2005 Annual Report - Local TV Content Analysis

The "hook and hold" approach is a mindset about what viewers want that imparts a surprisingly static, formulaic structure to most local newscasts.

The approach begins with a natural desire to hook viewers at the start. That is done by putting stories that are supposedly "live," eye-catching and alarming at the top of the newscast. The thinking relies on traditional TV journalism priorities like immediacy, localism, danger, and the conventional belief that only highly visual images will retain viewers' attention. The result is that the stories that lead newscasts turn out to be in a notably narrow range of topics, mostly incident-based, public-safety news - what used to be called "spot news," made up of crime, accidents, fires and disasters.

The middle of such newscasts is filled largely with stories that journalists don't want to leave out, but that are considered not good television. That's a surprisingly large band of topics, everything from business to education to science and technology to news about government, social welfare, budgets and politics.

The third part of the "hook and hold" approach is based on "holding" viewers until the end of the newscast. That involves "teasing" some of the funniest or most unusual video, and promising further detail later in the show. "Soft news" is nearly always the material here - topics such as pop culture, human-interest features, and sometimes medical news. These "softer" stories are often promoted throughout the newscast to remind people not to leave.

This approach shows up quite clearly in an examination of the data collected by the Project for Excellence in Journalism during its local TV news study from 1998 to 2002. While "public safety" news accounted for 36% of stories over all, it constituted nearly two-thirds of the stories that led newscasts (61%), the stories given the most time and resources. And public safety news continued to make up the majority of stories until the fifth story in the newscast. (Indeed, 13% of all newscasts began with three crime stories in a row, back to back to back.)

"Public Safety" and "Soft" News During Local TV Newscasts

By placement within newscast

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Source: PEJ Local TV News Project, 1998-2002

Trainers working for the Committee of Concerned Journalists have also seen ample evidence of "hook and hold"-style news in conducting more than 200 exercises at local news stations around the country, in markets large and small, with more than 1,000 local news professionals. These exercises ask newsroom staff members to "stack" a newscast using a selection of nine typical stories, including reports on events involving public safety, civic issues, and soft news. With exceptions so rare they can be counted on one hand, every group trained so far has followed the same approach and created nearly identical newscasts. Stories that have the potential for alarm - even when the journalists suspect the alarm will turn out to be unfounded - lead the newscast. Stories they know are important but not visual are given short shrift and buried in the middle. Amusing stories they think will get talked about the next day around the water cooler are held to the end.

These findings in the newscast data and the newsroom exercises explain some of the apparent homogeneity of broadcasts. They also offer clues to why critics believe some kinds of stories are ignored in local news, even though journalists feel they cover them adequately.

Interestingly, when this commonality of approach is discussed with news people during the trainings, they are not entirely aware of their actions. The tendency to lead with what is highly visual has become reflexive, but the effect of these priorities on newscast content tends to go unrecognized.

One effect of this emphasis on newscast leads is that stories at the top of the newscast get more time, effort and newsroom resources. They often merit "team coverage" and deployment of the station's helicopter and microwave trucks to grab live footage.

They are also more complete. The average lead story runs 2 minutes, 18 seconds. And with more time, the lead stories are statistically more likely to provide a fuller range of sources and viewpoints and more authoritative sourcing. A story about a highway pileup, for example, might include comments from a policeman, a hospital spokesman, and a bystander.

Together, the first three stories in a typical 14-story newscast consume a total of five minutes, or 32% of the average newshole of 14 minutes and 20 seconds (that is, the amount of time devoted to news excluding commercials, anchor banter, lead-ins, and promotions, sports and weather).

How Story Length Changes During Newscasts

Average story length, in seconds

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Source: PEJ Local TV News Project, 1998-2002

The second effect is that the broader range of public affairs news, which lacks dramatic visual elements such as flashing ambulance lights and yellow crime-scene tape, has little chance of breaking into the lineup before the fourth story, which is often the beginning of the second block of the newscast.

In the five years of the Project's local TV news data, only after the sixth story in an average broadcast does "public affairs" news (politics, government affairs, social issues, business, etc.) surpass "public safety" news in quantity.

Public affairs topics are not absent from local TV news. In fact, they account for 30% of all stories. But the "hook and hold" approach means they are given short shrift in the coverage they receive, not only when they appear but for how long and in what kind of treatment.

Story Topics on Local TV News

By placement within newscast

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ Local TV News Project, 1998-2002

Going back to the construction of the average newscasts, if the first three stories take up five minutes, the next 11 stories must compete for the remaining nine minutes.

In practice, that means that stories about more complex issues, like politics and business, are dealt with in a more perfunctory matter. The obvious consequence of having less time for a story is that it must be told in shorthand. The local TV news data reveal that sourcing (the number of sources, their expertise, and the number of viewpoints) deteriorates dramatically as the newscast progresses and stories become shorter. After the first story, the frequency of stories with multiple sources drops steadily while the number of items based on a single source or passing references increases. Non-controversial sourcing (that is, sourcing that provides undisputed facts or information), a characteristic of soft news, skyrockets as the broadcast goes on.

Both CCJ training and PEJ data reveal that soft news is almost always pushed to the end of the newscast. And local news people are candid in training in acknowledging that that is largely because of the "teasibility." The PEJ local TV news database shows that soft news was a lead story in only one out of ten newscasts. By the tenth story, however, "soft news" accounted for about a third (32%) of all stories, and the amount increased from there.

Such stories include classic "water cooler" fodder about the latest miracle diet, celebrity divorce, or heartwarming reunion. The very end of the newscast, the "kicker," is often a story about a weird or amusing incident designed to leave viewers smiling or laughing.⁷

Why has the "hook and hold" approach become so predominant? There are a variety of reasons, from the nomadic life of local news people to an overwhelming desire to keep what TV people call their "lead-in" audience, those viewers inherited from earlier programs, often higher-rated entertainment programs, particularly in prime time.

Another factor, local-news professionals say, is the development of more refined ratings technology that allows TV newsrooms to track their viewership minute by minute. In earlier decades, the main hump to get over was convincing people to tune in to a newscast in the first place. The expectation was that once viewers decided to sample a broadcast they'd watch it the whole way through.

The task now is no longer that simple. Instead, with the ability to track audience minute by minute, many newsrooms see their biggest competition as the remote control; their priority is to keep material flowing at a pace rapid enough that viewers won't feel any temptation to change the channel. One reason why credits at the end of primetime shows have shrunk in recent years is to create a "seamless" experience that will discourage viewers from changing the channel, whether between two sitcoms or between the end of "ER" and the local news.⁸

Graphed on a chart, the "hook and hold" reveals itself as an X. One leg represents the hook--"hard" public-safety or other "live, local and late-breaking" stories of the kind that usually lead broadcasts but disappear as a news program progresses. The other leg represents the hold-- soft, "teasible" water-cooler stories that viewers will sit through the broadcast to see.

It's a vicious circle: if a story isn't live, local and late-breaking, it won't make the first block. And since first-block stories are awarded the most time and resources, less breathless topics like government or transportation or business news get short shrift.

The desire to hook and hold an audience, however, isn't the only reason the X-factor has become so popular.