The End of Network News as We Know It?
Decreases in Ads and Viewers Mean Change is in the Air
By Brian Steinberg
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The big three TV network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers last year, and advertising on their three big morning news shows fell to an estimated $1.03 billion. The average viewer is 60 years old, and the demographic marketers most want to reach is more likely to be facing a computer screen than a TV screen when the evening news comes on.
Collectively, ABC, NBC and CBS’s network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers in 2007, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by the Project for Excellence in Journalism
Photo Credit: John Paul Filo
Given that rather sobering picture, maybe the discussion shouldn’t be over whether Katie Couric will last at CBS through the election. Maybe it should be whether we need network-TV news at all.
None of the networks was even willing to entertain the suggestion that it wasn’t completely committed to its evening newscasts, so this isn’t a story about how one or the other is about to close down its news division. But the economic incentive to reshape their news departments is pressing.
Collectively, ABC, NBC and CBS’s network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers in 2007, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a 5% drop from the year before. Even the audience for the morning news shows — the most successful of the news departments’ endeavors — fell for the third year in a row, the PEJ study said, down 2% from the year before, its lowest point since 1999.
Not surprisingly, ad revenue has followed viewers elsewhere. Spending on the three major morning news shows — ABC’s “Good Morning America,” NBC’s “Today” and CBS’s “Early Show” — fell to about $1.03 billion in 2007 from about $1.05 billion in 2005, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. And ad spending on the three major-network evening newscasts tumbled to about $502.8 million from about $538.3 million in 2005.
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