I’m sure many of you have read the Shepherd-Express article “Why We Hate Local TV News.”(Article). I can see how this article could/did anger some local television personalities and stations, particularly those at WTMJ4, but this article just re-listed things that even casual viewers have known about and complained about for years – overly dramatic music, entertainment plugs, and “the team.”
The 30-minute news format is flawed—that’s not enough time to share ALL of the news…and it’s a lot of time to produce segments for everyday, multiple times a day. What’s actually newsworthy is rarely what is important, but it’s timely or funny.
In a class, my professor showed us several news clips…a few of hard news (aka world issues/events, real news) and a few of soft news (Look how cute the Pandas are!). Hard news stories often times elicited no response or emotion, but a particularly funny soft news story had the whole room laughing and wanting more!
Think about what might pull YOU into an episode of the Nightly News—not what’s happening in Iraq—but instead how American’s are spending out of control, or about how the most popular car on the market spontaneously combusts… human interest & wacky stories draw in the viewers. We’ve shown news outlets what we want…but yet studies show, and we personally say, that we are disappointed and want more important information and stories (what is socially/intellectually acceptable to say).
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