Local Tv News, Content, and the Bottom Line

ABSTRACT:

This study compares the nature of local stories that were presented on television newscasts across 17 television markets in the United States. It is an extension of the localism research that was conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2004 and the Local Television News Media Project at the University of Delaware in 2007 and 2009. The focus was on the cost characteristics of the stories that were identified as “local” using the definition adopted by the FCC. I specifically examined those attributes of the stories across the television markets that would affect the cost of presentation to the station—the proverbial bottom line. Those attributes were story type, story placement, story duration, and the presentation mode. What types of stories were covered? What was their duration? Where were they placed in the broadcast? What presentation mechanisms were used to present them to the audience? What were the differences, if any, in these attributes across television markets? What are the implications for public policy and citizenship in local places?

Notes

1 For stories that took place in the core city or any of the larger cities/towns in the DMA, their location was easily identified. For those stories that took place in smaller towns or areas in the DMA where the local/nonlocal factor was not immediately clear, we consulted maps of the DMA. To make sure that we specified the location as local or nonlocal properly, we downloaded maps of each DMA with the delineation of all of the counties in the market. Then, we entered the name of the location in the Google map program to determine if the location was in any of the counties within the DMA. The location of the story was an objective fact that we could verify by consulting the appropriate sources. Therefore, it was possible to achieve a 100% agreement on that variable.