The second most critical difficulty was getting well-trained staff. Money came in third. The data show that the news directors have it right. In similar-sized markets, the larger the staff, the higher the news quality scores. In other words, hiring more people not only improves quality, it improves ratings.
Many stations spend a good deal of their budgets on equipment and other production resources.
More than half of all the stations responding used one or more helicopters, and more so in larger markets. Even so, we found no significant relationship between use of helicopters and either quality scores or audience ratings, even controlling for market size. Importantly, those stations that had proportionately large equipment budgets pressed their staffs harder than stations that spent less on equipment. Taking into account market size again, reporters were expected to produce more news packages at stations that spent the most on equipment. The problem is often that incentives are going in the wrong direction.