chapter 8 The Evolving Business Models of Network News?
Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Introduction
This paper critically appraises the shifting business models and practices of us television news 1940–2010, with particular reference to the terrestrial and cable news networks and the relationship of television news to centers of power. I review the networks’ origins, history and principal content characteristics. I examine major trends of the 2000s and ponder their significance in terms of a long-term transition from ‘network’ to a ‘post-network’ supply of news. I investigate one area of coverage as spectacularly revealing of networks’ rela- tion to major centers of us power, namely war and the military industrial com- plex, which I call a relationship of complicity. Some scholars have pondered the approaching “death” of television (Katz and Scannell 2009), taking their cue from the rise and fall of us terrestrial tele- vision network audiences – from a peak of 50 million homes in 1980, falling to 22 million in 2009. Yet this audience considerably exceeded the total reached by any one cable television channel. Pronouncements of the ‘death’ of televi- sion are perhaps a way of marking the decided transition from the exclusive networks of old to a ‘post-network’ society of abundant television, anywhere and at any time. Factors contributing to this transition have included: (1) pro- liferating competition of supply across platforms (including terrestrial, cable, satellite, wireless delivery to computer, phone and other mobile devices); within a framework (2) of industry concentration, corporatization and con- glomeration; (3) combination of technological advance and diminishing human resources; (4) apparent abandonment of public service criteria in favor of market orientation and infotainment.
Numbers of Television Journalists
According to us Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted in Weaver et al. (2007), the full-time editorial workforce in u.s. news media in 2002 was 116,148 with the largest concentration (58,769 or 50.6%) in newspapers, followed by weekly newspapers (21,908 or 18.9%), television (20,288 or 17.5%), radio
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(13,393 or 11.5%), news magazines (1,152 or 1%) and news services (638 or 0.5%). Television news staffs were spread across approximately 1,300 stations nation- wide. In the period 1971–2002, the total size of the full-time editorial workforce in the traditional mainstream u.s. news had grown 67%. In absolute numbers there had been growth in all but two categories: news magazines shrank slightly, from 1,900 to 1,152 and news agency services had shrunk dramatically from 3,300 to 638. Numbers of television journalists had increased the most dramatically of all, by 190% for the period as a whole, but slipping in the 2000s. News networks each employed 1000–1400 staff in 2010. The 2004 Pew report on the State of the News Media noted general declines in investment. Numbers of free-to-air (abc, cbs, nbc) network news correspondents were down by a third from the 1980s, the number of foreign news bureaus had fallen by half, while correspondent workload was up by 30%. In local television, almost 60% of news directors reported either budget or staff/cuts. Cutbacks were noted again in the 2006 report, with older journalists being replaced by younger. Broadcast network news had experienced a total 10% reduction of expenditure in the period 2002–2006. In cable, Fox expenditure was up 11%, cnn up by 5% while msnbc was still cutting. Staff in local television news experienced an average size increase of 36% in this period, although journalists were expected to do more: hours of news on local television stood at a record high (3.8 hours a day). abc News reduced its worldwide news staff from 1500 to 1100 in 2010. cbs reduced by 70. Only one of the free-to-air networks, nbc, was robustly profitable ($400 m annually), the only one of the three linked to a cable news channel, msnbc, with which it shared costs and from which it benefited from advertising and subscription revenues (Stelter and Carter, 2010)
Network History
Origins Over several decades three principal us networks delivered audiovisual news to us citizens: they were abc, cbs and nbc. A contender, the DuMont net- work, ceased broadcasting in 1956, lacking the safety-net afforded its rivals from radio network revenues. DuMont assets contributed to the assembly of Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation, a small network renamed Metromedia in 1961, then sold to News Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 1985, forming the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. This grew to become, in effect, the nation’s fourth network. Together the three majors reached almost the entire television population, constructing a ‘national’ portfolio of news that was considerably attractive to