The Influence of Message and Audience Characteristics on TV News Grazing Behavior

Abstract

This study examined television news channel changing (AKA grazing, zapping) behavior by focusing on the viewing duration and attention paid to stories that varied in sensational content and packaging. These two message-related factors had independent and interactive effects on how long grazers stayed tuned to a channel. Moreover, high sensation seekers, who were more avid news consumers in everyday life, exhibited different viewing and attentional patterns compared to low sensation seekers. While arousing television news was the most watched by all, high sensation seekers unexpectedly showed less preference for sensational tabloid packaging of arousing content than low sensation seekers.

Notes

The authors would like to thank Byungho Park, Sungkyoung Lee, Seunjo Lee, and Kythaparampil Jacob Koruth for their help with data collection.

The authors are listed alphabetically.

¹Most studies employ the original questionnaire item as an operational definition of news grazer. Respondents who completely or mostly agree with the statement: “I find that I often watch the news with my remote control in hand, flipping to other channels when I'm not interested in the topic” are treated as grazers (Bennett, Rhine, & Flickinger, 2008; Morris & Forgette, 2007; Pew, 2004). A related study on election news grazing employed the following question: “When you are watching (program or channel watched most often) how many times would you guess that you switch to other programs that contain information about the 2008 presidential campaign?” (Hardy & Jamieson, 2011).

²Five other gratifications were also tied to remote control use, including annoying others, controlling family TV viewing, accessing music videos, avoiding commercials, and finding out what is on TV (Walker & Bellamy, 1991; Walker et al., 1993; Wenner & Dennehy, 1993).

³This appears contrary to the Fox et al. (2004b) study that identified high sensation seekers as having more affinity for arousing news content. One key difference between the two studies, however, is our focus on sensational packaging features in addition to arousing content.