If the nightly news is still built around correspondents and taped, edited packages, morning news is not.

Instead, the majority of time on morning news is spent in live interviews (55 percent), usually conducted by anchors. Only about a third of the time on morning news is taped, edited packages (36 percent).

Reading of the news by people on these programs accounts for 5 percent of the time (but 31 percent of the stories), usually in the news summary at the top of the hour, read not by the main anchor but a separate "news" anchor or reader.

Story and Segment Length

Time is also spent differently in the mornings than on evening news. The shows produce fewer very short stories, 40 seconds or less, (29 percent versus 42 percent on commercial evening news). They also air fewer stories between 90 seconds and three minutes (30 percent versus 48 percent on commercial evening). Instead morning news relies more on long segments, over three minutes. Nearly a third of morning segments go that long, (31 percent versus 4 percent at night). This may be part of the morning news' appeal. But these are usually interviews, not stories. And that has consequences.

Sourcing

Since morning news relies so heavily on interviews as the story-telling medium, audiences are getting their information from fewer sources, usually just one or two people being interviewed by the anchor. The ability to double-check what these people are saying against the facts, or balance that with not only opposing views but also with independent or neutral experts, is more limited. It is by no means impossible, but it is more difficult, and, we found, not often done.

Only 8 percent of stories or segments on morning news had the highest level of sourcing and transparency - four named sources whose expertise and potential biases were explained so that audiences could judge their credibility. (That compares to 18 percent on commercial nightly news).

Format alone is not the whole explanation, though it is a significant part. The "NewsHour," with a similar format, was more likely to have the highest level of sourcing (13 percent of stories, compared to 8 percent for morning).

What about anonymous sourcing? In all, 27 percent of morning stories included at least one anonymous source with some attempt to describe for audiences why the source was credible. This was about the same as nightly network news. And 7 percent of stories included at least one blind anonymous source, about half that of nightly news.

Protagonists

Morning news also stood out for focusing its segments and stories more around people as central protagonists. Nearly half (48 percent) of all stories or interviews primarily concerned how something affected a central protagonist in the action: How do you feel about your son coming home from Iraq? Or how will this affect the president? Or did Kobe Bryant rape that woman? That was a good deal more than commercial nightly news (23 percent) or newspapers (32 percent) and markedly more than on the "NewsHour"(20 percent).