Link to Columbia Journalism Review for more details. Study on Quality of Local TV News Released Local TV News Tuning out the Obvious Quality Sells. Few Stations Deliver.
Audience Continues to Erode.
In the face of precipitous declines in ratings, many local television news broadcasts are cutting back on the very type of programming that attracts viewers, finds a major new study of local TV news released today by a journalists' group affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. They truly are at risk of slowly killing themselves off. The PEJ study, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, ranked 50 newscasts in 15 cities over two weeks using criteria developed by a team of veteran news professionals. For the third year in a row, it found that quality local TV news sells, contrary to the myth that the medium must play to the lowest common denominator. Among the top 10 stations in this year's study, only two had negative ratings trends and six were climbing.