Increasingly, Americans are turning to cable television, the Internet, even late-night talk shows rather than newspapers and network TV for news about the presidential campaign, according to a poll out Saturday.
Voters turn to a variety of sources for news about elections and campaigns.
The January poll showed that while three-fourths of the public still get most of their campaign news from television, viewers have migrated away from the networks since the last presidential election. Only 24 percent of the public cited network television as their main election news source, compared with 39 percent in April 1996. The proportion of people citing local television coverage had a similar decline. At the same time, those watching cable election news jumped from 23 percent to 31 percent. Kohut said the shift to cable might reflect shrinking campaign coverage on the networks.