Local TV Content, A Day in the Life

The three time slots for local news — morning, evening and late night — differ in what they offer viewers. The morning news segments stand out in particular as quite different from the other two. Here is a look at the day in local TV news, starting with morning shows.

Morning News: It’s Not the ‘Today Show’3

In the morning news hour on May 11, viewers in Houston and Milwaukee heard about a lot of different goings-on. In all, there were 275 different news items — an average of 39 for each hour segment — and that excludes traffic, weather, teases, promos, banter among the anchors and commercial time. For the vast majority of those items, what was heard was a quick anchor read with some video and perhaps sound on tape (which unlike packaged reports do not require anyone to actually leave the station but pulled from news services.)

Most of the “news” was crime or accidents from the night before. The hour devoted a little less of the total time to crime and accidents than the half-hour programs later in the day, but here they were perhaps even more prominent. Crime or accident news was the lead story following traffic and weather in every single newscast in the two cities.

On the 6:00 a.m. news on Houston ’s KHOU, for example, the entire first news segment, sandwiched between two traffic and weather reports, was eight crime or accident reports. The list:

Headline tease
Banter
Weather
Banter
Traffic
Metrorail accident
Train accident follow-up
Man and baby in stolen car
Charges against Texas criminal
Apartment shooting
Man killed in stolen car
Teenager found dead Pastor’s car bursts into flames
Weather
Traffic

All that came in the first 13 minutes of the program.

The lead live breaking-news item across all three Houston stations that morning (and even into the evening) was about the car that ran a red light the night before and crashed into a metro rail train. The scene had been completely cleared by morning, with no impact on the morning commute. All three stations, however, led with a reporter live at the site where the crash had occurred. Viewers mostly saw the same images of the crash that aired the night before —flashing lights, injured people on stretchers — and heard from the same transit official.

View KPRC TV Video Clip (Get Quicktime® Plug-in)
View KHOU TV Video Clip (Get Quicktime® Plug-in)
View KTRK TV Video Clip (Get Quicktime® Plug-in)

Interestingly, information concerning the topic with the widest public impact — the overall safety of the metro rail system — differed on each station. According to KTRK, metro rail had been “plagued” with so many wrecks that it “claims the worst first-year safety record of any rail service in the country.” But KPRC distinguished between accidents and fatal accidents: “This is the 80 th accident involving the light rail . . . but this is the first accident in which someone was killed.” KHOU’s live reporter offered perhaps the most nuanced picture: “Metro rail has been involved in 70 or so accidents since it opened. And we’re told that actually recently that number of incidents had dropped when it comes to trains and cars. In fact, it has been cut in half compared to this time last year.”

Milwaukee stations did not have the same kind of dramatic overnight news to offer, but found several overnight crime stories to lead their coverage. A double homicide, a daughter stabbed, the ongoing search for a missing man, a teen killed, and the murders in Zion , IL all topped the news this morning.

News of local government of civic issues, were mentioned only later in the program if at all. Viewers of Milwaukee ’s WDJT that hour would have heard briefly about a handful of items that related at all to local civic issues: election fraud discovered in Wisconsin , renter’s insurance, local jobs for youth and new housing for local inmates, new approval figures for the governor, and the renaming of the Marquette ’s sports teams. But all of these were anchor tell stories, sandwiched in the middle of the newscast and with less than three minutes of total airtime. WTMJ did stand out on this day, though, for a two-minute piece on the new bankruptcy law, complete with an interview (though even this appeared 27 minutes into the hour).

In Houston , the tax bill passed overnight by the Texas legislature, on the other hand, which would lead the Houston Chronicle the next morning and change residents’ property, education and other tax rates, was relegated to a 13-second anchor voice-over 30 minutes into the hour on KHOU and got similar treatment on KTRK. On KPRC, the tax overhaul still ran in the form of an anchor voice-over, but appeared earlier — eight and a half minutes in. Most of Houston ’s morning radio news programs, by comparison, reported the tax story at the top of the hour, and some made it their talk and call-in segments that day.

The few “packages” that did appear in the morning were normally softer, lifestyle pieces and were different from station to station. In Houston , besides the lead report on the metro rail crash, none of the packages were the same. KPRC ran two — work involved in the upkeep of a local Marriot hotel, sex offenders living in group homes — and two separate live reports on a teenager who stabbed his mother’s best friend. KHOU devoted packages to the strained relations between President Bush and Congress over Iraq , the winners of Survivor’s “Amazing Race,” and consumer advice on protecting against identity theft. KTRK ran just one package, on insects invading a city in Arizona .

Morning News Packages, May 11, 2005

Evening and Late Night News

The evening and late night newscasts in each city were thoroughly different from the morning.4 But they were nevertheless alike. Both half-hours tended to have more packaged reports and were even more locally focused than the morning.

Two patterns emerged. The first is that most of these newscasts demonstrated what we have come to call the “hook and hold” approach to local TV news. The phrase refers to the habit of opening the newscast with visuals that are meant to be alarming and eye-grabbing— flashing lights and yellow police tape — to get to the broadcast’s lead story, then repeatedly teasing viewers with the promise of another report, held till the end to try and keep people from changing channels. In the middle, stations carry the brief anchor-read stories that they apparently feel need to be covered but that aren’t “good TV” — legislative activities, budget news, etc. The item at the end, teased throughout the broadcast, is usually a funny or unusual piece of video, such as a married couple who say it was Elvis that brought them together. (For a more detailed discussion of this approach please see 2005 Local TV Content Analysis). On May 11, “hook and hold” was evident in both the evening and late newscasts, except that the middle of the newscast didn’t cover much in the way of government and other local issues. It was more crime and some national wire stories.

KPRC’s 6 p.m. newscast in Houston, for instance, hooked viewers in with the live, breaking news that the Houston Crime Lab had been re-accredited, followed by a live report from the scene of the metro rail crash that occurred 20 hours earlier (with the same eye-grabbing visuals as in the morning newscasts), and a then bike accident. The middle of the newscast included voice-overs about child murder, teacher alcoholics, the evacuation in D.C., the Iraq car bombs and local crimes. Teased throughout was the final package—a girl boxer with dreams of going to the Olympics.

Not every station followed the pattern exactly, however. KTVZ’s 6 p.m. newscast in Houston used the “hook and hold” but offered more serious news in between. It drew viewers in with a graphically displayed “Missing Student” story in the middle aired correspondent packages about two local pieces of legislation — an education bill and a gun bill — with some of the most in-depth reporting we saw that day.

In Milwaukee, WITI’s 10:00 p.m. newscast represented still another variation on the theme—the traditional “hold” but a much more serious lead story than the normal “hook.” It was a new state law that would restrict the purchase of some over-the-counter cold medicines. Even here, though, the anchor still tried to give viewers some sense of alarm in the lead in: “If the governor signs this bill you’ll need an ID to buy some over-the-counter drugs,” the anchor began. “Meaning, it will be easier to vote than to cure your cold.”

As for the “hold” teased throughout this newscast? There were actually two: An outer-space elevator and a new game — Robodog soccer.

A second finding for May 11 was that most the stations packaged different stories in the evening than they did on the late news following prime time. While cable news stands out for repeating its news items and even its packages across the day, local TV seems more concerned with giving viewers something different each newscast. Commonly, something that was an anchor read on one of the newscasts was a package on the other, and vice versa. Consider the 6 and 10 p.m. broadcasts on WISN in Milwaukee . At 6 p.m. the Zion murder case, the local Oswald trial, the Marquette nickname, and a boy’s prom dress were packaged reports. At 10, all of those except for the Zion murders were anchor reads with sound, while a pregnant drug addict and a flesh-eating germ became packages.

WISN Milwaukee: Story Rundown May 11, 2005

Finally, the late-night newscasts, with an extra five minutes in their newshole compared with the evening programs, didn’t devote that time to hard news coverage. They were more apt to close the newscast with a soft feature piece. In the final segments of the eight newscasts, viewers got reports on fortune cookies, a feature on an ice cream customer, a couple who believes their marriage centered around Elvis, local White House aides, King Tut, Robodog soccer and sports scores.