It's Not Your Father's Newscast Anymore
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Article 12 “You - .News” It’s not your father’s newscast anymore Call it “News Lite” or “‘News you can use”--by whatever name, TV is racing for relevance. But what gets lost along the way? Andie Tucher om Brokaw comes to our tele- teen weeks. @uring the week ending phone interview loaded for POLITICIANS March 7, for instance, NBC had an 8.8 bear To my boilerplate ques- rating, an 18 share, and an average of tion-“How do you respond to 12.01 million viewers; ABC came in at theT critics who say your newscast has 8.5/17 with 11.16 million viewers; and become softer?“-he snaps back that JOURNALISTS ALIKE CBS at 7.6/16 with 9.95 million viewers.) many of the critics are also competi- And this advance comes at a time tors with agendas of their own. WANT YOU TO when the market for network evening ‘There is an elitist, myopic point of KNOW THEY ARE news is inexorably shrinking through- view about what these broadcasts have out the 1970s the three network news- been and what they should be,” he JUST FOLKS WHO casts together would routinely attract says, “and I’m getting a little weary of up to three-quarters of the viewing it. There are no important stories we FEEL YOUR PAIN audience, but Nielsen reports that the have missed.” After we hang up, he combined audience share for the three calls me back to say I had overstated has now slipped under 50 percent. the length of a piece I had mentioned ing over as the new top dog in the rat- But edgy rivals aside, Brokaw’s as an example of a softer story-two ings war among the Big Three. From slicked-up newscast would still be ripe minutes on the Oregon death-penalty mid-December through mid-March for reassessment. While all the net- laws for sheep-chasing dogs-and to Brokaw’s half-hour evening broad& works have been tinkering with their remind me that critics have their own consistently edged out-barely but vis- programs, The Nightly News with lbm agendas. ibly-the seven-year ratings leader, Brokaw has given itself an inside-and- Of course they do. Some of the criti- AECs World News l’bnight with Peter out makeover. NBC’s broadcast now cism does come from rivals at CBS and Jennings, winning ten times, tying sports a hipper, more high-tech feel, ABC, who fear that NBC may be tak- three, and placing second once in four- with a new video-wall backdrop, From ColumbialotdiSm Review May&me 1997. pp. 26-31. 0 1997 by Columbia journalism Review. Reprint& by 74 permission. 12. “You News” Brokaw’S face in a monitor mirroring at’s more, the newscasts’ have been provided with “news you Brokaw’s face on Brokaw himself, core viewers tend to be can use” about, among other topics, Brokaw’s face appearing suddenly on older; The Pew Research clot busters, osteoporosis, memory loss the giant video screen overlooking Center reckons that almost macular degeneration, allergies, diabel Times Square as he signs off. Where Wtwo-thirds of people over sixty-four tes, male menopause, estrogen, blood once the airtime was full of congres- watch a network newscast “regularly,” transfusions, brain injuries, Alzhei- sional wrangles and Middle East peace while less than a quarter of GenXers mer’s, flu, antihistamines, panic at- talks, now it’s heavy with medical do. So “sooner or later the current tacks, arthritis, beta blockers, grapes news and features from fly-over coun- news audience is all going to die,” says as cancer fighters, uterine fibroids try NBC has indeed gone softer and Andrew Tyndall, editor of the !l)ndall obesity, drinking and driving, car: more user-friendly-‘populist,” NBC Weekly, which tracks and times the phoning and driving, and mammo- executives like to call it-and Brokaw stories covered on the evening news. grams. “The New England Journal of argues urgently that “what we’re at- “And that’s sooner rather than later.” Medicine should be charging,” says tempting to do is to cover the impor- In some fundamental ways the Sandy Socolow, a former executive pro- tant news of the day and the news that three newscasts haven’t broken far ducer for Walter Cronkite at CBS. “All is relevant to our viewers, and that from tradition-or from each other. All three broadcasts are mesmerized by news now has a much different woof pay due attention to the obvious anything that involves the human and warp than it did twenty-five years breaking stories: none could have been body-and I’m not talking about sex.” ago.” accused of ignoring either the verdict What distinguishes NBC now is Brokaw’s competitors detect a be- against 0. J. Simpson or the death of that both the gossamer and the useful trayal of journalistic standards in all Deng Xiaoping. After some initial foot- often outweigh the grit. Its Nightly this. CBS anchor Dan Rather told The dragging all have recently been doing News tends to air fewer stories each Philadelphia Inquirer in February that a “pretty good job” covering the hot po- evening than ABC or CBS, and far NBC was purveying ‘News Lite.” In litical story of the day-the campaign fewer of those come from the national late March, when Paul Friedman fund-raising scandals-says Bill Hogan capitals, whether Moscow, Belgrade, or ABC’s executive vice president fo; director of investigative projects at Thi yes, Washington. More of them focud news, also took back his old job as the Center for Public Integrity in Washing- on trends, life-style and consumer is- newscast’s executive producer, he told ton, a watchdog group that monitors sues, pop culture, and heartland Amer- The Washington Post that ABC would political spending. ica-and NBC isn’t hiding its Lite “cover serious news that the others under a bushel, either. An ad for the can’t manage.” newscast appearing in The New York But the old polarity between “soft” Times on March 28 touted what was and “hard” news is itself something of AN AD IN obviously considered the evening’s hot- a red herring. That’s because NBC’s test story: ‘Marriage Boot Camp’: Nightly News is not simply replacing THE NEW YORK Could it Save Your Relationship?’ (The coverage of world events with tradi- story was bumped by the news of the tional soft features on heroic rescues TIMES TOUTED California cult suicide and actually or celebrity comebacks. NBC’s produc- THE EVENING’S aired April 4.) ers, not unlike their fellows at the Brokaw says he’s simply “trying to other networks, have discovered that HOTTEST STORY= be less of a wire service of the air? be- in addition to the old categories of thi cause it’s clear people have already news you need and the news you want “MARRIAGE ‘BOOT heard the major news of the day by they can add a third type of newd the time they click on the evening that’s flourishing in the ’90s: news CAMP’: COULD IT news. “I travel across this country a about you-news to use at your next SAVE YOUR lot,” he says, “and everywhere I go I doctor’s visit, PTA meeting, or family hear what people are talking about dinner-table discussion. RELATIONSHIP?” and what interests them and what The special problems of the network they are desperate to know about. And news in the ’90s are legion. It’s not just a whole lot of that has very little to do that many people are too busy, too All include, as they always have with what we would routinely put on cynical, or too turned off by public life bright bits of the “news you want”‘: the air ten-fifteen years ago.” to enjoy the evening-news habit. It’s softer stories like the return of Star Last year, according to Tyndall also that so many have been able to Wars and mushy little tributes to Val- viewers were apparently most desperl go elsewhere-and everywhere-for entine’s Day. And all air a weekly slate ate to know about the summer Olym- their news, from CNN to all-news ra- of regular segments, ranging from pics, which were broadcast by NBC dio to the Internet to local television ‘Your Money” and “Eye on America” to Sports and which got more airtime on news to tabloid TV to paid political the often lightweight, even gossamer NBC News than any other story in ads, free political time, and even the “Travels with Harry” on CBS (corre- 1996 (CBS’s biggest story was TWA late-night comedians, a favorite “news spondent Harry Smith visits the stars Flight 800 and ABC’s was the Dole source” for a reported one-third of tele- of girls’ basketball) and “Person of the campaign, which included the entire vision-watchers under thirty, according Week” (people who have made positive primary season; see box). At the same to the Freedom Forum’s Media Studies social contributions) on ABC. time, NBC’s attention to such hard- Center. “This is a fact of life ” says But these days, all three networks news topics as the presidential cam- ABC’s Jennings. “I don’t know hhw any are paying as much attention to health paign and the Middle Eastern peace evening news broadcast could now cast problems as any scriptwriter for E.R. process was drastically lower than its itself in such a way as to suddenly During just the first two and a half competitors’.