Local TV News Project 1999

A year ago we found two paths to ratings success: quality or tabloid. Nearly two-thirds of the very best stations and the very worst were enjoying market success. We theorized that the audience for local news was not so much schizophrenic as segmented. One group liked news full of sensation, revelation, scandal and celebrity. Another liked a more sober information-based approach.

Why didn't the low-road stations fare as well this year? One explanation is simply that we measured different markets. Another possibility is that the tabloid approach is getting old. A third is that our segmentation theory was simply wrong.
A close look at the data suggests that low-scoring stations this year were putting a thinner product on the air. As a group, they were only half as likely to respond quickly to breaking events, nearly twice as likely to send a camera without a reporter, and twice as likely to use out-of-town feeds. They put fewer experts on the air, were more likely to air one-sided stories, and relied more on single and anonymous sources than they did a year ago. The numbers jumped out at us.

Was this year's sample simply different? When we looked at repeat stations with low scores, we saw the same decline. Six of the seven repeaters scored lower in these categories -- which reflect a station's ability to respond effectively, to get people on camera -- not on their broadcast style.
Then we looked at every repeat station in the study regardless of grade, those 19 stations where we examined the same newscast both years. While the majority improved in several categories that didn't 1998_cost anything, such as variety of topics covered, all 19 dropped markedly, an average of 12%, in the areas relating to enterprise.

This year's results, therefore, neither prove nor disprove the theory that audiences are segmenting into different preference groups. But they suggest a more important trend. Whether looking at enterprise, quality of sourcing, or getting both sides of the story, the findings suggest that when it comes to categories that require time and effort, newsrooms are stretching their resources, perhaps to their long-term detriment.