By JIM SCHUH
of The Gazette
It was a gradual thing.
At first, I found myself staying around to watch local TV news to see the top stories and maybe the quick weather synopsis the stations put on about five minutes into their evening newscasts. Then I began looking for something else to watch.
Now I find myself mostly surfing the channels after the headlines - not even waiting for the top stories and the weather.
What's happened to me?
Apparently the same thing that's happened to thousands of others - we're not watching local TV newscasts much any more. Younger people are abandoning local TV news and going to the Internet.
Why?
Three recent articles may help explain the phenomenon - comments to radio and TV news directors from CNN Correspondent Christiane Amanpour in the November/December issue of the Columbia Journalism Review; the November issue of the Radio and Television News Directors Association publication, The Communicator; and an article by Deborah Potter and Walter Gantz entitled "Bringing Viewers Back to Local TV News" in the fall issue of Civic Catalyst, from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.
Potter, the executive director of NewsLab in Washington, D.C., and Gantz, chairman of the Indiana University Department of Telecommunication, note that the content of the newscast is a reason many people don't watch. More definitive reasons include too much crime and violence in local news; too much negativity and sensationalism; it's boring and irrelevant; it's too shallow; it's more entertainment than news.
In "Time of Peril for TV News," the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) report notes that the root cause of the problem may be that the television business is reducing the elements that attract viewers - "enterprise, localism, breadth, innovation and sourcing" - all to maintain profit margins.
The report says local "television news is driving Americans away from what was long the most popular and trusted source of information in the country." A substantial number of young people who don't watch local TV news say it's too superficial and too repetitive.
CJR's report notes the surest way to lose lead-in audiences "is to trick up newscasts with easy gimmicks." It adds the best way to keep or build an audience "is to cover a broader range of issues and topics." That's at odds with a currently popular programming strategy that aims at specific target audiences to please advertisers.
CJR says Campaign 2000 this year made politics the second most-covered topic behind crime, but that 93 percent of the local TV news stories in its study dealt with the "horse race or tactics of the campaign," rather than substantive items such as candidates' positions on issues or how they might affect the local community.
According to CJR's report, stations with declining ratings cram more stories into their newscast to give the illusion that they cover the whole community. Viewers hate that. CJR adds that stations losing ratings air almost twice as many very short stories lasting less than 20-seconds.
Covering the world in a minute is a prime example.
Here is some of what CJR suggests to remedy the situation: Cover more of the community. Produce more longer stories and fewer short ones. Focus more stories around major local institutions. Do fewer demographically-targeted stories. Send reporters to the scene along with a camera crew, rather than having news anchors do the reporting. Air fewer crime stories. Broadcast more local stories. Do more investigative work, news series and tough interviews, and use less feed material from the networks.
The CJR report concludes that if TV stations keep insisting on profit margins that come from "gutting newsrooms … the biggest loser in the Internet revolution will not be newspapers, but local broadcast television news."
Potter and Gantz cite their survey showing 76 percent of the respondents said they'd watch more TV news if it covered more community issues and activities, and 72 percent said they'd watch more coverage of local schools. Many would watch more health and consumer stories, but they want to know about good and bad doctors, health insurance and nursing homes - not just the latest medical breakthrough. Sixty percent said they'd watch more TV news if it covered local government issues.
The conclusion from Potter and Gantz is that there's a yearning for local TV news that "truly informs viewers about their communities - not by covering the latest murder or car crash - but by focusing on news that matters to people."
Amanpour says, "Think about how much more of a contribution we could make to this great society if we weren't so dependent on… those hocus-focus-pocus awful groups who tell us what people are not interested in…" including serious news, presidential elections, foreign news and that "Americans don't care about anything but contemplating their own navels… It's in fact just the opposite. What Americans don't care much about is the piffle we put on TV these days. What they don't care about is boring… stories and what they really hate is the presumption that they are too stupid to know the difference… That's why they are voting with their off switch."
Amen.
You may reach Jim Schuh at The Gazette, or by e-mail at jpschuh@excite.com.