More than half the stories in the morning were about everyday incidents or everyday crime and were not connected to broader issues. That's 15 percent more than the average of all newscasts in the study. C Morning news has a hard time scoring on the quality scale devised for evenings because, by and large, the stations choose to play a different game at that hour a game that depends on good humor and service delivered in a package with a thin veneer of news. The results are inconclusive. And then more weather.
Weather leads every broadcast.
And it's ever so important to have the right messenger for all this service. My six years of producing morning television reinforced the conventional wisdom that the morning viewer is more likely to let a buddy into the house than some strong authority figure. In Detroit, weather and traffic make up about 45 percent of the half-hour broadcasts. Combine the cheerfulness and chat of your buddies with weather and traffic and there isn't much time for the kind of coverage that ranks high with the local TV professionals who established the study's quality scale. Portland stations pay scant attention to traffic and score higher on the quality scale.