Network News Down But Not Out
By Don | June 20, 2009
Network news has been written off for dead much like newspapers but with 21 million viewers they are still a force to be reckoned with.
From Forbes
Despite a steady erosion in their collective audience and an aging viewership that averages 60 years old, the big three nightly newscasts are hardly dead. Actually, they draw an average 21 million viewers every night.
Andrew Tyndall says there's a good reason for that--they're still the best daily snapshot of news on television. He's tracked and analyzed the content of ABC, CBS ( CBS - news - people ) and NBC news shows for two decades, publishing his results weekly in The Tyndall Report. His conclusion: In a world of 24x7 news, RSS feeds and Twitter-casts, the nightly news--surprise--still has a lot to offer if you want to know what's going on in the world. Anchors may change but these shows aren't going away.
Tyndall is correct for now. Network news does offer the best snapshot as to what is happening in the world and for years was a cash cow for the networks. But that has changed with fewer viewers leading to fewer advertisers forcing cutbacks by all the networks. There will undoubtedly come a time where the advertisers decide that the audience is too small or too old to bother with and that will be the death knell for network news as we know it.
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June 23 at 6:43 pm | #1 | Link
Statement from the article:
“...Network news does offer the best snapshot as to what is happening in the world…”
Definitely true.
And, a fair share of the 80 million Baby Boomers, plus the older Beat and the now disappearing Greatest generations - will ALWAYS be very committed fans of traditional network news.