Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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 […]
The Public Remains Disconnected In spite of the accelerated pace of the 2000 presidential campaign, only 16% of the public is following news about candidates very closely. Interest in the campaign has not meaningfully increased since July, despite competitive contests for both parties’ nominations. Even fewer Americans closely followed the recent GOP candidate debates. Less […]
Introduction and Summary Americans anticipate many perils in the next century, but none of them, no matter how grave, can dim the public’s positive view of the future. Despite consensus forecasts of natural disasters, environmental calamities and international terrorism, Americans are near unanimous in their confidence that life will get better for themselves, their families […]
STAUNCH CONSERVATIVES PAST TYPOLOGY COUNTERPART: Enterprisers 10% OF ADULT POPULATION 12% OF REGISTERED VOTERS PARTY ID: 72% Republican; 24% Independent, Lean Republican COMMENTS: As in 1994, this extremely partisan Republican group’s politics are driven by a belief in the free enterprise system and social values that reflect a conservative agenda. Dissatisfied with the state of […]
Introduction and Summary Even though Americans say that issues matter most, candidates’ personal qualities may be decisive in a campaign without dominant issues. Voters make fine distinctions, however, about what they want to know about candidates personally. Americans strongly reject press inquiry into most avenues of candidates’ private lives, yet at the same time place […]