The problems confronting the network news divisions are most acute, and for fans of traditional news, most alarming, in the falling fortunes of nightly news.
Television audiences are counted numerous ways. The most familiar is ratings, which count the number of all television sets in the United States tuned to a given program. Share is the percentage of just those sets in use at a given time tuned in to a program. Viewership is ratings converted into the number of people actually estimated to be watching, taking account of the fact that often more than one person is watching a given set.
In November 1980, the year CNN was launched, 75 percent of television sets in use were tuned to one of the three nightly network newscasts each night during the dinner hour. In 2003, it was a 40 percent share.
Of all television homes, 20.6 percent were tuned to the nightly news in November 2003, a drop of 44 percent from 1980, when the networks' nightly news broadcasts had a combined 37 rating.
Yet, much of this decline did not come with the advent of cable, between 1980 and 1990. The drop in audience has been even steeper in the last 10 years, as the number of cable outlets has proliferated, than in the previous 13 years.4 [1] A decade ago (November 1993), 40.7 million Americans watched the nightly newscasts. By November 2003, that number was 29.3 million, a decline of 28 percent in 10 years.5 [2]
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November 1993 to November 2003
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Source: Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com
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The decline from the historic peak of nightly news audience is even steeper. In 1969, when viewing choices were admittedly limited, the three network newscasts were watched in 50 percent of all American homes and 85 percent of the homes tuned to television at the time that the newscasts were shown.6 [4] Since then, ratings have fallen by 59 percent. Share has fallen 53 percent.
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November 1993 to November 2003
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Source: Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com
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November 1993 to November 2003
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Source: Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com
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What is driving the flight away from nightly news? How much is it a loss of viewers to cable, or a migration of people to the Internet? Is there a decline in interest in news generally? Do people dislike the changing content of the newscasts? Or how much is the increasingly disadvantageous time slot of nightly news to blame or the shift to more two-income families and longer commutes?
Certainly some of the fall-off seems an inevitable result of technology creating more alternatives. In the 1970s many viewers had only three or four choices on their broadcast television dial. Cable arrived in 1980, expanding the range of television choices to 20, then 30, then 40, or in the case of some cable or satellite systems, 200 or 300 channels. The number of broadcast stations also grew, with the development of UHF stations, and the Fox network (see Cable TV Audience [7]).
Research also suggests that the Internet, including Web sites associated with the networks themselves, has drawn audience more from television than other media, but the extent of that is difficult to assess. A 2000 survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that those who regularly went online reported watching less network television news than two years earlier.7 [8] Fewer watched television news overall, and those who did watched less of it. Meanwhile, viewing among those who did not go online was unchanged. It is unclear, however, to what extent this trend has continued in the last three years.
Local television news, too, now has access to many of the same pictures and stories that were once the exclusive domain of the networks; in recent years local television news viewership has also declined somewhat (see Local TV Audience [9]). In 1980, the three commercial networks monopolized national and international news, releasing their footage on these stories only after they had been broadcast on the networks, and even then only in limited amounts. CNN changed that by offering to share its footage with local stations in exchange for their material. In response, the networks began to increase feeds to affiliates. In the process, they inevitably hurt their own newscasts, making them stand out less.
Tastes also have changed. More people brought up on infotainment may prefer lighter fare and may get more of it elsewhere. The branding that comes with specialization ("CNN, the Most Trusted Name in News" or "Fox News, We Report, You Decide") may also be luring viewers away. In an age of such niche fragmentation, a single one-size-fits-all newscast may not appeal to as broad an audience.
Nightly newscasts are also hurt by their fixed time slots compared with the ubiquity and convenience of cable. In the 1970s, the nightly news was generally on later than it is now in most markets - 7 p.m. - and many more Americans were home, in single-income families, and the working fathers had notably shorter commutes. Today, the evening newscasts are often on much earlier, as early as 5 or 5:30 p.m. in some West Coast markets. On the West Coast, the evening news programs have the added problem of being tape-delayed. Viewers know the news they are watching is three hours old. Cable and local news has the advantage of being more up to date.
Add to that the fact that the so-called dinner hour simply offers less of an audience than it once did. Fewer people are home, particularly working people, as commuting times have lengthened,8 [10] and many parents are seeing their children for the first time since the early morning. The evening news time slot is probably the most disadvantageous on television.
Changes in the content of network evening newscasts may also be a factor. As the evening newscasts have lost viewers, they have cut back on their newsgathering. This has led to a decline in the number of bureaus and beats, and a shrinkage in the number of minutes of news produced in each program (see Newsroom Investment [11]). The evening newscasts have also tried changing their tone, particularly in the mid-1990s, doing more lifestyle coverage and less traditional news about national and international affairs (see Content Analysis [12]).
The changes in content and the shift toward seeing news divisions as profit centers have had other implications. The news divisions see themselves as having a different responsibility and persona in American life than they once did. The networks once felt obliged to do authoritative documentaries on major issues of the day - "NBC White Papers" or "CBS Reports," for instance - which burnished the networks' image as serious public institutions. Today, the network documentary has been replaced in prime time by the news magazine program, shows that are much closer to a form of nonfiction reality entertainment than an exercise in social responsibility.
To some extent, all these changes - the new character of existing programs, the growing importance of the morning shows compared to the evening newscasts, the elimination of public obligation programs and their substitutions with infotainment news programming - contribute to the public's no longer seeing network news divisions as authorities to turn to each day, or even on special occasions, for information and insight.
Most likely, all these factors are at play, interacting with each other.
One element here, the impact of time slot, is sometimes overlooked and deserves more comment. While the nightly newscasts are on a downward path in terms of viewers, what may be even more remarkable, given the increasing disadvantages of the time slot, is how many people still watch. Nearly 30 million viewers each night make the network news programs the three most-watched and influential news outlets in America, even if they have become something of a familiar punching bag for television writers and perhaps even a subject of doubt for their owners.9 [13]
Twice as many people watch these programs as are watching the morning shows at any given time. More than three times as many people watch each of these programs as read any of the nation's biggest newspapers.
Yet these viewers tend to be older and thereby not so attractive to television advertisers, which are highly concerned with attracting young audiences. Money, rather than solely demand, has relegated what some might argue is the best of network news to a subordinate position and has made the problems of the evening newscasts something it is not clear the networks are willing fundamentally to address. Many in network news privately worry about how long the networks want to produce signature evening newscasts at all.10 [14]
One comparison that seems relevant to understanding this is network versus local viewership. For many years of network news decline, local news programming seemed to hold its audience, in part, as indicated above, because satellite technology had led to their offering national and international news before the networks did. But today local news is also no longer holding its audience.
Since the late 1990s, local news and the networks appear to be losing audience at roughly the same rate. Nielsen data gathered by the financial research firm BIA show that, on average, early evening local news programs, which usually are broadcast right before or right after the network evening news, have suffered a combined market share decline from a 50 share in 1997 to 41 in 2003.11 [15] (See Local TV Audience [9].) This tracks almost exactly with the decline in network evening news share, which has gone from a 49 share in 1997 to 40 in 2003. In any kind of television programming, news or entertainment, the size of the audience of the lead-in program is a dominant factor in determining the size of the audience of the program that follows.
But network news has not suffered as much audience loss as other network programming. Between 1993 and 2001, for instance, according to the Cable Television Advertising Bureau, the three networks saw their share of prime time audience drop by 42 percent. Nightly news during that time dropped 23 percent.12 [16]