2005 Annual Report - Cable TV Content Analysis

Last year, the study found that the cable day broke down into four distinct parts of the day: the traditional morning show, daytime, early evening and prime time. Each had its own personality, with the three networks remarkably similar within each time frame. This year, to look more closely at those dayparts, we examined an hour of daytime, a prime-time talk show and the closest thing that each of the network offers to a prime-time signature newscast, all in a 20-day period.⁶

Prime-Time Talk Shows

The highest-rated program on every network is a prime-time talk show, and we examined each of them: Larry King on CNN, Bill O'Reilly on Fox and Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

The three shows are built around interviews, which take up 81% of their time, but they are not identical. King leans almost entirely on interviews -- 95% of all his time. The O'Reilly Factor relies on them heavily as well (79%), but 20% of the program's time is made up of the host reading news items and commentaries of his own.

MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews has evolved into something different. A quarter of its airtime (26%) is packaged pieces. Interviews with guests and MSNBC reporters make up 67% of the time. The remaining 8% is briefs and voice-overs. The channel appears to be trying to morph Hardball into something that is partially a news program.

The talk shows build their appeal partly around their hosts, of course, and partly around the celebrity of their guests rather than issues or events. As a group, these shows dedicated most of their time to three main topic areas in 2004: the elections (17%), government (16%), and celebrity/entertainment (16%). Lifestyle stories accounted for another 11% of the airtime and domestic affairs 14%.

Yet in choice of topics, the three programs also had different characters. Larry King devoted close to half (45%) of his time to entertainment and lifestyle topics, more than twice the figure for O'Reilly (21%) and three times as much as for Matthews (13%). Matthews, a former congressional press aide, spent more than half of his time on government and election topics, (the next most popular topics on CNN and Fox). O'Reilly's program was more of a mix.

Beyond topic, the most striking difference among the three shows is in the presence of the host's opinion. Nearly every story on Fox's O'Reilly Factor (97%) contained O'Reilly's opinions, even his quick news briefs. CNN's Larry King was nearly the reverse, with only 2% of segments including his opinions. And despite to his reputation for dominating the guests, Chris Matthews on Hardball offered his opinion just 24% of the time.

Topics on Cable News Programs

Percent of all time

Cable's Version of the Evening News

None of the cable channels airs a traditional evening newscast, but each has programs that come closer than others: Special Report with Brit Hume on Fox, NewsNight with Aaron Brown on CNN, and Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

The shows do more traditional storytelling than other cable programs, but produced tape packages are still only half as prevalent as on commercial network news -- 42% of all time versus 86%. In format, these news programs are closer to network morning news, or PBS, where packages make up a third of time.

In the topics they cover, the cable shows also differ from their broadcast counterparts. They cover government less (18% vs. 29% of time on network), and the broad range of domestic issues half as much (10% versus 20%). Meanwhile celebrity and lifestyle, virtually non-existent on broadcast nightly newscasts, account for 16% of the time on their cable counterparts. The only topic that gets similar amounts of time on both cable and broadcast network evening newscasts is foreign affairs.

In depth of sourcing, the news round-up programs do better than their cable siblings, but again fall short of levels found on network evening news or in print. That pattern also holds true for the mix of viewpoints offered.

Source Transparency on Cable versus Network News

Percent of all stories

Range of Viewpoints, Cable versus Network News

Percent of applicable stories

Are there differences between the networks here? Aaron Brown's program on CNN leans the most on taped edited packages -- double Keith Olberman on MSNBC and more than Brit Hume on Fox. Olbermann favors summaries of the news (more than triple that of CNN or FOX). Hume is a mix of taped packages followed by interviews. The Hume program is also Washington-centric -- 60% of it concerns government, the military and politics).

Daytime

The bulk of the cable news networks' time, between 5 and 7 hours a day, is made up of programs that might be called dayside. These shows, between 9 a.m. and roughly 3 p.m. depending on the channel, track the news of the day as it is happening.

The dayside programs offer a broader mix of storytelling formats than anything else we studied on cable. Edited packages take up 20% of the time, live interviews and standups 36%, and anchors' reads, sometimes with pictures, another 22%. Shown during the workday, these programs are more likely than others to carry events live (18% of time).

Yet like their evening counterparts, these programs are conspicuously limited in their range of topics. Entertainment and lifestyle stories were given the most attention -- a quarter of all airtime, (26%) nearly exactly the same as on prime-time cable talk shows. Interestingly, the daytime programs studied devoted less time to the elections (8%) than the other cable programs.

Sourcing on these daytime news programs was measurably thin. More than half, 56%, of all stories had not even a single fully identified source. Another 28% had just one. A mere 3% of all stories contained four or more fully transparent sources.

Journalist Opinion on Cable News Programs

Percent of applicable stories

Despite what Klein of CNN suggested, the daytime programs we studied were even less focused on the storytelling he was referring to than the rival networks.

At noon, CNN Live Today was the least devoted to packaged pieces (roughly half as much time as Fox News Live and a third as much as MSNBC Live). It spent more time instead on quick anchor reads. And lifestyle stories made up more than 20% of all airtime.

Fox News, on the other hand, tended to spend more time covering live events, and as a result offered more coverage about the government than either of the other stations.

Summary

For the second straight year, content analysis raises substantial questions about the nature of reporting on cable news. The time required to continuously be on the air seems to take a heavy toll on the nature of the journalism presented. While there are differences between channels identified this year in coding of the thoroughness of the reporting, the sector generally falls behind those of other media studied.

It appears that the appeal of cable is its convenience. It is there when you need it, and in a nation of multi-taskers, it can be on as a kind of background, something we can turn to in moments of curiosity.

The problems exposed in the content analysis may begin to seem more troubling to viewers when the Internet in the next year or two begins to meaningfully add searchable video. At that point, the Web will begin to present television on demand, when you want it, and in a searchable form.

Then the second disadvantage of cable as an on-demand medium will become more important: the fact that one has to sit through "the wheel" of whatever is on before a subject of choice might appear.

The Internet will offer the advantages of carefully produced packages, with the convenience of having it there when you want it.

The question will be how much hold the ease of television has on viewers -- it comes at you without your having to so much as click a mouse -- combined with the impression of its being up to the minute because it is "live."