Before And After

The study examined the three network evening news programs and three network morning shows were studied for two ten-day periods. The first was June 18th - 22nd and 25th - 29th, 2001, the second was October 15th - 19th and 22nd - 26th, 2001. The specific programs studied were ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, ABC's Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show and NBC's Today Show.

All broadcasts were monitored from videotaped segments of the program.

Study of the Morning Shows

The portion of the study looking specifically at the morning shows, we examined the two-hour period of 7:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M. ET. To remain consistent, we did not include the third hour of the Today Show which airs in some markets.

Coding process. Researchers worked with a detailed, standardized codebook. All stories were first coded for basic inventory variables—source, date and time in seconds.

Next, coders monitored two distinct elements of these shows, product stories and self-promotions outside of commercial time. They were defined as follows:

1. Product Stories: A product story was defined as a package or interview that had some kind of product attached. It could be a book, CD, kitchen tool, commercial website, movie or something else that could be bought or used to buy things. All products were fully coded as described below.

   Once a product story was identified, coders then examined two other aspects of it:

   Ownership: Who owns the product: Is it owned by the network's parent company? By another of the big three media conglomerates? By some other entity?

   Disclosure: If the network's parent company did own the product, was that relationship disclosed to viewers? By disclosure we mean any mention through either audio or visual means.

    

2. Promotions: The second element coders examined were self-promotions. A promotion was defined as a non-commercial plug or teaser for something connected to that network. It could be a promotion for an upcoming segment on the show, a plug within a story for the network's web page or a promotion for an upcoming segment on another program on that network. Researchers noted the time and type of each promotion.

   Both products and promotions were timed in seconds. In a few instances, a full story was both product oriented and a promotion for an upcoming segment. In these cases the story was coded for both and the time was divided evenly between the two.

In addition to this work, we considered the time devoted to local newsbreaks and commercials in the following manner:

Local Newsbreaks: Local newsbreaks are time that the network hands over to local affiliate stations to provide viewers local news and weather. We calculated the time each network devotes to local news by averaging three broadcasts for each network. Within each network the minutes had almost no variation day to day.

Commercial Time: As with local newsbreaks, commercial time was calculated by taking an average of three broadcasts for each network. Again, commercial time was very consistent within each network.

The Study of Topics—Morning and Evening

The topic breakdowns for both the evening news and the morning shows were based on data compiled by media researcher Andrew Tyndall for the Tyndall Report. For the Evening news programs, Tyndall monitors all news segments in which the reporting involves more than an anchor read. For the morning show, Tyndall monitors all packaged segments outside the local and national newsbreaks. The Project adapted Tyndall's research to the topic breakdowns it has used in earlier studies.

Intercoder Reliability

Intercoder reliability measures the extent to which individual coders, operating independently of one another, reach the same coding decision. Tests were performed throughout the project. No systematic errors were found. When necessary, the coding supervisor reviewed decisions on content variables to be sure coders were in agreement.