Quality Produces Quantity

Producers, reporters, anybody who works in TV will one day have to answer that question, "Why is there so much crime on TV news?"

The answer is, "Because you watch it." Crime, sensationalism, and tabloid sensibilities bring ratings. For producers like me, the challenge is where to draw the line between ambulance chasing and reporting on the crime stories people want to know about while getting "other news" in.

Tuesday night's 10pm newscast on KOLD News 13 had both ying and yang. We had a story on a missing Tucson woman found dead and a six-year-old shot to death while she was sleeping on the family couch. But we also had stories on the search for a new Tucson Unified School District superintendent, safety inspections for truckers. But the longest story of the night was a four-minute epic on the rise of Buddhism among Tucsonans.

So it's heartening to read a story in The Boston Globe about a study from The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which found quality news attracts viewers, too:

In an unprecedented survey, a team of researchers under the auspices of the Project for Excellence in Journalism studied the minute-by-minute Nielsen ratings for newscasts from 154 local television stations over five years, more than 33,000 news stories in all.

What they found is that quality sells. The sensationalism of late-1990s WHDH, the study suggests, does bring good ratings. But well-done, substantive TV news proves just as popular - and often earns even better ratings.

Viewers, the study found, are perfectly willing to watch stories on education policy or tax debates - in many cases they'll tune in to those stories but flip away from a segment on a celebrity divorce or a deadly highway pileup. And they'll consistently reward in-depth reporting with higher ratings than more cursory stories, no matter what the topic.

The findings suggest that the shift to violence and voyeurism has left everyone worse off. Viewers, fed a diet of out-of-state car chase footage, are left knowing less about issues, like the schools, that actually affect them. And the TV stations, in clumsily catering to an audience they misunderstood, may actually be sabotaging their own ratings.

"I think what governs most television news directors is the sense that they have no choice, that they have to use crime, accidents, and disaster to grab the interest of the viewer," says Marion Just, a political science professor at Wellesley College and one of the study's lead researchers. "But they do have a choice. They can do well and do good."

Take heart, TV newsers. We know people vote with the remote, but they're willing to give you a shot if you're relevant.

According to [Project founder Tom] Rosenstiel, the findings may be explained in part by the shrinking of the network TV news audience. "There are so may other ways to be entertained on television," says Rosenstiel. "People that turn to a local newscast are that hardy few that's actually looking for information."

Aha! People who watch news want news! Something a lot of us forget sometimes.