The Value of TV News: Should CNN Just Run Sitcoms?
Let me quickly end the painful suspense from my titillating title question: No. But maybe the more interesting question is: Why not? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (news nerd alert), spurred by a parade of horrible news about ratings and personalities at broadcast and cable network news networks and the ironically simultaneous massive news story of the tragic terrorist actions in Paris. I also just read a piece entitled “What Is News Still Doing On TV?” by P.J. Bednarski, who questions whether we really need TV do provide any news given the ease of digital news access. It’s pretty easy to say I disagree with Bednarski’s perspective; but he gets a big hat tip for provoking some greater thought on this point.
Before I get the “old media” apologist label, I do NOT consider the following to be sufficient reasons to continue to advocate a vigorous presence for news on TV: (1) Your family used to watch Walter Cronkite together every night over dinner (although mine did); (2) Columbia has an excellent journalism school and needs more well-paying jobs to send its students to (although it does and it does); (3) You cry during each of Charlie Skinner’s speeches during the HBO/Aaron Sorkin series “The Newsroom” (only every other one for me); or (4) You are a huge devotee of Leon Wielseltier and are as troubled as Leon about society’s descent into “technologism” and “posthumanism” (you had to see The New York Times Book Review this weekend to get this one – probably not worth the extra effort).
Yet despite the flood of easily accessibly digital news sources and the relatively easy targets provided by Fox News’ apologies and biases, CNN and MSNBC’s programming struggles and the latest Matt Lauer story, television remains not only a popular home for news but a vital one and even a (shockingly) potentially profitable one. And here’s why (and how):
There is a huge appetite for television news. It is brutally challenging to succeed in television when you don’t know what people will be interested in watching. This is the Darwinian world of the pilot season and why we see ubiquitous copying of the latest hit format (which rarely works – watch for a slew of failed hip-hop-flavored programs on the heels of “Empire”). But there is still a huge audience (not all over 90) that seeks out and watches news on television. Nearly 30 million households per night still watch the evening news broadcasts (even 7 million in the group of adults 25-54 demographic); over 14 million watch the morning news shows (5 million in the “demo”); cable networks average nearly 2 million households each hour over the course of a “total day”; 71% of Americans as late as 2013 still watched local broadcast news, with audiences actually growing from the prior year by over 6% for morning news and over 3% for the early evening news. You can add in Hispanic cable nets’ news as well. In sum there shouldn’t be any doubt of the resilient interest in watching news amongst vast numbers of Americans.
The definition of television “news” keeps expanding. For news snobs (G-d bless you Charlie Skinner) “soft” news is a scourge to be opposed. But television offers up plenty of non-traditional programming that certainly fits into what the public thinks of as news, and we don’t have to include following around the Kardashians. We can have legitimately interesting and well-presented news and information about the entertainment business (from E! and broadcast programs such as Access Hollywood), food, and home improvement, and a dynamic new entrant on the global news front in Vice. There is plenty of opportunity to provide information of value to a significant segment of the media universe.
It takes longer to deliver something on TV than online. Yes, you read that correctly – this is a good thing. You can release information in a split second in the digital world, and access it just as quickly. But we’re talking about news. Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should publish something so immediately. And speed doesn’t ever help context. The human infrastructure included in television production, whether live or through pre-produced packages, from writers, producers, editors, and technical directors, creates and is accountable for that context. I’m no luddite – there are a lot of terrific sources of news online that I use every day. But the market for curation and context in news is not going away – you just have to feed it in a creative and enticing fashion.
A whole lot of people still need TV. There are 116 million TV households in the U.S., and roughly 100 million of them have some form of multichannel video. Yes, 65% of the U.S. population also has a smartphone, but computer ownership and Internet access still varies widely. Unsurprising, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, “The television remains the most commonly owned video viewing device and our primary means of watching video content.” At a time of increasing rather than decreasing income inequality, let’s hope that we are a long way away from news going off of television.
THIS WAS PUBLISHED ON FORBES.COM ON JANUARY 19, 2015. FOR MORE OF MY WORK ON FORBES, CLICK HERE.
Attorney
10 年One America seems to have an old fashioned independent viewpoint. Most news is overproduced and overedited.
Content Acquisition & Strategy Innovator
10 年And I especially appreciate One America because it is news most of the time!
Bilingual Executive Secretary at Advanced Communications & Electriconics Systems Co., Ltd.
10 年I don't like to consider in terms of "Either or Or" because if you do then you will close yourself in a "BOX" which is certainly contradicting realty. Because people have so many varied interest in this "Global Village" that you may need more and more media outlets and forms of outlets as we move forward in this age of technology uproar.... Regarding branding, editing , there is too much beef around there and I think everyone is testing his/her fitness... let welcome the winner and sympathise with the looser... But at the end "Everyone will swim"...........
Editor at The Rye Record
10 年Whether we receive our news from online, print, or TV sources, it's the journalistic/editing process that is most important, not the network or correspondent's particular "brand." We need to be able to trust that the sources of the report are credible, and that the people who are part of the editing – I would never say "curating" which is something else entirely – process are focused on reporting the story factually in a compelling way. What I saw on CNN and Fox during the Paris bombings was shocking. CNN's in- studio reporter was obviously under-trained and overwhelmed by it all. And, Fox was immediately focused on why Obama would not call it "Islamic" terrorism. Through on air incompetence and an obsessive focus on ideology, both missed telling the story the way CNN and others use to be able to do. Online/print/short/long, we need well told narratives, an affordable, credible journalistic process. It's a wide open game now. There is no go-to breaking news place, as CNN was not too long ago. We better develop one fast.