The local television news is not my primary source of information. I subscribe to the Pioneer Press, and if I want local news, that's mostly where I will look. And yet I find myself watching the nightly KARE 11 news quite regularly, mostly for the weather report.
Interestingly, the weather report comprises a plurality of all locally produced content on the show, or at least it did on Wednesday night. Including the 10-second update at the end of the newscast, Belinda Jensen spent 5 minutes, 10 seconds talking about the weather. That's 3 more seconds than Randy Shaver spent on sports and 27 more seconds than Mike and Julie spent on local news (admittedly, I separated state news from local news, the reasons for which I will discuss later).
Unscientifically, I would argue that such time distributions are not by accident. Where else can consumers find updated local weather and sports? Newspaper websites still seem far behind on the weather angle (though the Star Tribune is gaining, with Paul Douglas' blog) and newspapers' sports coverage, while superior in actual information and insight, does not usually offer updated video highlights through the game. Local news, though, is much more thoroughly covered in newspapers and is not so often as visual as sports or weather. And national news (of which there was 4 minutes, 11 seconds on Wednesday night) can be found elsewhere with much more satisfaction. So there you go: Weather and sports rule local newscasts.
That is, after the advertisers. Surely out of necessity, ads comprised 7 minutes, 10 seconds of the 33-minute broadcast, or about 22 percent of it. I do not quibble so much with that, because someone has to pay for the programming (though Murrow would certainly hope the percentage would be lower). But the part that really surprised and frustrated me was the time given to internal promotions or house ads, a full 4 minutes, 24 seconds. That's absurd. Many of these were embedded in commercial breaks and highlighted what is to come on other shows on KARE 11, such as their Prep Sports Extra and Vikings Extra, the promos for which preceded the sports segment. Another half-minute was devoted to promoting news that would come later in the newscast, and the show's introduction took up 35 seconds.
Surely some of that could be devoted to more programming within the newscast. What of, say, the national deficit commission's report that was released Wednesday? Perhaps another local feature, or a part of another series? The longest news story on the show was the latest installment of their "Take Care of Your Money" series, which ate up 2 minutes, 47 seconds. There also was actually a nice feature story on the Wadena state volleyball team, which saw its community torn up by tornados this past summer (2 minutes, 6 seconds). I would argue that shouldn't be the second story of the broadcast, but when your first story is the national bit about the pedophiliac E-book being sold on Amazon, the ordering seems logical if based on poor news judgment.
This was not a particularly interesting newscast. The local news stories were so quick - none but the features were given more than 20 seconds - that they hardly can stand to be analyzed beyond their brevity. The national stories were dull. The state news - including that Wadena feature and a 19-second bit out of Austin - was so little as to make me wonder why anyone out of the metro would be motivated to watch the news. And that brings me back to the weather and sports, which are perhaps the most galvanizing features of the newscast. They reach across the state more than any other segment, and they are the most immediate and updated. This doesn't mean that broadcasters can't find and frame good news stories; they just don't seem to do so much anymore. I bet if they made it a priority, people would care.
This makes me think of the final lines from Good Night, and Good Luck, spoken by David Strathairn as Edward Murrow: "This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent the humans are determined to use it toward those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box." I think the TV news can be good, but it doesn't seem all that interested in trying to be anymore.
An activity for teaching
Ask students to complete a log of a local TV newscast. Then, compare the content with the local newspaper from the following morning. This is designed to illustrate what is valuable about either source. What stories are covered in both, and to what extend are they covered? What is more thoroughly covered in each, and why do you think that is? After this general look at the two media, find the common stories and assign corresponding pairs to different small groups. (Hopefully you can access this broadcast again in class, perhaps online or perhaps the teacher has recorded it.) Compare these elements of each:
- Number of sources cited
- Length (To compare, read the corresponding newspaper story that covered the same news and record how long it takes to read it at a steady pace.)
- Placement in news (page for the paper, story prominence on the TV news)
- Freshness of news (how soon after the event was it reported?)
- Any contradictions
These findings can lead to discussions about which source is superior, and what is valued in one medium more than it is in the other. Are they both important? If one went away, what would be lost?
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