In the special 1999 issue of 'Nieman Reports', Marc Gunther discussed network news. "Because so much has been written recently about the decline of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) and the rise of cable and the Internet, it is worth observing that network news still matters. In turn, what stories the Big Three choose to broadcast and how they tell them also still matters.
"During 1998, the three evening newscasts reached a combined average of about 30.4 million viewers in 22 million homes. This represents a reach that is greater than the total circulation of the nation's 10 largest newspapers. Prime time news programs connect with even larger audiences. CBS's '60 Minutes' (Sunday), the industry leader, has attracted an average of 13.4 million homes so far during the 1998-99 TV season.
"And '60 Minutes' is only one of 14 prime-time, hour-long news shows appearing on the Big Three. No cable program or newspaper has anything approaching that kind of reach. The most popular cable news program, CNN's 'Larry King Live', is seen by fewer than one million homes on a typical night. The Big Three networks are still, by far, the most commanding voices in American journalism and therefore one of the most important forces in our democracy.
"Last year (1998), ABC, CBS and NBC each had discussions with CNN about sharing staff and bureaus outside of the United States. While a full-fledged merger between a broadcast network and CNN appears unlikely, increased cooperation of some kind seems inevitable. The technique of 'pooling', in which news operations share footage from a single camera as they do in Congress and at the White House, has already begun to spread overseas.
"'Internationally, you will probably see some consolidation of resources,' says Pat Fili-Krushel, the President of ABC, who oversees ABC News.
The networks argue that they don't need as many bureaus and reporters now because their role has changed. Rather than trying to be first on the air with a headline or a picture, the mission at ABC, CBS and NBC is defined as providing so-called value-added programming - in-depth analysis and original reporting that 24-hour cable services and local TV can’t duplicate.
"This makes sense, but it’s difficult to provide thoughtful reporting of stories around the nation and the world without reporters on the ground who are given the resources to develop expertise. Paul Friedman, Executive Producer of ABC's 'World News Tonight', says, 'Journalism is about going out and looking at things, and you can’t do that by buying video from APTV … You wind up doing a lot more of what we did before the news budgets expanded and that was parachute in.
"'If you have good people who have a lot of experience, you can generally parachute in and do a good job. But it is not the same as having somebody on the ground who calls you and says, you know, you really ought to come and look at this developing story.' The same goes for coverage in Washington, where specialized beats have been gradually eliminated or several assignments have been combined.
"The war in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 exemplifies some of the problems that accompany these new approaches to network news coverage. No network had been covering the emerging crisis in Kosovo on an ongoing basis. Few reporters knew Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, knew much about the tensions fueling the crisis, or had established sources in the region. Even the best correspondents covering the NATO bombing and the mass eviction of Albanians were new to this story.
"When the Pentagon and the Serbs both clamped down on information, many in the press were largely unprepared to cover aspects of this story and, as a consequence, many critics felt the public was ill served.
Compared with hard news - expensive to cover and limited in the return it can deliver - the economics of prime time newsmagazines are very attractive. They don’t require bureaus with people stationed around the world.
"Typically, they rely on their own staffs of producers and correspondents to cover stories that they decide when, where and how to do. Controlling costs becomes easier. Executives in charge of newsmagazines can opt not to cover a complicated high-cost story, or they can decide to keep staff closer to home rather than pay for expensive travel. Unlike the daily news programs, newsmagazines do joint ventures and piggyback onto coverage generated by others.
"For example, NBC's 'Dateline' does projects with 'People' and 'In Style' magazines, Court TV and the Discovery Channel, among others, all of which save money.
Newsmagazines, as a genre, perform nearly as well as entertainment on a year-round basis.
Prime time newsmagazines can tell compelling stories, attract bigger audiences, fill more hours, and operate more efficiently than unpredictable hard-news programming."
'The Washington Post' reported in September 1995, "Summer ratings were exceptionally strong for 'Dateline NBC', ABC's 'PrimeTime Live' and '20/20', and CBS's '60 Minutes', and several shows broke major stories last week. (However) many magazines resorted to repetitive coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, while all but ignoring a host of more substantive topics, such as the economy, business, education, science and religion.
"Not as fortunate were ABC's 'Day One' and CBS's 'Eye To Eye with Connie Chung', which were canceled. Network producers say that, with fewer magazines on the air, the survivors will be stronger. Each network has its own strategy to revitalize the genre. At CBS, Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of '60 Minutes', has set out to make the program more timely.
"'60 Minutes' also delivers more foreign news than any other magazine. Mike Wallace interviewing Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb President and accused war criminal; and Ed Bradley profiling Latif Yahia, who acted as a body-double for Saddam Hussein's son during the Persian Gulf War and now living in exile in London. While '60 Minutes' relies on its stable of well-known, albeit aging, stars, NBC and Andrew Lack have turned 'Dateline' into what amounts to a 'store brand' magazine, a generic show that draws on all of NBC's anchors and a slew of not-so-big-name correspondents.
"That approach controls costs - 'Dateline' produces three hours a week with a staff of about 200, roughly the same number ABC needs to make the one-hour 'PrimeTime Live' and '20/20' - and diminishes infighting, which has plagued other magazines. 'Our idea was, let's just put one great team together, rather than create walls within the house where we compete with each other,' Lack says. 'In the other shops, there is respect and politeness among colleagues but the fact is, you aren't rooting for the other's success.' NBC also produces, at almost no added cost, a European version of 'Dateline'.
"By contrast, ABC wants its news hours to be distinctive, not only by virtue of their anchor-stars but because of their styles. 'PrimeTime' spotlights investigations and aims for a hipper, edgier feel, a video version, say, of 'Vanity Fair', whereas '20/20' has a middle-American flavor, built around Barbara Walters's profiles, self-help stories, emotional human-interest pieces and investigations.
"'To build a successful franchise, a newsmagazine should have its own voice and its own personality,' says ABC's Alan Wurtzel. 'These things should not be generic.' Last week (at the start of the 1995-96 season), as the networks began rolling out new dramas and comedies, the magazines more than held their own, commercially and journalistically."
Marc Gunther continued with the 'Nieman Reports', "Whatever one thinks of the network prime time magazines, even a casual viewer can see that they are not governed by news values in the traditional sense. Executive producers of these magazines don’t see themselves as under any obligation to cover the most important stories of the moment. Nor do they act like the kind of journalist whose job it is to provide citizens with information they need to participate in a democracy.
"Ratings for hard news have slid, in part, because of the explosion in alternative news sources. Consumers can pick up stories from all-news cable, Internet news sites (including those operated by the networks), local stations (which broadcast up to six hours of news a day in major markets), business cable news outlets, the Weather Channel, sports news channels, all-news radio and National Public Radio.
"In response, the newscasts anchored by ABC's Peter Jennings, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and CBS's Dan Rather are reporting fewer 'headline' stories, preferring to highlight in-depth stories, live interviews and news-you-can-use. Even so, their combined audience share has declined from a peak of 75% in 1980 to 47% in 1998. 'Good journalism is good business. '60 Minutes', 'Nightline' and the 'Today' show are these unique programs that go back for … years, that are just embedded in the national consciousness as very reliable, quality programs. Each of us is fortunate to have one of those franchises. They're pillars,' says NBC's Andrew Lack.
"In fact, unlike dramas and sitcoms, which run out of steam and leave the air, established news programs seem able to go on for decades. CBS's Andrew Heyward says news programs offer 'a wonderful combination of the familiar and the new,' familiar faces and formats, renewed daily or weekly with new headlines and fresh stories. Says David Westin, the President of ABC News, 'They go on forever, you don't have to reinvent them, and they draw an audience, week after week, month after month.'"
"Not as fortunate were ABC's 'Day One' and CBS's 'Eye To Eye with Connie Chung', which were canceled. Network producers say that, with fewer magazines on the air, the survivors will be stronger. Each network has its own strategy to revitalize the genre. At CBS, Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of '60 Minutes', has set out to make the program more timely.
"'60 Minutes' also delivers more foreign news than any other magazine. Mike Wallace interviewing Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb President and accused war criminal; and Ed Bradley profiling Latif Yahia, who acted as a body-double for Saddam Hussein's son during the Persian Gulf War and now living in exile in London. While '60 Minutes' relies on its stable of well-known, albeit aging, stars, NBC and Andrew Lack have turned 'Dateline' into what amounts to a 'store brand' magazine, a generic show that draws on all of NBC's anchors and a slew of not-so-big-name correspondents.
"That approach controls costs - 'Dateline' produces three hours a week with a staff of about 200, roughly the same number ABC needs to make the one-hour 'PrimeTime Live' and '20/20' - and diminishes infighting, which has plagued other magazines. 'Our idea was, let's just put one great team together, rather than create walls within the house where we compete with each other,' Lack says. 'In the other shops, there is respect and politeness among colleagues but the fact is, you aren't rooting for the other's success.' NBC also produces, at almost no added cost, a European version of 'Dateline'.
"By contrast, ABC wants its news hours to be distinctive, not only by virtue of their anchor-stars but because of their styles. 'PrimeTime' spotlights investigations and aims for a hipper, edgier feel, a video version, say, of 'Vanity Fair', whereas '20/20' has a middle-American flavor, built around Barbara Walters's profiles, self-help stories, emotional human-interest pieces and investigations.
"'To build a successful franchise, a newsmagazine should have its own voice and its own personality,' says ABC's Alan Wurtzel. 'These things should not be generic.' Last week (at the start of the 1995-96 season), as the networks began rolling out new dramas and comedies, the magazines more than held their own, commercially and journalistically."
Marc Gunther continued with the 'Nieman Reports', "Whatever one thinks of the network prime time magazines, even a casual viewer can see that they are not governed by news values in the traditional sense. Executive producers of these magazines don’t see themselves as under any obligation to cover the most important stories of the moment. Nor do they act like the kind of journalist whose job it is to provide citizens with information they need to participate in a democracy.
"Ratings for hard news have slid, in part, because of the explosion in alternative news sources. Consumers can pick up stories from all-news cable, Internet news sites (including those operated by the networks), local stations (which broadcast up to six hours of news a day in major markets), business cable news outlets, the Weather Channel, sports news channels, all-news radio and National Public Radio.
"In response, the newscasts anchored by ABC's Peter Jennings, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and CBS's Dan Rather are reporting fewer 'headline' stories, preferring to highlight in-depth stories, live interviews and news-you-can-use. Even so, their combined audience share has declined from a peak of 75% in 1980 to 47% in 1998. 'Good journalism is good business. '60 Minutes', 'Nightline' and the 'Today' show are these unique programs that go back for … years, that are just embedded in the national consciousness as very reliable, quality programs. Each of us is fortunate to have one of those franchises. They're pillars,' says NBC's Andrew Lack.
"In fact, unlike dramas and sitcoms, which run out of steam and leave the air, established news programs seem able to go on for decades. CBS's Andrew Heyward says news programs offer 'a wonderful combination of the familiar and the new,' familiar faces and formats, renewed daily or weekly with new headlines and fresh stories. Says David Westin, the President of ABC News, 'They go on forever, you don't have to reinvent them, and they draw an audience, week after week, month after month.'"
