MSNBC remains as least trusted

Tacked onto a recent poll about immigration were some simple questions on which TV news sources were the most, and least trusted.

Overall, Fox News was viewed as most trustworthy by a quarter of the June 2014 sample, just beating off the combined total for the 3 broadcast networks (23%).  CNN came in at 17%, PBS at 12 %.  MSNBC fell below the satirical "faux-news" Daily Show, at just 5%.  There were significant differences in trust among those with different political ideologies and party identifications, particularly when it came to Fox News.  But MSNBC still couldn't garner support from more than 10% of Democrats or liberals.

That people's trust in news outlets is generally low is nothing new.  Pew and Gallup both regularly ask about the public's trust in news media in their polling, and find trust declining, and also becoming more partisan - suggesting a perceived bias (check earlier posts here and here).  

And the American left must be shocked and appalled that "rabid, extremist, right-wing Fox News" (their terms) remains the most trusted news outlet among news consumers - and remains the most-watched of the cable news outlets by huge margins.  And that reliably leftist MSNBC remains among the least trusted sources for "accurate information about politics and current events," although it has managed to capture second place in viewership from CNN.

Source: Brookings Survey: The Most Trusted Name in Television News Is . . .  Fox News, National Review Online

Public Trust in TV News: Not Good, and Highly Politicized

Polling firm Public Policy Polling recently released its fifth report looking at the public's trust of major TV news outlets.  The results shouldn't really be that much of a surprise, although it will shock most media elites.
  Its probably not a shock to find that the public places more trust in PBS as a news source than it does any of the major broadcast networks, and all but one cable news outlet.  Or that that Fox News is that one cable outlet.  The real shock is in the numbers themselves - and that more people trusted Comedy Central most than trusted MSNBC and NBC.

When asked which media outlet they most trusted for news (more than any other outlet) - 39% said Fox News; 14% said PBS; 11% said ABC; 10% said CNN; 9% said CBS; 6% said Comedy Central; 6% said MSNBC; and only 3% identified NBC as their most trusted source.  Turning it around, Fox News was also identified as the "least trusted" by 33% of those surveyed, followed by MSNBC at 19%, Comedy Central at 14%, and CNN at 11%.  The broadcast networks can take take some comfort that none were identified as least trusted by more than 5%.

The survey also asked about each TV news outlet individually.  Most had similar numbers indicating that they trusted the outlet as said they didn't trust it.  Only PBS was significantly "above water" in that 57% of the sample said they trusted PBS, but only 24% said they didn't.  The two outlets that were significantly "underwater" were Comedy Central (29% trust, 38% don't trust) and MSNBC (34% trust, 44% don't trust).  That's probably not a problem for Comedy Central, as they don't see themselves as an "objective" news outlet - but could be a problem for MSNBC unless it wants to be perceived more as an opinion outlet than a news outlet.

In a blow to the idea of "objectivity" by news outlets, the poll also found that trust for most news outlets is highly correlated with political affiliation.  For instance, Fox is both the most trusted among those identifying themselves as Republican, and the least trusted by those identifying themselves as Democrats.  In looking at the news outlets individually, there were 40-50 percentage point swings in trusted/not trusted between those who voted for Obama in the 2012 election and those who voted for Romney.  This wasn't just Fox News and MSNBC, but was a coonsistent pattern for all of the news outlets examined.  The pattern also held true against a more general measure of political ideology, and smaller differences across gender, ethnicity, and age.

Oh, and the survey found that Fox's Bill O'Rielly would beat Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert in a Presidential election match-up.

Sources -  NBC, MSNBC sink to the bottom of who the public trusts , Washington Examiner
5th Annual TV News Trust Poll,  Public Policy Polling report

Shameless Plug - UT Today gets AP honors

A newscast assembled for the UT Today weekly broadcast on a local commercial station has won top honors in the collegiate Best TV Newscast category at the 2013 Tennessee AP Broadcasters Awards.

The broadcast, part of a series of weekly news magazines produced by students at the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism & Electronic Media and aired on local station WBIR-TV, was produced by Chelsea Jensen Koerten ('13), Brooke Fraser ('12) and Kristyn Royster ('12), and aired last  May.

"This was a great project for all of us and one I repeatedly got asked about last semester as I was interviewing for jobs," says Fraser, who works for NBC in New York. "Many employers found it very impressive and a great opportunity to prepare for the real world."

The winning newscast can be seen here.

Editted - To fix typo and initial phrasing as story instead of the whole newscast.

The State of Local TV News

The Pew State of the News Media 2013 report is out, and addresses a range of news outlets by media type. This post will look at Local TV News, and I'll start off noting that the report and numbers actually cover 2012.
The quick report - amount of local news programming is up, local TV advertising revenues are up (thanks to high levels of political advertising), but audiences for local TV news programs continues to decline.  Local TV broadcasters also experienced revenue gains from retransmission fees (growing 30-40% a year recently), and continued growth in digital revenues and online advertising - although these segments account for only 10-12% of station revenues on average. Most revenue forecasts for 2013 expect a small decline, as modest basic growth in some areas are offset by the loss of political advertising.  Long term forecasts suggest modest improvements in revenues over time, although stations will also face growing programming and personnel costs.

Local News Audiences

Audiences for local TV news has been generally declining for years.  Some stations tried to counter this trend by expanding the amount of local news programming they scheduled.  While this may have added some viewing, the numbers show that total audience numbers were declining across all broadcast times and all age groups. The report notes that the small gain in viewership in 2011 was wiped out in 2012.
  In almost every sweeps period, both the ratings and shares for the main local news time slots declined.  Local stations affiliated with the major networks saw audience decline an average of 6% (9% for the prime-time news programs common on Fox affiliates). While the decline in shares was smaller, the problem is that the overall ratings decline indicates that fewer people are watching any kind of TV at those times.  As the report notes:

With fewer people watching broadcast TV in general, local stations have little hope of reversing the long-term decline in audience for news in key time slots.

Another indicator of long term decline is that the drop in viewing is highest among younger adults.  Only 28% of 18-29 year olds indicate that they "regularly" watch local TV news broadcasts

There are indications that local TV news outlets haven't lost all of those users. People are increasingly going to online sources for local news and information. 

“Are they watching us as much? No. But our online numbers are up dramatically,” said Scott Blumenthal, executive vice president for LIN Media. “We are not a TV station anymore as much as a provider of news on multiple platforms.”

Local TV news websites have been helped recently by the expanded use of paywalls for newspaper websites. Online tracking data suggests that when newspapers introduce paywalls or restrict free access to their online news sites, much of their traffic shifts to local TV news websites.  Many local TV news websites are also pushing mobile-friendly sites and apps.

“Our audience proportionally is growing faster on mobile than on Web,” said Chip Mahaney, senior director of local digital operations for E. W. Scripps. “It used to be mobile was a small fraction [of our digital audience]. In some cases mobile has overtaken Web.”

Other research suggests that younger mobile audiences are leading this transition to alternative access to, and delivery of, local news and information.  Some of the viewership decline, particularly among younger adults, may reflect a shift to alternative (digital and mobile) access behaviors, rather than a loss of interest in local news.

Local TV News Programming
2012 saw a continuation of recent trends in local TV news programming.  There continues to be some expansion of local TV news hole, and in the number of news staff (in aggregate and on average - individual station numbers vary widely), and most TV news managers anticipate continuing to add staff over the near term.

  As for staffing, surveys  show an increased reliance on solo journalists (also known as "one-man-bands" or backpack journalists) who can cover news, shoot video, and produce stories for multiple media delivery.

“They’re looking for people who can do everything,” said Micah Johnson, president of MediaStars, an agency that represents TV news employees in contract negotiations.

Asking for more skills has not meant that local stations are willing to pay more.  Average news salaries increased just 2% in 2011, and stations moved to lock in more news staffers into long-term contracts as a means of controlling costs.

  Another way to keep costs under control is to share resources.  Roughly one-fourth of broadcast TV stations airing local news have that news produced by another station in the market.  More than half of the stations originating local news report feeding news stories to other TV stations, radio stations, or local cable channels in their market.  The Pew report suggests that some types of sharing have stabilized and may be declining, as technologies continue to shift production preferences and costs.

The increasing news hole over time has not necessarily resulted in more local news stories.  The number of edited package stories has dropped over time, and average story length has also fallen. In 2012, half of news stories ran under 30 seconds, while only 20% ran a minute or longer. A sampling of local newscasts showed that news packages accounted for only about a third of local TV newshole (down 20% from a 2005 study).  In contrast, the program time for sports almost doubled from 2005 to 2012, and time for weather and traffic also increased.  Combined, sports, weather and traffic coverage account for more than 40% of local news program content (by time). Those topics are also assuming greater importance - Pew reports that 20 of 48 morning and evening local newscasts they examined led with a weather report or story.

The Digital Front
Broadcasters were among the first news media to develop websites, and local news and information was a frequent focus (Bates et al., 1997).  For a while, local stations sought to limit online news coverage for fear that it might impact traditional viewing.  Well, viewing of local TV news broadcasts declined anyway, and now local stations are giving more emphasis to expanding their digital offerings as a way to expand their reach, and particularly to recapture the younger audiences that are rapidly deserting local TV news broadcasts.

“For TV, online generates what TV considers ‘extra revenue’ and helps bring at least some additional audience to the TV screen,” said Bob Papper, who produces the annual RTNDA broadcast news reports.

As a results many local TV stations and newsrooms (who often have separate websites and social media feeds), are pushing into social media and mobile feeds.

Mobile is becoming a larger driver of Web traffic, particularly outside of working hours. At WRAL in Raleigh, N.C., it accounts for 15% of digital visits and could double in six months, according to the station’s general manager, John Conway. “It’s a good way for us to grow our audience at times when historically you’d see somewhat of a trail off of your traffic,” he said.

Research does show that these online digital efforts are attracting users and generating traffic.  Perhaps most importantly, research is starting to suggests that mobile users actually seek and consume more news and information than typical news audiences.  With the rapid expansion of mobile technologies, those in the news industry are hopeful that mobile may lead to a news renaissance of sorts.
  The problem with these digital efforts has been that its been difficult to evaluate their impact and effectiveness.  Online local digital advertising revenues, while growing at a faster rate, are still tiny compared to broadcast advertising revenues.  Similarly, with all of the current focus on online metrics, there aren't any widely accepted (or industry-standard) measures of whether a local station's online, mobile, and social media users have actually expanded their audience.  Nor is there any clear indication of whether social media is delivering on its potential to increase audience engagement.  The potential is there, and stations are optimistic that good things are happening, but stations will need better measures to get top dollar from advertisers.

In sum, the prospects for local TV news is perhaps best described as "hopeful."  Revenues, employment, and newshole appear to be slowly growing over time, even as traditional viewing of local TV news broadcasts continue to decline.  The rise of digital, online, and mobile are providing a plethora of new opportunities for local TV news outlets, although revenue gains from these activities have yet to really kick in.  The real clear change is in the nature and packaging of local news and information - with less focus on investigative and serious news reporting, and more reporting of sports, weather, traffic, and quick headlines, promotions, and social buzz (on social media).  There's growing concern that these shifts in news content might be economically beneficial to local broadcasters, but perhaps not as broadly helpful to society.


Sources -  Local TV: Audience Declines as Revenues Bounce Back, Pew State of the News Media 2013
The Changing TV News Landscape, Pew State of the News Media 2013
"WebTV: How Broadcast Television is Using the World Wide Web,"  Bates et al. research paper.

BBC Scandals Mount Up; Director-General Resigns

Earlier this fall, the BBC faced a child-abuse scandal involving one of its star presenters - and charges that the BBC failed to address early allegations and junked its own investigation of renewed charges, allowing it to be scooped by its competition.

  Now comes a second child-abuse scandal - this time falsely accusing a politician of child-abuse on its premier news program, Newsnight.  After airing the allegation, the victim said he had misidentified his abuser, and Newsnight reporters admitted they had neither shown the victim a picture of the politician, nor sought a comment on the story from his office.
  This was enough to for George Entwistle, Director-General of the BBC, to resign after two months on the job.
  These two scandals come in the wake of a scathing public inquiry about BBC news reports of government impropriety in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

One of the BBC's most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from program budgets.
"He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents," Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

The head of the BBC Trust, which oversees BBC operations agreed that management structures were a problem -

"Apparently decisions about the program went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks - and still emerged," he said.

Patten continued, saying that radical changes were needed to restore the public's confidence in the public service broadcaster.

"If you're saying, 'Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?', then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do...
"The basis for the BBC's position in this country is the trust that people have in it," Patten said. "If the BBC loses that, it's over."

It'll be a hard job, but someone really has to do it - quickly.

Source -  BBC Head says broadcaster must reform or die,  Hollywood Industry blog

Streamworks aims to help TV capture breaking news

One of the major problems in capturing and rapidly disseminating breaking news is the wide array of video standards used in cameras, network signals, and display devices.  Another is getting access to channels for disseminating video on the fly.  Streamworks is a UK start-up that's working to address those issues and provide a mechanism for TV news organizations to capture video from a variety of sources, convert it into appropriate standard configurations, and stream it to users through multiple channels and devices, all in real-time.
  Ray Mia, Streamworks' founder and CEO, says the aim is to provide a "(s)ingle live solution, publish once deliver any and everywhere... fully integrate(d) with social tools... allowing the audience to choose that manner in which to select, see & share video content."  Their service combines structural and technological elements to minimize bandwidth needs - video goes from source to an authorized transmission partner, where the video is processed before being fed to fiber optic Internet infrastructure.  
  They're already  working with AP Television News, and have been designated the streaming partner for United Nations Web TV.

  Anything that fosters faster distribution of multiple news video sources to the full panoply of screens and devices - particularly with breaking news - is likely to help news organizations and the interested public.  Streamworks looks like its taking a good step in the right direction, although there's still a bottleneck/ gatekeeper in the form of the "authorized transmission partner."  So there's still a ways to go to  achieve the goal of real-time total coverage and access.

Source -  How Streamworks is helping TV capture breaking news,  Lost Remote

update - corrected typo in header.

Radio uses Web for News

Another portion of the RTNDA/Hofstra study of broadcast newsrooms focused on their use of websites to post local news.  The study reports that almost all radio stations, and every TV station airing local news, have websites, and that 80% of those sites have at least some local news.  Even when breaking results by market size, the proportion remained fairly consistent (83.3% in major market websites, 84.6% in large markets, 78.9% in medium markets, and 76.7% in small markets).
  The study also found that few radio stations offered their own apps.  Roughly a quarter of radio station websites included web-exclusive content, and only 6.7% included user-generated content.  In other words, most news on radio station websites is ported from regular station news content.  Also, almost 60% of radio news directors couldn't tell if their web news operations was profitable or not - which is more likely to reflect a situation that web operations and revenues are bundled with other operations (and not considered as a separate cost center) than it is reflection of news director's ignorance.  For those who did separate out website operations, about 13% reported they were profitable, 13% broke even, and 15% reported losses.

Sources -  2012 RTNDA/Hofstra Newsroom Study Looks At Station Websites,  AllAccess.com
Full Study -  2012 TV and Radio News Staffing and Profitability Survey

Confidence in TV News hits new low

The latest in Gallup's annual tracking poll of confidence in U.S. institutions showed that only 21% of Americans have either "a great deal of confidence in" or "quite a lot of confidence in" TV news - the lowest level since Gallup added TV news to its tracking poll in 1993.  The decline in confidence in TV news was the highest decline expressed this year (falling from 27%).  The poll showed that Americans have a bit more confidence in newspapers - 25%.  Confidence in newspapers declined slightly in the last year, but was still a bit higher than the 2007 level of 22%.  Still, it was half the level of confidence in newspapers at their peak in 1979 (51%).  While all of the annual declines are within the poll's sampling error, the trend is fairly obvious.

 

What's more interesting in this year's results are some of the demographic breakdowns, particularly for the TV news question.  This year's decline is fed by significant drops in confidence in TV news for self-identified liberals and moderates, who actually expressed less confidence in TV news that did conservatives.  Republicans and Independents shared the same level of confidence (17%), which was half of that indicated by Democrats (34%) - a result that could further fuel the debate about bias in TV news.  (One would expect that a truly unbiased news would have the same level of confidence across groups)  Perhaps more worrisome for TV news is that there appears to be a clear education effect - the more educated the respondent, the lower the amount of confidence expressed.  Of the demographic breakdowns presented, the lowest level of confidence in TV news (10%) was among those with postgraduate education.

In contrast, the decline in confidence in newspapers seemed to be more general, with just about every provided demographic breakdown showing a small decline in confidence.  The only significant declines in the last year were among men (fell from 30% to 23%), and self-identified liberals (fell from 37% to 30%).
  And in case you wondered, the survey was conducted in early June - well before CNN and Fox blew the initial call on the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare - so was not influenced by that very public error.  Also, yes, there's a general drop in the level of confidence shown in the 16 American institutions included in the survey (newspapers ranked 10th, TV news ranked 11th) - and once again Congress was the institution, of the 16 included in the survey, that Americans had the least confidence in (13%).

Source -  Americans' Confidence in Television News Drops to New Low, Gallup press release