Hundreds of local and regional radio and television stations comprise the U.S. public media system.
Network TV news – appointment viewing for many Americans – saw its audience decline over the past year.
Cable TV is home to a set of television channels whose news broadcasts have become an important information source for many Americans.
Local television news programming has shed audience over the past decade, but it still garners more viewers on average than cable and network news programs.
Western Europeans have a clear preference for television as a source of news. And while use of online and radio outlets for news is also widespread, print trails the other formats.
Just 31% of Americans say it would be very hard to give up their TV, down from 2006. In contrast, roughly half of cellphone owners say it would be very hard to give up their cellphone.
On a typical weekday, three-quarters of U.S. Latinos get their news from internet sources, nearly equal to the share who do so from television, according to a 2016 survey of Latino adults by Pew Research Center.
Just 50% of U.S. adults now get news regularly from television, down from 57% a year prior in early 2016.
Many Americans are exposed to science through TV and movies, and they come away with a positive impression of working in science, technology and medicine.
As of August 2017, 43% of Americans report often getting news online, just 7 points lower than the 50% who often get news on television.
