By Deborah Potter and Walter Gantz
The news is troubling for local television news. Audiences in many major cities are down across the board for early evening and late newscasts. And news directors are searching desperately for ways to reverse the trend. “We’ve heard the wake-up call,” one corporate news executive says, “we’re just not sure what to do about it.”
NewsLab’s latest research can help. It not only pinpoints some of the reasons for declining viewership, but also offers a roadmap for bringing viewers back. We surveyed a national sample of 500 people who describe themselves as infrequent viewers of local TV news.1 These people told us they either watch less often than they used to, or at most three nights a week. If stations want to grow their audience, this group offers substantial potential.
The people we interviewed are not uninterested in local news, but many of them said they get it elsewhere. Only 20% of our sample turn to television as their main source of news about their city or town. Compare that to 15% who said their primary source of local news is conversations with other people, about the same number who turn to the radio. The leading source of local news, for more than 40% of our respondents: the newspaper.2 We also asked how often our respondents used different sources of news each week. The most frequently used source was conversations with other people (more than four days per week), followed by local radio and local newspapers. The Weather Channel and network newscasts also were more frequently used by our sample than local television (less than two days per week).3
For several years, people have been telling researchers they don’t watch local TV news because they simply don’t have time. More than a third of the people we surveyed gave similar reasons-they’re either not at home (38%) or asleep (36%) when the news is on-and they’re not just making excuses. We checked, by asking when they got home from work and when they went to sleep. They really aren’t available. There’s not much a station can do to draw those people back, outside of shifting the news to a more convenient time. But a quarter of our sample (27%) was not only available at news time, they were even watching television-just something other than the local news. Those people clearly could watch, if they wanted to.
Many of their reasons for not watching had to do with the content of the newscasts-something news managers can change. Some of their complaints are familiar: there’s too much crime and violence on the news. “All you see is horrendous crime, murder, things like that,” one person said. “It’s very stressful. And sometimes people just don’t want to deal with that. So many good things are happening out there and everything has to be about crime or celebrities. I want to hear about the real people.”
Others said the local news is too negative and sensationalized. “It’s depressing,” said one respondent. “They drive the same stories to the ground, over and over.” Another person told us: “I think the stories are sensationalistic. I think they focus on human tragedy, and they’re going for entertainment value.” And a large percentage of our sample called the local news boring and irrelevant: “I used to watch it a lot but it’s gotten so repetitive and so boring, I just turn it off.” Another person told us: “They are always behind about three days, and what they do tell you, it is as if they are talking to a six year old.” They complained that the local news is “always the same stuff,” and said too many of the stories are fluffy features. “It’s too shallow,” one person said. “It is more entertainment than news. They focus on stories that have little impact on my life.”4
So what could bring these viewers back? Provide more variety, they said. More substance. “Tell the whole story, not just bits and pieces,” one person suggested. “More in-depth and intelligent stories,” said another. A third respondent urged local television news to “explain more.” As another person put it: “I’d like to see them do some real reporting that is in depth, not to a limited number of people, but to the entire community.”
What specific kinds of stories are they looking for? Think local, local, local. Three-quarters (76%) of the people we talked to said they would be a lot or somewhat more likely to watch if TV news covered more community issues and activities, like special events, programs for kids, neighborhood cleanups, even local council meetings. “Current events and things that are happening locally, things that deal with politics, current things that are happening in cities and counties, how we can become more a part of the community,” one person said. They wanted to know about events before they happened so they could participate and help. “There is no sense of being clued in,” one person said. Almost as many respondents (72%) said they’d come back to watch more coverage of local schools. For some people, that meant reports about testing and teacher training, for others, money and taxes or school safety. They wanted to know how their schools compared to others, to hear “both good and bad.”
Our respondents also said they’d watch more health stories and consumer reporting-echoing the findings of other television news surveys. But the people we talked to defined the health beat more broadly than many stations do. They wanted to know about good and bad doctors, about health insurance and nursing homes, not just about the latest medical “breakthrough.” Two-thirds of those we surveyed said they’d watch a lot or somewhat more local TV news if it covered local business, with an emphasis on economic growth and jobs. A similar number expressed interest in knowing more about the environment.
And government was not a turnoff to these potential viewers. Almost two-thirds (60%) said they’d watch more news if TV covered city and local government. One person wanted to know “what our city and government officials are really doing for us, whether or not they are doing what they said they were going to do.” Several others mentioned a desire to know more about local campaigns and elections. Yet when we asked in general terms if more coverage of political campaigns and elections would encourage them to watch more often, the answer was a resounding no. That topic ranked with crimes, fires, and accidents at the bottom of the list of coverage they’d tune in for. It appears that viewers may be turned off by the term “politics” alone, not necessarily by political news.5
These suggestions come from a national sample, and while it is a representative sample6, different areas of the country may have different priorities. But the survey indicates a yearning for local television news that truly informs viewers about the community they live in-not by covering the latest murder or car crash-but by focusing on news that matters to people. If you provide it, they say, they will come back.
1. Walter Gantz is professor of Telecommunication at Indiana University, and analyzed the survey results.
2. The telephone survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates in January-February 2000.
TABLE 1 Q: Where would you say you get most of your news about what’s going on in your city?
| NEWS SOURCE | PERCENT |
| Newspapers | 43.2 |
| Television | 20.6 |
| Radio | 16.8 |
| Other people | 15.4 |
| Other/don’t know | 2.6 |
| Internet | 1.0 |
| Magazines | 0.4 |
NOTE: Television ranked higher as a source of news about the world (35.6 percent called it their main source, compared to 24.8 for newspapers). TV was in a virtual tie with newspapers as the leading source of news about the state (32.8 for TV vs. 33.4 for newspapers). But for local news, as Table 1 shows, twice as many people in our sample turned to newspapers as television. (REMINDER: Only people who said they watch local TV no more than three days per week, or less often than they did a few years ago, were questioned for this survey.)
TABLE 2 Q: About how many days a week would you say you use each of the following sources for news?
| NEWS SOURCE | MEAN # DAYS PER WEEK |
| Conversations with other people | 4.02 |
| Local radio stations | 3.97 |
| Local newspapers | 3.31 |
| The Weather Channel | 2.32 |
| Broadcast network news (eg ABC, CBS, NBC) | 2.17 |
| LOCAL TV NEWS | 1.84 |
| National cable networks (eg CNN, MSNBC) | 1.82 |
| Internet | 1.78 |
| Local cable channels | 1.65 |
| ESPN, Fox Sports or CNN/SI | 1.56 |
| National newspapers (NYT, USA Today, WSJ) | 0.82 |
TABLE 3 Q: I’m going to read a list of reasons that others have mentioned for not watching the local TV news. What I’d like you to do is tell me how much each reason applies to you. We’ll use a scale from zero to ten, where zero means the reason doesn’t apply at all to you and ten means the reason applies a great deal to you.
| REASON FOR NOT WATCHING LOCAL TV NEWS | Mean score on a scale of 0-10 | Percent saying 8, 9 or 10 |
| You get local news elsewhere | 5.33 | 35.2 |
| You are too busy to watch when home | 5.33 | 34.4 |
| You are not home when the news comes on | 5.26 | 38.6 |
| There is too much crime on local TV news | 4.79 | 32.0 |
| The news seldom presents positive things | 4.52 | 24.4 |
| Local news is always the same stuff | 4.51 | 25.0 |
| There are too many fluff stories | 4.49 | 24.6 |
| You are asleep when the late news comes on | 4.47 | 36.6 |
| You are watching something else when the news is on | 4.28 | 27.0 |
| The local news is too negative | 4.22 | 22.8 |
| Local news is boring | 4.18 | 19.6 |
| The news doesn’t offer enough details | 3.89 | 18.6 |
| The news doesn’t relate to your life | 3.61 | 19.6 |
| You don’t like the way they present the news | 3.61 | 16.8 |
| Newscasters don’t always get their facts straight | 3.46 | 14.4 |
| You don’t care that much about local news | 3.40 | 17.0 |
| The promos for the news turn you off | 3.31 | 15.6 |
| The news doesn’t live up to the promos | 3.18 | 11.0 |
| The stations don’t give much local news | 3.10 | 12.2 |
| There is too much sports | 3.09 | 14.0 |
| You don’t like the way it covers people like you | 3.07 | 19.0 |
| Local news just isn’t important to you | 2.98 | 13.8 |
| Newscasters don’t know what they are talking about | 2.94 | 10.4 |
| Newscasters spend too much time talking to each other | 2.91 | 12.2 |
| There is too much weather on local news | 2.47 | 9.0 |
| You work at night and can’t watch the news | 2.28 | 14.4 |
TABLE 4 Q. Now I’m going to read a short list of topics that could be covered on the local TV news. Please tell me if you would be MORE likely or LESS likely to watch the local news if it offered more coverage of each topic. Would that be a lot (more/less) likely or somewhat (more/less) likely?
| TOPIC | A LOT MORE | SOMEWHAT MORE | SAME | SOMEWHAT LESS | A LOT LESS |
| Education issues, like testing, teacher training | 37.3 | 31.1 | 8.8 | 16.3 | 6.4 |
| Stories about what’s happening in the local schools | 37.1 | 35.1 | 7.8 | 13.8 | 6.2 |
| Health reports | 33.7 | 36.9 | 8.4 | 13.0 | 8.0 |
| Community events and happenings in the area | 33.0 | 43.3 | 5.2 | 12.7 | 5.8 |
| Local business activities and jobs | 28.1 | 38.0 | 9.6 | 17.9 | 6.4 |
| Environmental issues, like air pollution and clean water | 27.9 | 38.0 | 9.2 | 15.3 | 9.6 |
| Government waste or fraud | 26.8 | 31.4 | 7.9 | 20.7 | 13.2 |
| Features about interesting people | 24.5 | 38.1 | 9.3 | 17.6 | 10.5 |
| Consumer reports | 24.0 | 42.7 | 9.1 | 14.7 | 9.5 |
| Personal finance issues | 20.5 | 34.5 | 9.2 | 23.1 | 12.7 |
| State government actions | 20.3 | 34.9 | 10.2 | 22.9 | 11.6 |
| City or local government actions | 20.2 | 39.8 | 7.7 | 20.6 | 11.7 |
| Political campaigns and elections | 12.3 | 19.3 | 12.5 | 25.3 | 30.4 |
| Fires | 9.7 | 22.9 | 13.4 | 34.1 | 19.9 |
| Accidents | 9.1 | 21.4 | 12.3 | 28.7 | 28.5 |
| Crimes | 8.3 | 21.3 | 12.3 | 26.9 | 31.2 |
TABLE 5 Demographic information in percentages, national sample (N=500)
| Gender | Male | 47.8 |
| Female | 52.2 | |
| Age | 18-29 | 28.0 |
| 30-39 | 25.6 | |
| 40-49 | 21.4 | |
| 50-59 | 14.0 | |
| 60-69 | 6.6 | |
| 70+ | 2.6 | |
| Refused | 1.8 | |
| Mean | 40.3 | |
| Education | Less than high school degree | 7.0 |
| High school degree | 26.4 | |
| Business/technical/vocational | 6.4 | |
| Some college | 24.8 | |
| College degree(s) | 34.6 | |
| DK/refused | 0.2 | |
| Race | White | 79.0 |
| Black | 10.2 | |
| Hispanic | 2.2 | |
| Other | 6.8 | |
| DK/refused | 1.8 | |
| Household income | Less than $25,000 | 15.4 |
| $25,000-$39,000 | 19.8 | |
| $40,000-$59,000 | 18.6 | |
| At least $60,000 | 32.6 | |
| DK/refused | 13.6 | |
| Work for pay | No | 17.8 |
| Yes | 82.2 | |
| Of those who work for pay | Full time | 81.6 |
| Part time | 18.3 |
