2005 Annual Report - Network TV Audience

One of the most important questions about 2004 is whether the presidential election will be viewed in retrospect as a watershed (or merely another step) in the gradual decline in public perceptions of the authority of network news as a source about politics and major events.

Four facts from the campaign year are important in this regard.

• The networks carried only three hours of each convention, skipping one night entirely - including the keynote address at the Democratic event - the lowest number since they began broadcasting.

• Not coincidentally perhaps, for the first time a cable channel (Fox) outdrew each of networks (individually) in viewers during the GOP convention.

• The networks also had record lows in viewership on election night.

• After exposing the prisoner torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan, CBS News's reliance on apparently phony documents in the story that became known as "Memogate" proved to be one of the most embarrassing moments in the network's history. It prompted an outside investigation that led to the ouster of four people and the early retirement of anchor Dan Rather. The investigation did not examine the news division as a whole. Its focus was narrow - on the reporting of one story and the public-relations aftermath. The news division, however, could end up being transformed anyway.

Before the convention season, there was no clear rise or drop in the volume of campaign coverage on the evening newscasts compared with previous years. The primary season was shorter than usual, and unlike those of 2000, 1992 and 1988, involved contests in only one party. As a consequence, the total number of minutes of primary-season coverage on the nightly newscasts was lower than in some previous years and higher than in others, according to tracking from Tyndall Research. That appears to be more a function of scheduling decisions made by the Democratic National Committee, state parties, and voters, not journalistic decisions made by the networks. At the peak of the primary season, in Iowa and New Hampshire, the coverage showed no diminution from previous cycles.

That coverage, however, was soon overshadowed by the decision of all three networks to walk away from covering the conventions every night.

In late July, the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, hosted a panel discussion at which Peter Jennings of ABC "…[likened] conventions to 'infomercials'… There's not a great deal of reason to show up."

The NewsHour's Jim Lehrer responded: "We're about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country. The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge."

The exchange offers a snapshot of the argument over the network decision to substantially leave the conventions.

That argument, played out mostly in brief quotes and sound bites in news stories, deserves detailed examination to determine whether, as Lehrer implied, the message the networks were sending was either significant or new.

The network argument is really twofold. First, the conventions are no longer newsworthy because they are scripted "infomercials." Second, the networks are relieved of their public service obligation to air them because the conventions can be watched on cable - in particular on the three news channels, as well as C-Span - along with PBS on the broadcast airwaves.

The critics counter that those are excuses. The networks, they say, are backing away from the conventions purely to make more money - they can do better airing reality shows than the conventions - and in the process the networks now have given up not just on public service but on journalistic credibility, too.

Let's take the points one at a time.

The notion that the conventions are not news defines a news event as one at which something unexpected might happen. Certainly, the conventions are now scripted. Everything - the platform debates, the speeches, the "spontaneous" demonstrations - is controlled in advance.³⁹ (In 1972 The New York Times discovered the GOP had a script for every moment of its meeting in Miami.)

The unexpected is not the only kind of news, however. It can also be defined as an event, however planned, that has a major impact on public opinion. The networks do cover this second kind of news when it suits them, from inaugurations and funerals to State of the Union addresses and other ritual civic events. And by this standard conventions clearly qualify as news. Not only do they represent the only time most Americans will hear either candidate explain his vision for the country at any length, but they are also the lone opportunity for the two political parties to do so, and for other party leaders to introduce themselves to the country beyond eight-second sound bites.