Network TV Content, A Day in the Life

On PBS, the “NewsHour” stood out as distinct, not only in evening news but against any other daily program on television we studied — cable, broadcast, national or local.

It began by handling most of the breaking news stories of the day in a news summary, with further coverage of just two — the bombings in Iraq and the plane scare. Both pieces had correspondents, tape and sound, but they were something not seen elsewhere on national TV — shorter packages, something less than a minute. Yet because they were more straight-news pieces, not thematic, magazine-style reports that tried to touch on other issues, they were fairly complete, straightforward news accounts. The retelling of the Iraq bombing story, for instance, gave more on the basic facts of the day’s violence than the longer pieces on network news.

The “NewsHour” skipped altogether the grenade story that led morning news and came second on the evening newscasts as a brief tell story. It also passed on the Jackson trial, which was a major focus of morning and cable news (MSNBC’s top story). It did nothing on the Zion murder trial, a big feature of the morning and on cable (it was Fox’s top story).

The “NewsHour’s” primary “focus” piece following its news summary was a deeper discussion of the fallout from the judge’s decision the day before that United Airlines could default on its pensions. With its substantial treatment on network evening news, this was the most heavily covered topic across network news, though not on cable.

The discussion was billed as a look at “ the likely impact of the bankruptcy judge's decision on United, its workers, and other Americans enjoying or expecting retirement pensions.” While the piece covered much the same ground as other nightly newscasts, the taped package, followed by a 12-minute discussion between Margaret Warner and three pension experts, was more than four times longer than what appeared on the commercial newscasts and went much deeper into the story’s various elements.

That report was followed by one from the Arctic Circle on the melting of the ice pack, and how it is changing life there. The next piece was a lengthy discussion on the fights over judicial nominations. Anchor Gwen Ifill interviewed two federal judges who had “gone through the wringer” of the nomination process, Judge Charles Pickering, who eventually won a recess appointment from President Bush, and James Wynn, who never got to a vote.

The program closed with a feature on King Tut, a story carried by two of the three commercial networks.

Of the “NewsHour’s” four longer segments, in other words, half were long-term developments that were not breaking news — global warming and judicial nominations — and were not seen elsewhere on network news this day. One was a followup to breaking news, and a piece seen widely on network news. The fourth was a feature, also widely seen elsewhere. As a percentage of the newshole, more was unique on the “NewsHour” than we saw on cable or on morning or evening commercial television.