The Decline of TV News

"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together."   -   Joseph Pulitzer.

Sometimes important historical changes do not come at a specific identifiable place and time. Sometimes such shifts occur gradually, almost imperceptibly, in small increments until they accumulate to the point that we are surprised at how profoundly things have changed.

In a recent report, the Pew Research Center documents the ongoing changes in the way Americans perceive and receive the news. One of the most interesting findings is that fewer and fewer people are even bothering to keep up with the news. Only 45% of the public reported to pollsters that they enjoy keeping up with the news. This represents a steady drop since the 1990s. Moreover, the effect is most pronounced among the young. According to Pew Research, only 31% of young adults enjoy keeping informed, while 57% of those above 50 years old do.

Part of this may simply be the fact that economic times are good and people feel that their personal stake in what is happening nationally is small. Just like farmers who pay special attention to the weather forecasts, people will listen to the news if they believe their economic futures hang in the balance.

General apathy about national news may in part be a consequence of people focusing on their families, their communities, and their jobs. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather than passively learning what is being done to or for them, they are actively leading their lives. Perhaps part of the correlation of age with eagerness to keep up with the news may be a reflection of how much more vulnerable and dependent on government those nearing social security age may feel. Or perhaps older adults are just maintaining old habit.

Producers of national broadcast news programs should be alarmed by the fact that their audiences are fleeing. Regular viewership of national news broadcasts plummeted from 60% in 1993 to 30% in 2000. Although trends probably will not continue unabated, at this rate, in 10 years there will be no regular viewers of the national news broadcasts at all.

There are probably three reasons for this decline, two technological and one social. The advent of the television remote control has made it simple to surf between television stations and only view the parts of national news programs that are of interest. After watching the headlines, a viewer can switch to re-runs of Star Trek . The inconvenience of getting up no longer chains viewers to particular TV broadcasts. The additional distractions offered by cable television make it just that much more likely that people will click away from the national news. Pew Research estimates that 62% of viewers watch the news with a remote in their hands. One uninteresting or objectionable story and the viewer can vanish.

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