As I noted last August, the nightly summaries now give viewers a real choice. Just how different the network newscasts have become is apparent in Andrew Tyndall’s new 2011 Year in Review report.

International news dominated network television coverage with three of the top five stories of the year: political turmoil in Libya and Egypt, and the tsunami and earthquake in Japan. And the networks took noticeably different approaches, with NBC spending the most time on international news and ABC lagging in third place, despite the name of its broadcast–World News.

ABC also spent the least time on hard news and substantially more time than the other two on features and soft news. CBS spent the most time covering the economy while NBC led the group in weather coverage–perhaps not surprising given its corporate ties to the Weather Channel.

The list of correspondents who got the most air time is revealing in itself. ABC’s David Muir got the most exposure by far, 343 minutes covering domestic news. ABC’s White House correspondent Jake Tapper was in second place with 283 minutes. NBC’s Richard Engel reported on foreign news (246) and Chuck Todd from the White House (226). It’s usually a given that covering the White House is a ticket to lots of air time but that didn’t hold true for CBS. That network’s top reporter was Nancy Cordes (226), who covers Capitol Hill.

The other impression you get from the list of most-used correspondents is that ABC and NBC have an A-list, while CBS spreads the wealth. ABC and NBC each have five correspondents in the top 20; CBS has the remaining 10.

One last note: NBC’s Brian Williams has a much larger ”magic“ quotient –the term used at CBS back in the days of Walter Cronkite to describe the amount of time the anchor spent on camera during the broadcast. NBC Nightly News had more than 1,000 minutes’ worth of non-reporter stories, compared to about 850 on CBS and 600 on ABC.

At first glance, the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. The three evening newscasts added almost 2 million viewers combined in the second quarter compared with the same period the year before. That amounts to a 10 percent increase – the first major jump in a decade – not too shabby for programs that have been written off as dinosaurs. The network morning shows saw a similar uptick, adding 1.2 million viewers for a total of 13 million. It’s too soon to call it a trend, but the numbers are significant enough to be worth a closer look. What’s going on here?

There’s no question that more viewers tune in when there’s big news, and there was plenty of it this spring. The aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami raised fears of a nuclear meltdown. The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan marked a turning point in the 10-year fight against terrorism. And the devastating tornadoes across the South provided the kind of emotional footage that TV news thrives on. But that’s not the whole story behind the numbers.

Over the past several months, the broadcast networks haven’t just been covering the news, they’ve been making it. Katie Couric’s departure from CBS, announced in April, drew almost as much attention as her arrival there five years ago, when she became the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast. Her replacement back then as cohost of NBC’s top-rated “Today” show, Meredith Vieira, stepped down in June.

Both networks found solid successors in-house, with Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” stepping in for Couric and “Today” veteran Ann Curry taking over for Vieira. That made the transition relatively smooth for regular viewers and may have kept defections to a minimum. More important, the widely publicized changes likely enticed some non-viewers to sample the new-look programs, which could have bumped up the ratings. In Pelley’s first five weeks all three networks posted gains for their evening newscasts, according to the Nielsen Co. – most unusual for summer, when viewership typically slumps.

The uptick in the morning is all the more impressive, given the downturn in the audience for broadcast television overall. All three networks lost viewers in prime time this TV season compared with the year before. NBC alone, with no Olympics on the schedule, lost almost 14 percent of its prime time audience while “Today” gained about 10 percent. That’s a substantial swing, indicating that many viewers who flock to cable for entertainment at night are flipping to broadcast in the morning to watch the news.

As for the evening news, the latest numbers challenge the conventional wisdom that network news viewers are old and getting older. While the average age of the audience is over 60, all three evening newscasts added viewers in the coveted 25-54 age group―the audience advertisers most want to reach. In fact, nearly a quarter of the growth in viewership in the second quarter came from that demographic.

With so much news available everywhere all day long, why would more people be seeking out an evening newscast? “It may be that cable news has reached the point of saturation,” says TV news consultant Michael Castengera. “Regurgitation isn’t news. People may just want a summation.”

Lately, the nightly summary has varied considerably from network to network, giving viewers a real choice. CBS appears to be taking a harder news edge under new Chairman Jeff Fager. On Pelley’s first night in the anchor chair, the Rep. Anthony Weiner sex-text story ran in the third block while NBC led with it. ABC appears to be trending tabloid, with “ABC World News” giving the final week of the Casey Anthony trial more airtime than the other two networks combined.

Time to pop the champagne? Not so fast. The audience for evening newscasts has been on a steady downward slope for 30 years. Since 1980, the three networks have lost more than half their nightly news viewers. The last time those programs gained viewers year over year was in 2001, when the networks briefly reprised their role as national unifiers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (see “Anchoring the Nation,” November 2001). It didn’t last. The morning news audience has been dropping at a slower rate for about six years. There’s no reason to think either trend has been reversed.

But the improved numbers this year are a valuable reminder that network news still serves a huge audience. Four times as many people watch the nightly news on ABC, CBS and NBC as watch CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC combined in all of prime time. The end may come, one day, but for now the network newscasts remind me of that guy in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who resists being thrown on the cart that’s collecting plague victims. “I’m not dead yet,” he whines.

Neither are they.

Originally published in American Journalism Review, June-July 2011

Entertainment Tonight writer Ken Tucker found that insulting and appalling. “It’s also a depressing, dismaying precedent to set,” he wrote, for the network to feel the need to define what he decribed as “a fairly ordinary word.”

Most of the commenters on Tucker’s post took issue with him. Several said it was helpful of ABC to have posted the definition of a word many of them didn’t know. But I have to wonder. At what point is context not enough to provide understanding? Who decides what words the audience needs to have defined for them?

Maybe there’s something else going on here. Perhaps ABC was trying to send Amanpour a message?

Cue in 6:20 and listen to the discussion. See if you think the definition was necessary.

Bubba the Love Sponge, formerly known as Todd Clem, exemplifies the latest effort by television stations across the country to attract more viewers for their local newscasts. Commentary, once shunned by local stations as too controversial, is now seen as a way of drawing attention in a crowded media marketplace. In the past couple of months, it’s popped up in newscasts from New York to Kansas City.

WTSP, the Gannett-owned station in St. Petersburg, Fla., brought Bubba on board in February, not coincidentally in the middle of sweeps, and he’s still going strong.  His commentaries air three times a week at 11 p.m. While the newscast is local, Bubba’s commentaries frequently aren’t. He’s weighed in recently on Libya, violent video games and Donald Trump.

It’s an odd alliance, to say the least. Bubba hosts the top-rated morning radio show in the market and boasts on the Web that it delivers “a good ball-busting.” WTSP is affiliated with CBS, the network with the oldest lead-in audience for the late local news. What are they thinking?

“We were looking to provide thought-provoking commentary but do it in a way that is different from other stations,” said Peter Roghaar, WTSP’s news director.

Different, it is, especially compared to what local newsrooms used to do. Decades ago, on-air editorials were commonplace but rarely contentious. Back then, stations took pains to avoid ruffling feathers for fear of driving viewers away. Today’s commentaries are all about stirring the pot.

Consider Joann Augello, “the real housewife of Bensonhurst,” who’s become a regular fixture on WNYW, the Fox-owned station in New York City. The 10 p.m. newscast features her in a segment called City Rant, and rant she does, about everything from sky-high electric bills to the lack of parking spaces in her Brooklyn neighborhood. “Park the car on the roof! Where the f— else are you going to park these cars?” she screeches. Good thing Augello isn’t live so the station can bleep the obscenities.

Not all local commentaries are quite so off-the-wall. Gannett stations in Atlanta, Columbia, S.C., and St. Louis all started running segments this year called “I’m Just Sayin’,” featuring politicians, newsmakers, local celebrities and just plain folks weighing in on the issues of the day, from tax rates to Kobe Bryant’s use of a homophobic slur.

“We’re always talking about having a conversation with the viewer and this is a way for them to talk to us,” said Marybeth Jacoby, news director at WLTX in Columbia. “It really does help up understand our community better.”

Does she ever worry that a commentary will go too far and offend the audience? All the time. “Evoking emotion is good but we don’t want to disparage anyone,” Jacoby said. To play it safe, a station committee approves all commentary topics in advance and scripts are reviewed before segments are taped.

At WTSP, Roghaar admits that Bubba’s in-your-face style has irritated some viewers admits, but on balance he believes adding the segments has been a plus, especially considering the free publicity the station gets when Bubba promotes his TV appearances on his morning drive radio show. “The commentary has helped us retain our audience through the [11 p.m.] newscast and has recruited new viewers to our newscast,” he said.

With Fox News and MSNBC thriving in prime time thanks to sharp-edged opinion programs, it was probably inevitable that local stations would turn to commentary in the hope that ratings would follow. After all, as the comedian Fred Allen once said, imitation is the sincerest form of television.

There’s no doubt that too many local newscasts are clones of each other, with look-alike anchors and predictable stories. Commentary can help a station stand out from the pack, but there’s a fine line between clever and cheesy and stations cross it at their peril. Trying something different may get people talking, all right, but will it really make them watch?

What’s different this time around? The new edition includes substantial revisions but retains the essentials: how to report, write and produce for multiple platforms. We have chapters on delivery, ethics and job seeking as well. There’s a ton of real-world examples and advice from professional journalists. New screen shots, images and examples are included throughout.

There’s also a new focus on the use of social media and mobile devices in gathering and disseminating news. Difficult to believe, but Twitter didn’t exist when we wrote the first edition. My how times have changed:

A majority of journalists today use social media to do their jobs—mainly to find stories, sources and information quickly and to monitor trends. Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools, once used primarily in breaking news situations, have become a central part of the daily newsgathering process. TV anchor Amy Wood says she gets “lots of tips on breaking news” via her social media sites. One of her Twitter followers told her a hostage crisis at a local bank had been resolved before the police announced it.

We’re hard at work on a new companion website that will be available for use with the book this fall. You’ll be able to buy access to the entire site or to individual modules. Each online module–linked to a chapter in the text–includes interactive exercises, tutorials, resources and examples of multimedia storytelling. The “Ongoing Story” module allows users to report a story from beginning to end, and write a TV package as well as a Web version.

No matter what edition of the text you have, updated chapter-by-chapter content will continue to be available on the Advancing the Story blog.

Sourced from: Advancing the Story

Scripps-owned WPTV in West Palm Beach launched its early morning newscast in January; General Manager Steve Wasserman calls the ratings “respectable.” In Tampa, Fox sta¬tion WTVT reports that local news at 4:30 is drawing more than twice as many viewers as the program it replaced, the celebrity gossip show TMZ. And the numbers are growing, which is more than you can say for local news in most other time slots.

“Morning news is today’s late news,” Wasserman says. “It used to be that every advertiser wanted to be in the late news, and now they crave mornings.”

Who’s watching?

One reason may be the kinds of viewers who tune in early. At WCCO in Minneapolis, the audience for the 4:30 newscast is made up almost entirely of people 25 to 54 years old, says News Director Scott Libin. That’s the demographic advertisers most want to reach, so it’s no wonder more stations are rushing to produce a show that’s easy to sell to them.

Because the stations adding early-early newscasts already had local news starting at 5 a.m., it hasn’t cost them much, if anything, to tack on another half hour. WPTV didn’t add a sin¬gle staffer. At WCCO, the only cost has been a little overtime. The revenue from commercials that sell for a few thousand dollars each may not be huge, but it’s all profit to the station.

In some respects, the shift to mornings isn’t a great surprise. The audience for the local news at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. has been shrinking for more than a decade. Some of the decline can be blamed on a change in measurement systems, but there’s no doubt that American viewing habits have changed. The network programs that follow the late news are in trouble, too. Between them, Leno and Letterman have lost a million viewers in the past two years.

One driving force behind the switch is obvious: driving. Longer commutes have pushed bedtimes earlier and made pre-dawn wake-ups commonplace in cities like New York and Los Angeles, where four local stations now offer news at 4:30. But commuters aren’t the only viewers targeted by stations getting into the early news game.

“There are literally tens of thousands of bakers, bus drivers, fishermen, café
managers, construction workers, hotel employees…all up long before the sun,” says Jonathan Shelley, news director at Hearst-owned WDSU in New Orleans, which launched its “First Edition” newscast in August. “We believe there is a real and consistent audience at 4:30 a.m.”

There’s definitely an audience for television at that hour. About a third of all households in New Orleans have the TV on that early already. Now, they have the option of tuning in to a local newscast at 4:30 instead of network or cable news programs. And they may watch it differently.

“People used to watch for 10 or 15 minutes [in the morning] and leave for work or school,” WPTV’s Wasserman says. Now, he says, they’re staying tuned for 30 to 45 minutes at a clip, to the delight of early morning advertisers.

Different content

What viewers like about local morning news isn’t just the timing, it’s the content. “There’s lots of stuff going on,” Wasserman says. “On the late news, a lot has already happened.”

No question, late evening newscasts are often crammed with crime and other so-called breaking news that doesn’t amount to much in the light of day. The new predawn newscasts are more utilitarian, packed with weather and traffic reports that help early risers plan their day. And they bring viewers up to date on late sports scores and international developments that took place overnight.

“It’s the only time of day when you can assume the viewers have not had access to news for six to eight hours,” Libin says. That means stories from Iraq or Afghanistan, which local stations typically wouldn’t touch later in the day, are fair game first thing in the morning. And viewers all over the country want to know the numbers from the global financial markets.

At KUSA in Denver, the 4:30 a.m. newscast that launched in June focuses on financial and business news. “There are more and more people [here] working in multiple time zones domestically and internationally that must use various work hours to conduct business,” says Patti Dennis, the station’s vice president and news director.

Not long ago, it seemed inconceivable that local news at 4:30 a.m. could succeed. Now the question is whether to start even earlier. One New York station has a 4 a.m. newscast in the works for fall. “I have no plans to go at 4 a.m.,” Wasserman says. “But if you’d asked me 18 months ago if I planned a 4:30 [newscast], I’d have said no.”

Anchors, set your alarm clocks earlier. The audience already has.

This column was originally published in American Journalism Review, September/October 2010

The Tribune station in Houston is planning a total overhaul of its newscasts changes this fall with a new format it calls NewsFix. “The core concept is to focus more on storytelling by allowing those in the story to tell the story and to place video and audio at the center of all that we do,” KIAH general manager Roger Bare told the Houston Chronicle. Translation?

Say goodbye to traditional anchors and on-camera reporters. Most stories apparently will be fast-paced, told with lots of nat sound from the perspective of those involved. As a station employee who didn’t want to be identified told the newspaper:

“It’s not going to be as much of a newscast as a collection of stories that will roll into each other,” the employee said. “There will be natural sound, and you won’t see the reporters. It will be news for people who don’t watch news, which sounds a lot like opening a bar for people who don’t drink.”

KIAH is now advertising a job opening for an “executive producer and imaginator” to oversee the newscast and it’s an eye-opener.  They’re looking for someone “with a fiery passion to help re-invent the 80′s rooted, focus grouped, yuppie anchors and a news desk, super doppler ultra weather style.”

Experience in running a TV Newsroom is not necessary and might actually be detrimental, as this position requires someone with no traditional TV News baggage, because there’s little tradition involved in this idea.

KIAH probably isn’t risking much by trying something totally new. Its two daily newscasts get the lowest ratings in town, drawing less than a .5 rating. But other Tribune stations could be in line for a similar “fix.” The company plans to roll out the NewsFix at some of its other 23 stations “that don’t have a strong legacy news product or where the local news tradition may not be as strong as it is in other markets,” says Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman.

This is hardly the first time a news organization has talked about getting rid of anchors. I seem to remember discussions along those lines at CBS News back in the 1980s. As I recall, some experimental newscasts were even produced, with each reporter tossing to the next reporter in line. The idea never took hold.

One reason may be that many viewers decide what newscast to watch based on who the anchor is. What television news has that print doesn’t is personality. Stations have tried to capitalize on the personal connection viewers feel to TV journalists by making sure they’re not just heard but also seen. Reporters who resist doing stand-ups are inevitably told that they must appear on camera regularly because viewers want to see the person who’s telling the story. Was that just a myth? I doubt it. But if the Tribune experiment succeeds, a lot of TV managers will be proved wrong.

And that’s not the only problem with text-heavy graphics. On-screen fonts don’t convey the same credibility as an excerpt from a document itself. So consider these alternatives the next time you’re faced with a paper-heavy story.

Highlight the Paper

• Instead of calling graphics to make full-screens of excerpts, shoot the actual pages or computer screens, tight, to let the viewer see the specifics you are citing. Use highlights or lighting techniques to make the words stand out. One simple tactic is to shoot someone highlighting the words with a reference marker. Use a lipstick cam and shoot tight to make words pop off the page or screen.
• Capture and use natural sound as you move pages, flip through documents, or click through computer screens.
• Be sure the narration repeats the specific, highlighted words to reinforce their significance.
• Use the papers or computer screens as a narrative device–go back to them several times, if you are building a case that one person or organization keeps turning up in the documents.
• Have someone directly involved in the story read the documents aloud. This provides an opportunity for b-roll, and brings the documents to life, sometimes with emotion that would be inappropriate in a reporter track.
• If the volume of the documentation is part of the story, use it in a standup. For example, one reporter walked through the halls of the local jail unfurling a computer printout of DUI convicts who had never served their sentences. The sheer length of the list made the point that the city wasn’t holding violators accountable.
• Try an old-fashioned movie technique to illustrate timelines: shoot a calendar, or show dates on documents in close-up. Dissolve or flip through dates to show the passage of time.
• When you create full-screens, consider how font sizes and shapes can enhance the meaning of words. Experiment with different fonts to reflect the emphasis and tone of different voices, for example, in a court or hearing transcript.

Hide the Paper

• Find a way to “put a face” on what is in the documents. Medical records from a state mental hospital will pack more power if you quote them over video or still photos of the people who were sterlized against their will.
• Look for analogies or metaphors that can help viewers see more clearly what the documents imply. For example, you could explain the results of a scientific study about how the number of healthy brain cells shrinks as you age by showing the difference between a forest in summer and in winter.
• Translate jargon from documents into everyday language. You may not want to highlight the documents if the language is so complex that it’s hard to understand.

The CBS station in Miami launched a new half-hour program in November featuring stories produced by its I-Team. Each story runs six or seven minutes, and the program airs in place of the 6:30 p.m. Sunday newscast, just before 60 Minutes. “The style, tone and feel is 60 Minutes,” says news director Adrienne Roark. But the stories are all local. South Florida, she says, is a rich target for investigative journalists.

The first program featured reports on Medicare fraud, pollution connected with construction of a new baseball stadium, and dangerous truckers. Two more have aired since then, and the station has committed to running one special per month.

How is that possible in a time of cost cutting and layoffs? As we noted earlier this year, WFOR has one of the biggest local I-Teams in the country, with three full-time reporters and general assignment reporters who also do investigations. Roark says they all have multiple stories in the pipeline on any given week. Timely stories with broad appeal and “amazing” elements that can sustain five or six minutes are now being targeted for the monthly special, “4 I-Team Investigates.”

WFOR isn’t the first station to try something along these lines. About five years ago, KPIX, the CBS station in San Francisco, launched ‘30 Minutes: Bay Area,’ an investigative special that also ran just before 60 Minutes but only aired quarterly.  “The stories were just plain excellent,” news director Dan Rosenheim said via email, “but we were not able to find a sponsor and could not sustain the effort.”

The WFOR program airs with just two commercial breaks–fewer than the newscast it replaces. Eventually, Roark hopes to be able to sell the program. For now, she’s scheduling stories for January and February. “If we can get rolling, we’d do two a month,” Roark says.

But now, with most news outlets feeding multiple platforms, the question arises: If your staff is limited, where should you focus your energies when local news breaks?

To figure that out, it would help to know where most people turn for local breaking news. But when a news manager asked me that question recently, I couldn’t come up with any research that answered it. The Pew Research Center regularly asks about news consumption–and always finds that Americans get most of their news from TV–but that’s not specific enough.

So…I’m asking you. Maybe we can figure this out together.