Article 12

“You -.News”It’s not your father’snewscast anymore

Call it “News Lite” or “‘News you can use”--bywhatever name, TV is racing for relevance.

But what gets lost along the way?

Andie Tucher

Tom Brokaw comes to our tele-phone interview loaded forbear To my boilerplate ques-tion-“How do you respond to

the critics who say your newscast hasbecome softer?“-he snaps back thatmany of the critics are also competi-tors with agendas of their own.

‘There is an elitist, myopic point ofview about what these broadcasts havebeen and what they should be,” hesays, “and I’m getting a little weary ofit. There are no important stories wehave missed.” After we hang up, hecalls me back to say I had overstatedthe length of a piece I had mentionedas an example of a softer story-twominutes on the Oregon death-penaltylaws for sheep-chasing dogs-and toremind me that critics have their ownagendas.

Of course they do. Some of the criti-cism does come from rivals at CBS andABC, who fear that NBC may be tak-

POLITICIANS

JOURNALISTS ALIKEWANT YOU TOKNOW THEY AREJUST FOLKS WHOFEEL YOUR PAIN

ing over as the new top dog in the rat-ings war among the Big Three. Frommid-December through mid-MarchBrokaw’s half-hour evening broad&consistently edged out-barely but vis-ibly-the seven-year ratings leader,AECs World News l’bnight with PeterJennings, winning ten times, tyingthree, and placing second once in four-

teen weeks. @uring the week endingMarch 7, for instance, NBC had an 8.8rating, an 18 share, and an average of12.01 million viewers; ABC came in at8.5/17 with 11.16 million viewers; andCBS at 7.6/16 with 9.95 million viewers.)

And this advance comes at a timewhen the market for network eveningnews is inexorably shrinking through-out the 1970s the three network news-casts together would routinely attractup to three-quarters of the viewingaudience, but Nielsen reports that thecombined audience share for the threehas now slipped under 50 percent.

But edgy rivals aside, Brokaw’sslicked-up newscast would still be ripefor reassessment. While all the net-works have been tinkering with theirprograms, The Nightly News with lbmBrokaw has given itself an inside-and-out makeover. NBC’s broadcast nowsports a hipper, more high-tech feel,with a new video-wall backdrop,

7 4 From ColumbialotdiSm Review May&me 1997. pp. 26-31. 0 1997 by Columbia journalism Review. Reprint& bypermiss ion.

12. “You News”

have been provided with “news youcan use” about, among other topics,clot busters, osteoporosis, memory lossmacular degeneration, allergies, diabeltes, male menopause, estrogen, bloodtransfusions, brain injuries, Alzhei-mer’s, flu, antihistamines, panic at-tacks, arthritis, beta blockers, grapesas cancer fighters, uterine fibroidsobesity, drinking and driving, car:phoning and driving, and mammo-grams. “The New England Journal ofMedicine should be charging,” saysSandy Socolow, a former executive pro-ducer for Walter Cronkite at CBS. “Allthree broadcasts are mesmerized byanything that involves the humanbody-and I’m not talking about sex.”

What distinguishes NBC now isthat both the gossamer and the usefuloften outweigh the grit. Its NightlyNews tends to air fewer stories eachevening than ABC or CBS, and farfewer of those come from the nationalcapitals, whether Moscow, Belgrade, oryes, Washington. More of them focudon trends, life-style and consumer is-sues, pop culture, and heartland Amer-ica-and NBC isn’t hiding its Liteunder a bushel, either. An ad for thenewscast appearing in The New YorkTimes on March 28 touted what wasobviously considered the evening’s hot-test story: ‘Marriage Boot Camp’:Could it Save Your Relationship?’ (Thestory was bumped by the news of theCalifornia cult suicide and actuallyaired April 4.)

Brokaw says he’s simply “trying tobe less of a wire service of the air? be-cause it’s clear people have alreadyheard the major news of the day bythe time they click on the eveningnews. “I travel across this country alot,” he says, “and everywhere I go Ihear what people are talking aboutand what interests them and whatthey are desperate to know about. Anda whole lot of that has very little to dowith what we would routinely put onthe air ten-fifteen years ago.”

Last year, according to Tyndallviewers were apparently most desperlate to know about the summer Olym-pics, which were broadcast by NBCSports and which got more airtime onNBC News than any other story in1996 (CBS’s biggest story was TWAFlight 800 and ABC’s was the Dolecampaign, which included the entireprimary season; see box). At the sametime, NBC’s attention to such hard-news topics as the presidential cam-paign and the Middle Eastern peaceprocess was drastically lower than itscompetitors’.

And NBC has figured out the plea-sures and profits of packaging. Tyndall

Brokaw’S face in a monitor mirroringBrokaw’s face on Brokaw himself,Brokaw’s face appearing suddenly onthe giant video screen overlookingTimes Square as he signs off. Whereonce the airtime was full of congres-sional wrangles and Middle East peacetalks, now it’s heavy with medicalnews and features from fly-over coun-try NBC has indeed gone softer andmore user-friendly-‘populist,” NBCexecutives like to call it-and Brokawargues urgently that “what we’re at-tempting to do is to cover the impor-tant news of the day and the news thatis relevant to our viewers, and thatnews now has a much different woofand warp than it did twenty-five yearsago.”

Brokaw’s competitors detect a be-trayal of journalistic standards in allthis. CBS anchor Dan Rather told ThePhiladelphia Inquirer in February thatNBC was purveying ‘News Lite.” Inlate March, when Paul FriedmanABC’s executive vice president fo;news, also took back his old job as thenewscast’s executive producer, he toldThe Washington Post that ABC would“cover serious news that the otherscan’t manage.”

Wat’s more, the newscasts’core viewers tend to beolder; The Pew ResearchCenter reckons that almost

two-thirds of people over sixty-fourwatch a network newscast “regularly,”while less than a quarter of GenXersdo. So “sooner or later the currentnews audience is all going to die,” saysAndrew Tyndall, editor of the !l)ndallWeekly, which tracks and times thestories covered on the evening news.“And that’s sooner rather than later.”

In some fundamental ways thethree newscasts haven’t broken farfrom tradition-or from each other. Allpay due attention to the obviousbreaking stories: none could have beenaccused of ignoring either the verdictagainst 0. J. Simpson or the death ofDeng Xiaoping. After some initial foot-dragging all have recently been doinga “pretty good job” covering the hot po-litical story of the day-the campaignfund-raising scandals-says Bill Hogandirector of investigative projects at ThiCenter for Public Integrity in Washing-ton, a watchdog group that monitorspolitical spending.

But the old polarity between “soft”and “hard” news is itself something ofa red herring. That’s because NBC’sNightly News is not simply replacingcoverage of world events with tradi-tional soft features on heroic rescuesor celebrity comebacks. NBC’s produc-ers, not unlike their fellows at theother networks, have discovered thatin addition to the old categories of thinews you need and the news you wantthey can add a third type of newdthat’s flourishing in the ’90s: newsabout you-news to use at your nextdoctor’s visit, PTA meeting, or familydinner-table discussion.

The special problems of the networknews in the ’90s are legion. It’s not justthat many people are too busy, toocynical, or too turned off by public lifeto enjoy the evening-news habit. It’salso that so many have been able togo elsewhere-and everywhere-fortheir news, from CNN to all-news ra-dio to the Internet to local televisionnews to tabloid TV to paid politicalads, free political time, and even thelate-night comedians, a favorite “newssource” for a reported one-third of tele-vision-watchers under thirty, accordingto the Freedom Forum’s Media StudiesCenter. “This is a fact of life ” saysABC’s Jennings. “I don’t know hhw anyevening news broadcast could now castitself in such a way as to suddenlyCommand the attention of vastlygreater numbers of people.”

AN AD INTHE NEW YORKTIMES TOUTEDTHE EVENING’SHOTTEST STORY=“MARRIAGE ‘BOOTCAMP’: COULD ITSAVE YOURRELATIONSHIP?”

All include, as they always havebright bits of the “news you want”‘:softer stories like the return of StarWars and mushy little tributes to Val-entine’s Day. And all air a weekly slateof regular segments, ranging from‘Your Money” and “Eye on America” tothe often lightweight, even gossamer“Travels with Harry” on CBS (corre-spondent Harry Smith visits the starsof girls’ basketball) and “Person of theWeek” (people who have made positivesocial contributions) on ABC.

But these days, all three networksare paying as much attention to healthproblems as any scriptwriter for E.R.During just the first two and a halfmonths of 1997 a steady channel surf-er through the three broadcasts would

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2 4* COVERING NEWS

calculates that during the first twoand a half months of 1997, NRC gaveover a total of 351 minutes of itsweeknight broadcasts to named fea-ture segments, compared with 197minutes on CBS and 185 on ABC. Onany given evening as much as a thirdor more of the twenty-two-minutenews hole might be devoted to suchsegments. Some of the features wereshorter specials like “Sleepless inAmerica,” “Starting Over” (on keepingNew Year’s resolutions), ‘The PlaneTruth” (airline safety), or “GoingHome” (NRC newspeople return totheir roots); others were establishedregulars like “In Their Own Words n“In Depth,” “The Family,” ‘The Fleed-ing of America” (governmental and in-stitutional corruption and waste) ‘TheAmerican Dream,” and “N&manSchwarzkopf’s America.”

neighborhood crime, motivate childrento learn, reduce accidents among teen-age drivers.

“Solutions” has come in for its shareof criticism, too. After the segmentlooked at cures for snoring, the WallStreet Journal television critic, DorothyRabinowitz, wrote savagely of a broad-

Nielsen’s Numbers:How the Three Network EveningNewscasts Have Scored withU.S. Audiences, 1971-1996

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A 11 this translates into a “pot-pourri,” as Brokaw wouldhave it, a “rich mix of differ-ent kinds of stories.” It’s a

mix, anyway. In the first months of1997 NBC’s “In Depth” segment, whichusually runs some three or four min-utes, examined everything from find-ing jobs for welfare recipients to theaging process. Under the other labelscame a jumble of the informative, theyou-focused, and the fluffy: reports onthe meaning of daydreams, the gene-alogy craze, absent fathers, oversupplyrip-offs at the Pentagon, no-fault di-vorce, Debbie Reynolds’s comebackgetting out of debt, managing one’;time, overcoming the fear of flying,coarse behavior among athletes, seniorcitizens on stage in Las Vegas andhow life has changed for worn& inYankton, South Dakota (pop. 12,703),where Brokaw grew up.

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Audience share, shown above, measuresthe percentage of the households actua//ywatching television that was tuned to eachprogram. Ratings, listed below, take potentialviewers into account, showing the percentageof all households with television tuned toeach program. Years run from Septemberto April. In ‘95’96 a single ratings pointrepresented 959,000 U.S. households.

RatingI I

The other networks have madechanges that are similarthoughits

somewhat smaller. down ratings trembled, ARC

added a three-times-weekly “Solu-tions” segment in place of the eight-year-old “American Agenda,” whichhad explored a wide range of issues inhealth, education, religion, and the en-vironment. The new feature, intro-duced last September, also fallsheavily into the utilitarian mold. It hasfocused on successful efforts aroundthe country, many of them small inscale and private or local in scope, toaddress common problems and pre-dicaments of daily life: how to curechronic pain, find good day care, cut

ABC 9 . 6 ii.1 9 . 9 12 .6 11 .1 10 .7 a0 11.3 6 . 6 1

CBS 14.7 iti. 15 .1 15 .4 13 .8 l2.l 10 .1 9 . 8 7 . 2NBC 12 .9 14 .4 13 .6

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cast “that has begun confusing itselfwith a social agency whose mission itis to advise citizens on all manner ofpersonal concerns.”

Jennings maintains that “Solutions”marks no radical departure for thebroadcast; it’s simply a way to empha-size a feature that had already been

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an important and popular part of‘American Agenda.” “I think we’re paying a little price because of what it*,called,” he says. The segment on snor.ing “would have been tine if it hadbeen on Your Health.’ It’s a nationalproblem and a thing we spend moneyon, and if we’d done it on Your

_ Health’-well, Dorothy wouldjust have waited for anotherone,” Jenningslaughing.

continues,

“Our critics just don’t likeit because it’s deemed to bepandering,” he says. ‘But weget more response to ‘Solu-tions’ on the Internet thananything else we’ve everdone.”

CBS’s Evening News, mean-while, after dominating theairwaves for years as thenewscast of the “Tiffany” net-work, slid into third place inthe ratings after Larry Tisch’scost-cutting years of the late’80s. Ratings don’t always tellthe whole story, of course.Some of NBC Nightly News’scurrent strength may be at-tributable to “bounce” fromthe network’s other suc-cesses-the thriving thrice-weekly newsmagazine Date-line, the slick new cable-and-online partner MSNBC, andthe hot prime-time schedule.And CBS is quick to point outthat some of its newscast’spresent weakness derivesfrom intra-network “splat”:CBS traded twenty-six aEli-ated stations with other net-works after losing thebroadcast rights to pro foot-ball, oRen ending up withweaker partner stations.

Dan Rather maintainsthat it’s a “miracle” the Eve-ning News” is doing as wellas it is in the face of the net-work’s crumbled delivery sys-tem. “Because we have areputation for being a hard-news outfit, we manage tostay in the hunt,” he says. “Ibelieve if we go the soft-newsroute we fall farther behind.I don’t hear anybody amongour viewers complaining thatwe run too much foreign

news. I do find viewers complainingwhen we run something they feel is aWade Of their tim-like a soR feature.”

CBS’s lineup does indeed includenoticeably more international storiesthan the other two newscasts. Lastyear the Evening News spent more

time than either competitor on bothBosnia and the Middle Eastern con-flict. It has aired a series of pieces bySob Simon on the adjustments to blackrule in South Africa, and no other net-work had a correspondent filing re-ports from Albania weeks before thecountry imploded in mid-March. ButCBS, too, airs such small-focus fea-tures as “The Class of 2000” on teen-agers’ lives, and it has certainly doneim bit for the New England Journal ofMedicine.

As the newscasts continue towarm up and soften up, it’seasy to romanticize the gold-en age when television news

did, supposedly, have a soul. It’s neverbeen entirely, unrelentingly devoted to“hard” news: on a single randomly se-lected evening in 1971, CBS gave fiveminutes to Charles Kuralt’s visit to arally of An-stream-trailer fanciers andNBC’s David Brinkley bade a leisurelywelcome to spring.

A nd sometimes the eveningnews mistook ponderousnessfor heft. There was that hotnight in August 1977 when

ABC and NBC led their broadcastswith the death of Elvis Presley and theTiffany network began with six min-utes on an event it considered morenewsworthy:Panama Canal

negotiations over theTreaty. “A lot of the for-

eign coverage ten years ago wasdeathly dull,” says Tyndall. “A lot ofthe vaunted foreign news coveragethat NBC is not now doing used to beMarvin Kalb reading a press releasefrom the secretary of state.”

But critics point to other artifactsof the golden age that now seem justas quaint as an An-stream. “In thegood old days you never even raisedthe issue of cost,” says Marty Koughana sixteen-year veteran of CBS New;who is now the executive producer forMother Jones Television, “and if youraised the question of ratings you weremocked. At CBS Reports I worked onan hour on litigation in America-justtry that today”

Sandy Socolow remembers when asort of intellectual elitism was consid-ered not just normal among newspeo-pie, but healthy. “The mandate used tobe to tell people what they needed toknow-but they often don’t know whattheY need to know until someone tellsthem,” he says. “The newsperson’s jobis to hunch out what’s important,

what’s significant, and to make thatinteresting.”

But that, says Brokaw, is exactlywhat’s changed-the sense of what’sreally important to people-and abroadcast that doesn’t notice isn’t go-ing to last long. “One of the things thatI want not to happen is for us to allcommit suicideP he says. Everythingfrom education to the automobile busi-ness has also been changing, and “theycould have been rigid and said ‘I don’t

12. “You News”

Among Newsweek’s top ten covers onlynumber nine, on the crash of TWAFlight 800, was pegged to a breakingnews story. Other top sellers featuredJohn F. Kennedy’s new wife (“CarolynStyle’?, gay parenting, the cartooncharacter Dilbert on why ‘Work isHell,” and ‘The Biology of Beauty”

So, the argument goes, why shouldthe newscasts be exempt from reori-enting themselves as best they can,too? Why should the public require

want to be demeaning to the institu-tion,’ and they’d have gotten left be-hind.”

Brokaw could have added the restof the press to his list of evolving in-stitutions, too, as it grapples with theglut of information and what surveyssuggest is an unshakable resistanceamong most of the audience to serious,“hard” news. The print press, longsince displaced as the medium of firstresort by the evening newscasts andmore recently by the omnipresentCNN and C-SPAN, has for years beenadapting by substituting service sto-ries, life-style features, and analysisfor the urgent scoop. The “newspaperof record,” The New York Times, nowputs on its front page leisurely storiesabout the plight of bored wealthy Rus-sian wives or the overelaborate cautionlabels on, for instance, children’s Bat-man capes. The muckraking bimonthlyMother Jones recently started a healthcolumn. And the best-selling issue ondomestic newsstands for both Timeand Newsweek in 1996 was devoted tonew interpretations of the life of Jesus.

MOFFETI CECIL

this one medium to be stuck with play-ing Norma Desmond when everyoneelse gets to be Madonna?

One reason is precisely that: every-one else is doing it. If the goal is reallyto give people news they haven’t al-ready heard, it’s hard to believe thatwithout NBC on the case, viewerswould never find out that familieswork better if Dad’s around or that notgetting a good night’s sleep can be badfor your health. The more any broad-cast strives to be “not your father’sevening news,” the more indistinguish-able it is from the “everything else”that is its most feared competition-the local television news, the tabloidshows and newsmagazines, the slickprint magazines, Oprah, even the late-night comedians.

Yet there’s a larger question atstake here, too, one that goes well be-yond any critique rooted in Tyndall’snumbers of minutes devoted to this orthat. It’s a question of the mood, thetone, the underlying message of thestories that do make air-and of theones that don’t. How long can an eve-

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