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Intro | Content Analysis | Audience | Economics | Ownership | News Investment | Public Attitudes | Conclusion | Charts & Tables
Audience
When it comes to audiences of network news, the headlines
are generally grim. Only one or two programs are increasing
their audiences. For most, flat ratings are a victory. The
networks are showing no real signs of innovation or of creating
genuinely new kinds of news programming that might win new
audiences. The lone exception is morning television news,
which saw an upturn in 2003.
Some points:
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The three nightly newscasts have seen ratings decline
by 34 percent in the past decade, nearly 44 percent since
1980, and 59 percent from their peak in 1969.
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The war offered the nightly news little bump in viewership
in contrast with past major news events.
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Morning news is the one relative bright spots for the
networks, with audiences holding steady rather than declining
over the past 10 years. It had an increase in audience
size in 2003 and in 2000 as well.
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The best evidence suggests it is availability, rather
than content, that is hurting evening news, but there
seems little opportunity to change that.
The Nightly Newscasts
The problems confronting the network news divisions are most
acute, and for fans of traditional news, most alarming, in
the falling fortunes of nightly news.
Television audiences are counted numerous ways. The most
familiar is ratings, which count the number of all television
sets in the United States tuned to a given program. Share
is the percentage of just those sets in use at a given time
tuned in to a program. Viewership is ratings converted into
the number of people actually estimated to be watching, taking
account of the fact that often more than one person is watching
a given set.
In November 1980, the year CNN was launched, 75 percent of
television sets in use were tuned to one of the three nightly
network newscasts each night during the dinner hour. In 2003,
it was a 40 percent share.
Of all television homes, 20.6 percent were tuned to the nightly
news in November 2003, a drop of 44 percent from 1980, when
the networks' nightly news broadcasts had a combined 37 rating.
Yet, much of this decline did not come with the advent of
cable, between 1980 and 1990. The drop in audience has been
even steeper in the last 10 years, as the number of cable
outlets has proliferated, than in the previous 13 years.
A decade ago (November 1993), 40.7 million Americans watched
the nightly newscasts. By November 2003, that number was 29.3
million, a decline of 28 percent in 10 years.
The decline from the historic peak of nightly news audience
is even steeper. In 1969, when viewing choices were admittedly
limited, the three network newscasts were watched in 50 percent
of all American homes and 85 percent of the homes tuned to
television at the time that the newscasts were shown.
Since then, ratings have fallen by 59 percent. Share has fallen
53 percent.
What is driving the flight away from nightly news? How much
is it a loss of viewers to cable, or a migration of people
to the Internet? Is there a decline in interest in news generally?
Do people dislike the changing content of the newscasts? Or
how much is the increasingly disadvantageous time slot of
nightly news to blame or the shift to more two-income families
and longer commutes?
Certainly some of the fall-off seems an inevitable result
of technology creating more alternatives. In the 1970s many
viewers had only three or four choices on their broadcast
television dial. Cable arrived in 1980, expanding the range
of television choices to 20, then 30, then 40, or in the case
of some cable or satellite systems, 200 or 300 channels. The
number of broadcast stations also grew, with the development
of UHF stations, and the Fox network (see Cable
TV Audience).
Research also suggests that the Internet, including Web sites
associated with the networks themselves, has drawn audience
more from television than other media, but the extent of that
is difficult to assess. A 2000 survey from the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press found that those who regularly
went online reported watching less network television news
than two years earlier.
Fewer watched television news overall, and those who did watched
less of it. Meanwhile, viewing among those who did not go
online was unchanged. It is unclear, however, to what extent
this trend has continued in the last three years.
Local television news, too, now has access to many of the
same pictures and stories that were once the exclusive domain
of the networks; in recent years local television news viewership
has also declined somewhat (see Local
News Audience). In 1980, the three commercial networks
monopolized national and international news, releasing their
footage on these stories only after they had been broadcast
on the networks, and even then only in limited amounts. CNN
changed that by offering to share its footage with local stations
in exchange for their material. In response, the networks
began to increase feeds to affiliates. In the process, they
inevitably hurt their own newscasts, making them stand out
less.
Tastes also have changed. More people brought up on infotainment
may prefer lighter fare and may get more of it elsewhere.
The branding that comes with specialization ("CNN, the
Most Trusted Name in News" or "Fox News, We Report,
You Decide") may also be luring viewers away. In an age
of such niche fragmentation, a single one-size-fits-all newscast
may not appeal to as broad an audience.
Nightly newscasts are also hurt by their fixed time slots
compared with the ubiquity and convenience of cable. In the
1970s, the nightly news was generally on later than it is
now in most markets - 7 p.m. - and many more Americans were
home, in single-income families, and the working fathers had
notably shorter commutes. Today, the evening newscasts are
often on much earlier, as early as 5 or 5:30 p.m. in some
West Coast markets. On the West Coast, the evening news programs
have the added problem of being tape-delayed. Viewers know
the news they are watching is three hours old. Cable and local
news has the advantage of being more up to date.
Add to that the fact that the so-called dinner hour simply
offers less of an audience than it once did. Fewer people
are home, particularly working people, as commuting times
have lengthened,
and many parents are seeing their children for the first time
since the early morning. The evening news time slot is probably
the most disadvantageous on television.
Changes in the content of network evening newscasts may also
be a factor. As the evening newscasts have lost viewers, they
have cut back on their newsgathering. This has led to a decline
in the number of bureaus and beats, and a shrinkage in the
number of minutes of news produced in each program (see Newsroom
Investment). The evening newscasts have also tried changing
their tone, particularly in the mid-1990s, doing more lifestyle
coverage and less traditional news about national and international
affairs (see Content).
The changes in content and the shift toward seeing news divisions
as profit centers have had other implications. The news divisions
see themselves as having a different responsibility and persona
in American life than they once did. The networks once felt
obliged to do authoritative documentaries on major issues
of the day - "NBC White Papers" or "CBS Reports,"
for instance - which burnished the networks' image as serious
public institutions. Today, the network documentary has been
replaced in prime time by the news magazine program, shows
that are much closer to a form of nonfiction reality entertainment
than an exercise in social responsibility.
To some extent, all these changes - the new character of
existing programs, the growing importance of the morning shows
compared to the evening newscasts, the elimination of public
obligation programs and their substitutions with infotainment
news programming - contribute to the public's no longer seeing
network news divisions as authorities to turn to each day,
or even on special occasions, for information and insight.
Most likely, all these factors are at play, interacting
with each other.
One element here, the impact of time slot, is sometimes overlooked
and deserves more comment. While the nightly newscasts are
on a downward path in terms of viewers, what may be even more
remarkable, given the increasing disadvantages of the time
slot, is how many people still watch. Nearly 30 million viewers
each night make the network news programs the three most-watched
and influential news outlets in America, even if they have
become something of a familiar punching bag for television
writers and perhaps even a subject of doubt for their owners.
Twice as many people watch these programs as are watching
the morning shows at any given time. More than three times
as many people watch each of these programs as read any of
the nation's biggest newspapers.
Yet these viewers tend to be older and thereby not so attractive
to television advertisers, which are highly concerned with
attracting young audiences. Money, rather than solely demand,
has relegated what some might argue is the best of network
news to a subordinate position and has made the problems of
the evening newscasts something it is not clear the networks
are willing fundamentally to address. Many in network news
privately worry about how long the networks want to produce
signature evening newscasts at all.
One comparison that seems relevant to understanding this
is network versus local viewership. For many years of network
news decline, local news programming seemed to hold its audience,
in part, as indicated above, because satellite technology
had led to their offering national and international news
before the networks did. But today local news is also no longer
holding its audience.
Since the late 1990s, local news and the networks appear
to be losing audience at roughly the same rate. Nielsen data
gathered by the financial research firm BIA show that, on
average, early evening local news programs, which usually
are broadcast right before or right after the network evening
news, have suffered a combined market share decline from a
50 share in 1997 to 41 in 2003.
(See Local
TV Audience.) This tracks almost exactly with the decline
in network evening news share, which has gone from a 49 share
in 1997 to 40 in 2003. In any kind of television programming,
news or entertainment, the size of the audience of the lead-in
program is a dominant factor in determining the size of the
audience of the program that follows.
But network news has not suffered as much audience loss as
other network programming. Between 1993 and 2001, for instance,
according to the Cable Television Advertising Bureau, the
three networks saw their share of prime time audience drop
by 42 percent. Nightly news during that time dropped 23 percent.
The Race Among the Networks
Which of the three networks is on top in the evening news?
This was once a vital question. In the late 1980s and 1990s,
the evening newscasts contributed big profits to the networks.
For even longer, being No. 1 in nightly news was a key to
a network's brand, adding prestige. It gave the news divisions
not only bragging rights, but better access to newsmakers
as well.
For much of that time, the history of network news was characterized
by several distinct eras. In the early 1960s, the "Huntley-Brinkley
Report" on NBC dominated. In the late 1960s and 1970s,
Walter Cronkite on CBS was No. 1, and that newscast continued
to lead for some time in the 1980s when Dan Rather took over.
NBC News was emerging as No. 1 until General Electric took
over the network in the mid-1980s and made moves that caused
the network to temporarily stumble. In the late 1980s and
early 1990s, Peter Jennings' ABC "World News Tonight"
dominated. And in the late 1990s, a resurgent NBC saw Tom
Brokaw on top, although this owed more to the other networks
losing viewers than NBC gaining.
Throughout 2003, NBC had a narrow edge in ratings, followed
closely by ABC, then, farther back, by CBS.
To understand the race, consider the fortunes of each network
over the last decade. Using numbers from the critical November
sweeps month, the CBS "Evening News" with Dan Rather
has seen the biggest decline. Its viewership has fallen 37
percent in the last decade (from 13.1 million viewers in 1993
to 8.3 million in 2003), and even more since 1980. "World
News Tonight's" viewership on ABC has fallen 29 percent
(from 14.3 million viewers in 1993 to 10.1 million in 2003).
NBC's "Nightly News" has fallen the least, but still
a substantial 18 percent (from 13.3 million viewers in 1993
to 10.9 million in 2003), according to Nielsen data. These
Nielsen numbers actually show a near 2 percentage-point gain
for NBC in the last year.
NBC's "Nightly News" took over the No. 1 spot in
1997, and has remained there most weeks since.
Why has NBC fared better generally over the last seven years?
A detailed analysis of one program over another is not the
focus of this report. But some mention of possible factors
can show how complicated the mix of variables can be. NBC
has the advantage of having a cable network and one of the
biggest news sites online with MSNBC.com, which was launched
in 1996. Strategically, each of the brands was supposed to
reinforce each other. Loyalists to MSNBC.com would naturally
turn to its siblings when they wanted broadcast (NBC) or cable
(MSNBC) or even financial news (CNBC). NBC has almost one
minute more of news content above the three networks' average,
which, given channel switching during commercials, is probably
also significant. In addition, the popularity of the "Today
Show" in the morning may be another factor, building
loyalty to NBC News as a brand, which spills over into viewers
watching the network's nightly news as well. According to
at least one survey by TV Guide, Tom Brokaw is the most trusted
anchor on television, either network or cable, although it
is not known whether this is a result of Brokaw's audience
size or the cause of it.
Another important factor was that during much of this period,
NBC had the most successful prime time lineup of the three
networks.
It must be stressed, however, that NBC took the No. 1 spot
more because of ABC losses than NBC gains. In 1994, when NBC
was third in the ratings, it had 11 percent more viewers than
it does today, when it is No. 1.
The Age Factor
The ratings trends for nightly newscasts are a problem by
themselves, but the age issue makes the long-term prospects
even more complicated. Not only are their audiences shrinking,
but they are also getting older. The commercials on a network
evening newscast tell something about the audience. They are
often a string of pharmaceutical ads aimed at older Americans.
The median age of network evening news viewers in 2003 (from
59.5 for ABC to 61.2 for CBS)
is around 10 years older than network programming as a whole
(which was 45.7 to 52.2 in 2002). For the American population
as a whole, the median age is 35.3.
This makes the nightly news a less attractive sell to advertisers,
preoccupied with youth (see Economics)
and thus less lucrative for the networks. According to network
officials, the ad rates networks can charge for older audiences
are substantially less, perhaps even a third lower, than those
charged for the youngest demographics.
In terms of long-term strategy, moreover, what happens in
10 years when a significant portion of the network news audience
has died?
The Networks in 2003: War No Cure for the Problems
Traditionally in times of national crisis, like the war in
Iraq, viewers have turned to the networks for coverage, if
not the first night, then within a day or two.
That did not happen in 2003 with the war in Iraq, and some
television writers called this an important change, another
signal of decline for the network news and the evening newscasts
in particular.
The total number of viewers tuned to nightly news actually
dropped during the war. After rising just slightly the first
week of the war, to 32.2 million viewers, nightly news viewership
fell as the war continued. The number of viewers on the three
nightly newscasts dropped by 2.7 million the second week of
the war and 1.6 million more the third week as American soldiers
got to Baghdad.
On cable, by contrast, ratings more than doubled during the
war (see
Cable), though that audience has vanished since.
Does this spell an even more dire future for nightly news,
as some journalists have predicted?
Not necessarily.
A closer look at the Iraqi war ratings suggests two other
lessons.
In a head-to-head moment, when cable news and network news
are both in continuous live coverage, Americans still prefer
the old broadcast networks.
On the first night of the war, from 9:30 to 11 p.m., 42.2
million people turned to the three networks and their nightly
anchors, according to estimates made by Nielsen. Less than
half as many (19.2 million viewers) tuned to the three cable
networks, and 7.7 million more turned to Fox News on broadcast.
Combining Fox broadcast and Fox cable would put Rupert Murdoch's
two channels in second place among the networks (at 15.6 million),
well behind the combined NBC and MSNBC (at 22.2 million).
But that would be ahead of CBS (at 13 million) and ABC (at
11 million), neither of which has a news cable sibling.
Breaking News Viewership, First Night of Iraq War
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Viewership between 9:30 pm and 11:00 pm on the night
of March 19th, 2003.
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Design
Your Own Chart
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A further look at the ratings also suggests that people turn
to network for some things and cable for others. During times
of intense crisis, the continuous 24-hour coverage of cable
may be appealing. Indeed, the networks converted to continuous
coverage during the first two days of war and saw viewership
spike, then went back to regular programming and saw viewership
fall. The contrasting formats we found in the content of evening
newscasts versus cable are also instructive. Evening news
specializes in taped packages, cable in live stand-ups. The
Pentagon's embedded reporter program tended to showcase cable
skills (felicity with extemporaneous first-person monologue)
and made traditional newsgathering (interviewing, fact-checking,
getting all sides of the story, editing) logistically impossible.
But during other times, when events are moving more slowly,
people may still look to the somewhat more reflective coverage
offered by the once-a-day evening newscasts. The run-up to
war may be a case in point. Nightly news viewership actually
rose in the weeks leading up to the war. The highest ratings
in 2003 occurred in mid and late February, when 32.7 million
viewers tuned in to the three evening newscasts, according
to Nielsen Media Research. The Tyndall Report said that these
two weeks were dominated by coverage of Hans Blix's preliminary
report on Iraq's weapons programs and the United Nations debate
on a resolution in support of using military action against
Saddam Hussein.
NBC Fares Best, Wins the War
The network that drew the most viewers during the war was
NBC. In the first week of the war, NBC's "Nightly News"
recorded its single highest number of viewers for the entire
year (13.2 million viewers). While NBC's "Nightly News"
picked up a point in share during the week, ABC and CBS lost
a point each, though the bump in viewers at NBC was short-lived.
One interpretation of these share figures is that NBC's gain
was at the expense of ABC and CBS.
Yet another interpretation is that during major news events,
marginal news viewers tune in to the network nightly newscasts,
and do so disproportionately to the time slot leader (in this
case NBC). At the same time, some hardcore evening news viewers,
news junkies, defect to 24-hour cable. Thus ABC and CBS might
have lost more viewers to cable than they gained in new viewers,
while NBC gained more than it lost to cable. This is, however,
only a theory.
Morning News
After a night of bad news, network executives are probably
quick to tell themselves things will look better in the morning.
And they do. Morning show viewership, in contrast with evening,
has held steady and in some cases has actually risen slightly
in recent years.
As of November 2003, 14.6 million Americans watched the three
network morning news shows, one million more than a decade
earlier.
The rise has not been steady. For instance, looking again
at the critical November sweeps numbers, ratings rose in 2000,
during the Florida election fiasco (14.5 million Americans
watched the morning shows). Yet a year later, as the U.S.
moved into Afghanistan after September 11, the number of people
watching the morning shows was actually smaller (13.8 million).
The number drifted upward again in November 2003.
Why have morning shows proved more stable than evening? Again
several factors likely converge here.
Clearly the question of time slot is significant. The morning
shows are on, or at least begin, when most Americans are still
home, just starting their days. The number of people home
in the evenings is shrinking.
The researcher Andrew Tyndall also theorizes that on the
two top morning shows - the "Today" show on NBC
and "Good Morning America on ABC - a factor in their
appeal is that they offer 20 minutes of content without commercial
interruption. People wanting news and information, or even
diversion, in the morning and getting ready for work will
leave when the commercials start. In an age of growing commercial
time, this stands out.
The morning shows are also far more flexible and lighter
in content. They can fill their time with infotainment, scandal
mongering, tabloid fare, thinly veiled reality programming
(wedding planning or makeovers) or seasonal recipes, all with
a straight face. Or they can devote the first half-hour to
news from Iraq or Washington, although they do not often do
so.
The morning shows have also tinkered with their formats and
changed their looks somewhat more than the evening newscasts
to keep viewers interested and freshen their genre. In 1994,
NBC began the wave of changes when it moved the show back
to a ground-floor studio in Rockefeller Center in New York
City that had a window out onto the street (as it had in its
earliest days with its first host, Dave Garroway) and began
to incorporate the street crowd more in the program. Not long
after, CBS and ABC followed suit with their own elaborate
studios.
(The trend has also spread to cable: both CNN and Fox News
use street-side studios for their morning programs.) Morning
musical guests and street concerts also became a bigger part
of the morning show routine in this time. And the weather
segments have become longer features that involve the assembled
throng. In many ways, too, the anchors of the "Today"
show and "Good Morning America," particularly Katie
Couric and Diane Sawyer, are the biggest stars of the news
divisions today, the most highly paid and promoted.
Morning news programs are attractive to advertisers because
they provide access to a younger audience than the evening
programs. In fall 2003, according to analysis by Magna Global
USA, a market research firm, the median age for each of the
networks morning shows audience ranged from 51.3 to 53.1 years,
compared with 59.5 to 61.2 years for each of the network's
evening shows.
Looked at another way, while the 25-to-54-year-old audience
for evening news is 27 percent larger than the morning news
audience, the 50-plus demographic is 145 percent higher than
the same demo during morning news. The morning shows are a
more efficient way to reach the younger audience that advertisers
prefer.
The morning programs also get "softer" as the younger
demographics go to work and the nonworking mothers and older
viewers remain at home.
''Today'' on Top
Among the morning shows, NBC's "Today" has been
the clear leader since 1995. Its viewership had actually risen
to the top spot by a significant margin in the mid-1980s but
declined after the network's takeover and shakeup by General
Electric. "Today" vaulted back to the top in the
mid-1990s after the arrival of Katie Couric and after it moved
to its street-level studio, largely taking viewers from ABC.
Overall, "Today's" audience is 38 percent larger
than it was a decade ago (6.5 million viewers in November
2003, up from 4.7 million viewers in November 1993).
"Today's" totals peaked at 7.2 million in November
2000 when NBC's Tim Russert appeared on an almost daily basis,
having sealed his reputation as a political oracle with his
Election Night blackboard prediction that results would depend
on "Florida, Florida, Florida."
ABC's "Good Morning America" now draws the same
number of viewers that it did a decade ago, but it has been
a roller coaster ride. The No. 1 morning show in 1993, its
audience fell by 36 percent by 1998. After revamping the show
around Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer in 1999, it had rebuilt
its audience by the November 2003 sweeps back to 5.2 million
viewers. That had narrowed the gap with "Today"
but still put it in second place by 1.3 million viewers.
CBS's "Early Show" is a distant third. Despite
ups and downs and format changes, its audience in November
2003 was 21 percent smaller than a decade earlier.
The Sunday Shows
Another franchise of network news that deserves note is the
Sunday morning talk show. In recent years, "Meet the
Press" on NBC, whose host is Tim Russert, has established
itself as the dominant ratings leader. At the end of the 2002-2003
season, it led its nearest competitor, CBS's "Face the
Nation," with its host, Bob Schieffer, by 1.8 million
viewers (4.7 million versus 2.9 million). Since the 1997-1998
season, it has led consistently. ABC has changed the format
of "This Week," with George Stephanopoulos as host,
under producer Tom Bettag and a team from Nightline. This
is worth watching. At the end of the 2002-2003 season "This
Week" averaged 2.75 million viewers.
The Cable News Challenge
It is difficult, as mentioned before, to apportion precisely
where network news audiences are going to, given the variety
of changes that have occurred in technology, competition and
lifestyle, plus the content of network news.
But since the steepest decline in network viewership dates
back to the 1980s and the advent of cable, it makes sense
to look closer at the impact of that medium.
Network executives are quick to point out that, even while
ratings have dropped, more than 29 million people still watch
the networks news on average in the evening, and just under
15 million still tune in for the morning shows. Those numbers
far outstrip any cable network news program at anytime, even
when the cable networks' highest-rated programs are airing.
There are 2 million people watching the average cable news
program in prime time, but that figure hardly matches the
losses in network viewership in nightly news.
Ratings and viewership, as cable executives are quick to
note, are not the whole story. Ratings tell only how many
people are watching a given program. They do not add up how
many different people cumulatively turn to cable or network
news over the course of a day, a number analogous to unique
visitors in the online world. This, cable professionals say,
is important in understanding the appeal of their medium.
To more fully assess the flight of network news audiences,
one must turn to survey data. These suggest that a more significant
part of networks' loss has been cable's gain. Contrary to
the ratings data, according to studies by the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press, more people now prefer
cable news than network news as their source for national
and international news. As far back as 1993, when CNN was
the sole cable news channel, the public was as likely to turn
to cable as network. By 1999, Pew data showed cable with a
13-point advantage over network. In March of 2003, the gap
had widened to 27 percentage points.
Where People Go for National/International News, Network
vs. Cable
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Do you get most of your news about national and international
issues from network TV news, from local TV news, or
from cable news networks such as CNN, MSNBC, and the
Fox News Channel?
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Design
Your Own Chart
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Why? Is there something in the nature of cable news content
that people prefer over network news content? Or is this preference
for cable a function of availability?
Here the superior ratings of network news programming over
cable become relevant. In head to head competition, when network
news and cable news are on at the same time, network news
prevails, and by a large margin. This suggests that people
apparently do not prefer the way cable does the news; they
prefer its instant availability. The age of appointment news
- when people would structure their time to wait for a certain
program to come on - has faded. People now want their news,
or their kids' programming, or their cooking show, when they
want it.
One question is what the networks will do when the current
evening anchors retire. Will audiences for evening news shrink
further when the familiar faces are gone? If so, will the
networks decide to abdicate covering news nearly entirely,
having skeletal crews that can offer just enough traditional
hard news to fill a morning show or an occasional prime time
magazine segment, but not purport to cover the world in any
comprehensive way? Or will they seek newer ways of offering
news, perhaps to a younger audience? Some say NBC has already
taken steps in this direction with CNBC and MSNBC.
Researcher Andrew Tyndall says, "NBC has become the
cross-medium multi-demographic news division for the entire
conglomerate. It was a great institutional failure of ABC
News and CBS News not to have replicated what NBC News has
done. If, for example, CBS News was responsible for news for
children (on Nickelodeon), for youth (on MTV), for African-Americans
(on BET), for men (on Spike), on the radio (Infinity) and
so on, it would once again address the mass market that Cronkite
once did and put the Tiffany in Viacom, as it were. That potential
audience for CBS News is already waiting in Viacom's distribution
system, but the news division just does not have the vision
or the corporate ambition to revive its once-famous name."
Click
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