Yet even the audiences for tabloid share some characteristics with those at the other end. They reward stations that put more effort into their stories. They did longer stories, had better sourcing, showed more enterprise reporting, and did more stories about big ideas and issues. There is no magic bullet. The difference between quality that gets high ratings and quality that doesn't is many small decisions that add up.
Success is in the details.
Another big difference is that master stations on average earned the highest possible score for covering a wide range of topics, while earnest stations averaged several points lower. Covering more of the community raised the quality score, and it also seemed to help ratings. Master stations treated more complex stories differently, too. Consider, for instance, how they dealt with ideas and issues, the sort of material local TV often avoids. The masters' stories were half as likely to be based on sources who were unnamed or referred to only in passing.