2004 Annual Report - Network TV Content Analysis

If nightly news is still the place where viewers can get the most comprehensive sense of the day's events, morning news programs have become clearly more important to network news divisions (see Network TV Audience and Network TV Economics). They have held onto more of their audience and become more important economically to network fortunes.

What are Americans getting in the morning, and how does it compare to evening news? Here we can compare how nightly and morning news allocate their total time for news (rather than just story counts).

The morning news format is suited to flexibility. The programs will transform themselves into covering major breaking news in times of crisis. They revert back to a softer mix in more normal times. Recent times have seen a series of crises.

Yet even during major events, network morning programs offer a markedly different and softer news agenda than nightly news. The two types of newscasts, in other words, are hardly substitutes for each other. And that is not just a matter of approach, where the morning programs emphasize live interviews by the anchors and the evening programs feature edited pieces taped by correspondents.

Compared with the total time on nightly newscasts, the morning news programs:

• Are much more focused on crime (19 percent vs. 5 percent)

• Spend much less time on affairs of government (8 percent vs. 17 percent)

• Spend half as much time on foreign events (13 percent vs. 26 percent)

• Spend vastly more time on celebrities (14 percent vs. 2 percent)

• Spend twice as much time on lifestyle news (15 percent vs. 7 percent)

And these differences are just looking at the first hour of morning news - the more hard-news-oriented hour. If the second hour (and the third in the case of the "Today" show on NBC) had been sampled as well, the differences would have almost certainly been even more pronounced.

Given that morning news ratings are stable or rising, while evening is shrinking, this has significant implications. Those who get their television news in the morning are learning about a different agenda of what matters and are far more likely to talk about the trial in the murder of Laci Peterson, Michael Jackson's child-molestation case or Tom Cruise's movie, even in the supposedly hard-news hour of the morning, than those who get their news in the evening. When they discuss the war in Iraq around the water cooler, it is personalized as human interest in Jessica Lynch rather than issues such as compliance with Security Council resolutions. It is a world where the economy is covered as household finance tips; where science is covered as innovations in personal health or consumer electronics; and where environmental stories such as global warming are covered as the latest weather disaster.

Topics in Network News, 2003

Percent of All Time

Topic	Network Morning	Network Nightly Comm.	PBS Newshour
Government	8%	17%	33%
Foreign/Military	13	26	32
Defense	5	3	1
Domestic	11	18	13
Crime	19	5	1
Business	1	9	5
Celebrity/Enter.	14	2	*
Lifestyle	15	7	6
Science	1	2	3
Accidents/Disasters	9	9	2
Other	3	2	3

*Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

On the other hand, it might be a mistake to imagine that these programs gained in ratings in 2003 because of a lighter news agenda. Indeed, some evidence suggests the morning news programs have moved more in the direction of traditional news about government and foreign affairs lately, thanks, perhaps, to several major events.

Research by the Tyndall Report finds that the 2000 Florida recount represented one such moment. Viewers waking up wanted to know who the next President was, and ratings rose. Eight months later, however, a study of one month of morning show content by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in 2001 saw little in the way of substantive coverage of major news events. That changed after September 11, when coverage became more serious again. Yet that, too, did not last. A PEJ study of the first six months of 2002 found a return to softer topics, though not as far back as in the summer of 2001.

In 2003, the content analysis finds, the war in Iraq represented another spike in coverage of major events in the morning television news and a move toward a more serious agenda.

In June 2001, for instance, only 4 percent of morning stories pertained to government, defense or foreign affairs. In the first half of 2002, that had risen to 14 percent of stories. In 2003, that had doubled again to 29 percent.

Morning News Topics Over Time

Percent of All Stories

	June 2001	Oct. 2001	2002	2003
Government	1%	5%	2%	8%
Foreign/Military	3	9	7	17
Defense	*	15	5	4
Domestic	3	29	8	10
Crime	12	2	13	18
Business	4	3	3	2
Celebrity/Enter.	25	12	20	11
Lifestyle	45	11	38	14
Science	5	14	2	2
Accidents/Disasters	2	1	1	11
Other	0	0	N.A.	3

* Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

While celebrity and lifestyle make up a large percentage of morning news, that percentage is apparently down, from 70 percent of all stories in June 2001 and 58 percent in 2002 to 25 percent in 2003.

Still, to the extent that morning news is becoming the key newscast in any news division, this has significant implications in terms of the values of the news division, the expertise of its reporters and producers, and the knowledge and brand that it provides to the American public. Their prominence and popularity represent a change in the mission of the network news divisions to an emphasis of less serious policy-oriented fare. The fact that these divisions' resources, promotional efforts, star anchors and profits are focused more than they were 15 years ago on the morning programs, and less on their evening newscasts, demonstrates a shift in the center of gravity of their news values.