Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Finances Top Family Problem Economic concerns are weighing on the minds of Americans these days. When asked in an open-ended format to name the biggest problem currently facing them and their families, most Americans (62%) cite financial concerns, and the proportion doing so is up significantly from the mid-1990s. In 1994, 56% named financial concerns […]
The advent of congregational sites Among our respondents, Web sites were fairly well established: 44% have been up for over 2 years, and 78% for at least one year. They were generally created on an ad hoc basis by volunteers (66%) rather than as a planned action of the clergy or a committee (27%). Once […]
What health seekers want and how they hunt for it* *This section is based largely on a special survey of 521 Internet users who go online for health care information. Health seekers are mostly interested in investigating specific physical and mental ailments and their searches often are tied to visits to the doctor. However, they […]
Far More Republicans Satisfied Than in ’96 While Americans are more indifferent to the presidential election than at this stage in the campaigns of 1992 or 1996, they also are more satisfied with their choice of candidates. Indeed, more than six-in-ten (62%) express satisfaction with the candidates, far more than at a comparable point in […]
Quality Versus RatingsTwo Roads to Success?How to Make Quality SellThe Low Road To RatingsStations in the MiddleStory Length & Focus GroupsBottom Lines What is Quality? In this second year, the definition of quality remains the one established by our “design team” of local TV news professionals. (See Design Team.) It emphasizes mastering the basics: Newscasts should […]
What Was There On the surface at least, the Internet offers plenty of news. Two-thirds of all front pages had at least 16 election-related stories. The exact number varied significantly from site to site, not because of the type of site but because of different judgments of how much was too much. Four sites, Go/ABC […]
AOL.comCNN/AllPolitics.comGO.comMSN.comMSNBC.comNational Review OnlineNetscape.comNewYorkTimes.comPathfinder/Time.comSalon.comWashingtonPost.comYahoo.com AOL.com America Online has become the biggest Internet service provider in the country largely on the strength of a reputation as a friendly, easy-to-use service. Unfortunately, that attitude doesn’t extend to the political news section of its web site. AOL’s politics news page is quite difficult to find. From www.aol.com, one must […]
Numbers Show Staff, Not Stuff, Wins Viewers By Marion Just, Rosalind Levine and Todd Belt If you want to boost ratings, helicopters won’t do it. Hiring more skilled people will. This is one of the discoveries about managing resources contained in this year’s study of local TV news. We sent detailed questionnaires about policies and […]
What Happens to Your Local News Between 6 and 11? By Forrest Carr The good news is we news directors were right. That’s also the bad news. When the Project for Excellence in Journalism set out last year to study the effect of quality on ratings, it measured the most popular time slot in 20 […]
What Four Quality Stations Can Teach You By John Corporon Most industries use benchmarking — identifying models of successful excellence — as a way of improving quality. The case study method used in top business schools is predicated on this theory. Local TV news hasn’t benefited much from benchmarking. Hard data about what works journalistically […]