J201 Local TV news What s on the local news tonight if it bleeds it leads the political horse race 30 second summary of national and international news 1970s The consultants come to town 1971 McHugh Hoffman Inc apply social science to help local stations win market share through their news broadcast news helps build a warm trusting and dependent relationship between the audience and the station the feeling overflows into almost all the other areas of its programming including entertainment halo effect for advertising on news broadcasts news as a profit center rather than a loss leader Example The Eyewitness News format News is rebranded with logos music graphics writing the story so that the details were what the man in the street could recognize happy talk among anchors allow the sports or weather to lead lots more use of portable video stand ups Branding the news talent brand the anchors and reporters themselves attractive people have an advantage use supers to increase name reconition cultivate talentn from smaller markets to larger FAM score and Q rating does being a decent journalist even count yet all is not well in local news today revenues have been flat and are tied to market size profitability has declined slightly most ad revenue is local political advertisements are a crucial revenue source 2006 was 2 billion smaller markets have smaller newsroom staffs and salary costs have increased what are local stations doing on the web yet local news still gets a high believabilty rating video news releases VNRs news packages assembled by PR firms or state freely available to local news stations enticements to local news directors illegal to air VNRs without disclosure no central tracking of VNR use 2006 VNR study by Center for Media and Democracy monitored 10 months of local newscasts found 77 stations which aired VNRs never identified source of VNRs eg GM Intel Pfizer never balanced VNR claims with independent reporting 80 of these stations owned by conglomerates collectively these stations reach over half of US audience just the tip of the iceberg Markets airing VNRs in study red more VNRs Some VNR examples
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