grandfather) just have to watch the news. It’s just habit, I think.
Hey, dammit, I interned at KNBC in Burbank. For all you LA news bashers, let me tell you something…um…actually you are all quite right.
It was a great experience on the technical side of things. You would be amazed at the production facilities that exist in a modern news van. An entire remote piece can now be recorded, edited, dubbed and beamed home ready for the air. The production room during a broadcast is also quite a sight, kind of an organized chaos of monitors and countdown timers.
People in charge of story selection and writing are often disappointed in the level of their work. Local news became an entertainment show rather than an information show years ago. As Evil One described, it is a major source of revenue for the local affiliates, ratings and ad sales are everything. Pictures are primary, words are secondary. There is also a constant pressure to move from one piece to the next, lest the audience become bored. The broadcasts are also tailored to different demo groups at different start times. Too bad such extensive research and daily effort ultimately yields drivel.
I work in local TV news as a graphic designer so I only watch it to see what it looks like. Sure it’s toejam for the brain but it can sure look cool!