Its intent is to evoke warm feelings and friendship between newspeople and the viewer. The consultants want to give you another reason to watch a particular newscast. I ve heard station managers describe it as retail. It means that if a newscast is like a supermarket, then there is information, anchors, sets, graphics, music and chitchat for sale. If you don t like our set, then please try our chitchat.
Some stations plan their chitchat in advance and set aside time for it in their newscasts.
Several exchanges in the same newscast can total two or more minutes. In a half-hour, excluding weather, sports, commercials, and promotions, the average time for news is 12 minutes or less. The exchanges result in even less time for the important news of the day. Grade the News sampled three newscasts of the four large commercial bay area TV stations on August 4th, 9th, and 12th. We found that the newscasts on Channels 5 and 7, on the nights surveyed, had the highest number of personality-driven exchanges and devoted the most time to them.