If you are anything like me, you are stuck at home amidst a quarantine where your parents are listening to the news in every room of the house. I’ve never been a huge fan of news channels as a source of entertainment, but I recognize the importance of listening to it in this climate.
If you are anything like me, you also have been more attached to your phone as usual in these trying times. With this influx of news, I have come to notice a pattern: Every time I hear something on television, it’s almost like a déjà vu moment where I hear them talking about some current event and I say to myself, “I feel like I’ve heard that before.” About 10 seconds later, I realize I read about it hours ago on Twitter or Instagram. A few hours later, the news will run the exact same stories as if nothing else has happened in that interim. There is far too much happening in the world for a source of news to be repeating stories that they’ve already discussed.
For years, watching the news has been an integral part of nuclear family, daily routine. The family gets up, turns on the news while everyone gets ready for school and work. Throughout the day, everyone spends time at their respective institutions. The family gets home from school and work. Kids do homework while parents make dinner, and the news is on in the background. If you rewind 10 years before the television came into prominence, the newspaper used to be just as important to a person’s routine … look at the status of that industry.
The broadcast television scene, much like the daily newspaper, could use a bit of an update. Times are changing and with news surrounding us everywhere we look, it all becomes outdated pretty quickly. I do understand the benefits that broadcast news provides to viewers — it offers a standard viewing time for those who aren’t dialed in to social media and televised news [general news broadcasts, not political news broadcasts] tends to be generally more reliable than what you read on social media.
As older generations who buy into that cycle die out, ratings will plummet. Social media has just become too powerful and omnipresent to take over. If broadcast news wants a fighting chance at staying alive, a change has to be made. It’s high time broadcasts pivot and emphasize breaking news. I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with quickly reiterating news that has been known for a few hours without making an entire news segment out of it. You can discuss what’s going on in the viral digital world without trying to make it into a whole exposé.
“The final Nielsen numbers for the just-completed 2018-2019 network news season are in, and ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir again finished first in total viewers and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt beat its rivals in key demographics. But viewership was flat or down across the board, even as the networks seized on the numbers for bragging rights,” according to a Deadline (x). You can also preview a list of networks that have seen a steady decline in ratings with what would be considered a key demographic in years to come.
I think networks could also stand to take a page out of the magazine industry (no pun intended) and start getting more creative with highlighting interesting individuals in the community doing phenomenal things that go unnoticed. Since we’re on the topic it would also bode well for them to give their design, photography and graphics a makeover as well — if they want to hook people like me into watching the news, which [if we’re being honest] can skew to dry and mundane, they could at the very least make it look visually appealing.
In terms of optimizing the business model: it should start from the ground up. Give the news the updated look it deserves. Hire news anchors who feel more like people and less like robots. Have a staff of reporters who focus on local news, national news, global news and digital news. Add two additional groups of researchers and reporters: one focusing breaking news that’s happened within the hour leading up to the broadcast, and another focusing on long-term projects highlighting exceptional people making a difference locally and beyond. Hire writers who can put together a script that balances news, weather, sports, breaking news, community highlight and humor. These writers should also be able to edit a transcript up until the very minute that a broadcast begins (and even during a broadcast if something newsworthy happens).
I truly do believe that the news has the potential to be interesting. I think that this good-for-nothing virus has ended up being good for broadcast news ratings. According to Variety, the virus could result in a 60% increase in television ratings. And I believe even after the virus is over, people will tune into news more out of habit. However, while it may be a trend, watching the news will never be what it was in the 20th century. Ratings will eventually decrease. Broasting networks should take this surge in viewership as an opportunity to rework their business model to prevent the decline in ratings that they’ve experienced in the past.