2004 Annual Report - Network TV Content Analysis

What are Americans now getting from network news?

In recent years, five major trends have dominated the broadcast news divisions: shrinking audience, intensifying budget constraints, competition from 24-hour cable news, the fast growth and then decline of prime time news magazines, and the increased influence within news divisions of morning programs.

It seems logical to ask what impact they are having on what viewers see. Have the nightly newscasts retreated from their traditional role of resembling, in effect, the front-page of the daily newspaper, in favor of becoming more infotainment-oriented? Have the journalistic styles of the nightly newscasts and the morning programs converged to the extent that the first hour of the morning programs is now an alternative source for the same type of news? Has PBS's "NewsHour" managed to stake out a separate journalistic terrain in which it not only covers stories differently but also covers altogether different stories than the three network news programs?

To get answers, this study conducted a content analysis of all three network evening and morning newscasts, as well as the "NewsHour" on PBS. The study encompassed a month of weekday newscasts (20 days), selected to include four of each weekday (see Methodology), 110 hours of news programming, an examination of nearly 2,000 separate stories.¹ Earlier studies have offered some sense of the news agenda of prime time television news magazines.

The quick answers:

• Having experimented with tabloid, sensation, lifestyle and celebrity during the mid-1990s, nightly network newscasts have become more traditional, some might say serious, in their topic agenda since September 11. It is an oversimplification, however, to suggest they have returned to the news agenda of 15 years ago.

• However they have evolved, nightly newscasts remain quite distinct from morning newscasts or cable--more likely to cover the major news of the day and to do so with stories that are carefully written and edited, and more densely sourced than elsewhere on television.

• People who get their news from network morning shows, on the other hand, are seeing a world more focused around true crime, entertainment, lifestyle, and, when they are covered, the human interest angle on government and foreign affairs.

• The "NewsHour" resembles morning news in its interview-heavy format as well as the nightly news in its public policy content. But it has adopted a focus on government and foreign affairs that is even heavier than the front pages of most newspapers.