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July 12, 2006

Slow Death of Network News

The other day I wrote this post on how pointless I think nightly network news is and how I never watch it anymore. Apparently I am not the only one not watching as average network news ratings have dropped from about 27 million average viewers to about 21 million over the past six months, which is down from around 50 million from around 25 years ago. Newsbusters reports:

We're talking about a total audience drop of over 20% in just six months (from roughly 27 million to 21 million). Sure, it's summertime, but I'm skeptical that the total viewership numbers will recover at all in the fall, even with (especially with?) the arrival of Katie "Don't Call Me Perky" Couric at CBS. Barring a recovery I don't see happening, the nets have lost one-third of their evening news audience in the past 5 years, while the general population has grown 5% or so.

Okay, much of the long-term change in viewership has to do with increased television and other news and entertainment choices. But all of those choices were already in place six months ago, so that excuse doesn't wash in explaining this year's steep drop.

Tom thinks this is a result of liberal media bias and while I think that has turned some people off, I think the main turn off is the poor quality and pointlessness of it all. The fact is that most half hour evening news broadcasts could be contained in one short paragraph with a couple of hyperlinks on a webpage and no one wants to sit through a half hour of that.

Related to this is the decline in newspapers. Of all the people I know under 35 I am pretty sure none of them currently subscribe to a newspaper. Before we were married my wife got the Sunday edition of the San Antonio Express News because her roommate wanted the coupons and her roommate later subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, but no longer does. This is especially relevant since from my conversations with them most of the people I am friends with follow the news, many follow it fairly closely, and the vast majority of my friends are also regular voters. They just get their news from radio, cable, and the internet with the internet being the number one source for most of them.

I doubt there is a long term future for the network evening news and suspect many traditional news sources will continue to struggle because young people who care about the news are not satisfied with the choices given by, and the necessary limitations of, network news and newspapers. A lack of hyperlinks will be the death of many a traditional news source. Radio may survive because it is usually free and you can listen to it while driving and doing other stuff. TV news will survive in some form because people like moving pictures and TV can be faster than magazines and newspapers, but CNN and Fox News can cover that market for most people. And while pretty much everyone has a TV not everyone will have the internet in their home for many years so while I think network TV news will die eventually, it will be a slow death that no one will watch anyways.

Posted by Pete at July 12, 2006 09:46 PM

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Comments

I have a newspaper subscription to the Chronicle. Had one to the Express-News when I was in San Antonio too. Didn't have one in my last city, but that's because the paper was a pitiful sad little thing. While I still get most of my news via the internet, there's just something about a decent newspaper that I really like.

Posted by: Dangerous Dan at July 12, 2006 11:32 PM

Just to set the record straight, I, too, subscribe to the Houston Chronicle, which I enjoy mostly for the feature articles, funnies and coupons. However, I agree that the evening news (and most television programming, in my opinion) is a waste of time. The sole purpose of the TV in our house is to watch DVD's from Netflix. We get the majority of our news from radio, the Internet and Newsweek (my weakness).

Posted by: Mary Ruth at July 13, 2006 09:15 AM