2005 Annual Report - Network TV Content Analysis

Despite continuously declining audiences, (see Audience) more people still gather around the three evening newscasts - more than 25 million each weekday - than for any other three news sources in America. What do they get there? How does it differ from morning news? What, if anything, distinguishes the content of PBS's evening newscast? In a year that saw the CBS anchor under fire and the NBC anchor replaced, did network news change much?

To get answers, the project conducted a content analysis of all three network evening and morning newscasts as well as the NewsHour on PBS. The study built on the 2003 report and added several new areas of analysis. It encompassed a month of weekday newscasts (20), 110 hours of news programming, and examination of 1,756 separate stories (see Methodology).

Among the findings:

• Network broadcast news - commercial and public - offers more thorough reporting than cable news.

• The big three nightly newscasts on commercial television are distinguished by their reliance on written, edited, and vetted correspondent packages that match pictures and words.
• Thanks in large part to these correspondent packages, stories in the evening contain more viewpoints and more transparent sourcing than most TV news.
• The NewsHour on PBS, by some measures, exceeded even the three commercial nightly newscasts in its reporting, despite its heavy reliance on the interview format. It also stands out for its orientation to hard news.
• Morning shows are particularly adept at stirring up controversy over what many would consider fundamentally minor news - think Laci Peterson, or Martha Stewart. Indeed, even with more time, morning news covers major stories less heavily than the evening newscasts, and fills the rest of its time with lifestyle, celebrity, true crime and other softer topics.
• All of network TV news programs studied covered a limited range of headline topics.

Storytelling Versus the Culture of Live

What news the networks do choose to offer has a thoroughness that is hard to find on cable. Much of that stems from the continuing reliance in evening newscasts on the taped, edited, correspondent package as the heart of the program.

The vast majority of the commercial evening news hole (86% of all time) is devoted to such pieces.¹ Live reports, interviews and stand-ups, on the other hand, account for just 2%. About 12% of the time is made up of anchors reading short summary "tell stories" or narrating video.

The reliance on correspondents telling stories distinguishes the three network evening newscasts in the national TV news landscape. Much of what viewers get from TV news today (outside of their local newscasts) is characterized by a dependence on live, unscripted communication. Just as "reality" TV is replacing scripted drama and comedy on the entertainment side, news on TV is also becoming a more extemporaneous medium.

In network morning news, for instance, only a third of the time (32%) is made up of edited storytelling - and here we measured only the first hour, which is more hard-news oriented. The majority of time is made up instead of interviews (42% with outsiders and another 13% with in-house correspondents.) Live reporter stand-ups are rare (less than 1%).

Yet even morning news depends on more edited storytelling than cable. In the same 20-day sample of cable programming, just 24% of the time was correspondent packages, while 52% was live. (see Cable TV Content Analysis for a more detailed account).

The format of PBS's NewsHour lies somewhere between commercial evening news, morning news and cable. At first glance, it most closely resembles morning news - about a third packages (31%) and slightly more than half (53%) interviewing of outside analysts.² Yet the NewsHour sets up more of its interviews with introductory packages that offer viewers background. Another difference is that the interviews are often discussions with two or more analysts, rather than one guest or two opposing advocates in a debate format.

Incidentally, as video becomes more a part of the online universe, the taped package may become the basic unit of reporting in the interactive, video-streamed news of the future.