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This pretty much says it all: Tons of commercials, lots of fluff reporting, and not much important news. Interestingly enough, shortly afterward, my dad applied the parental control setting to block the CNN Headline News. I think that the only other channels he blocks are FoxNews and the TV Guide channel.
This graph got me thinking: maybe what we need, in order to improve the quality of television news is some quantitative analysis like this chart. Then we can find out which channels report the most important news most consistently, and hand out some recognition for the highest performers. Once you start keeping score (aka measuring performance, as Gawande would say), people start caring about how well they're doing.
What sort of quantitative analysis of the television news is out there? I've spent some time searching, but haven't found much. I checked some of the electronic journalism awards, like the prestigeous Peabody Award or the Emmy Award. Here's what I found:
Peabody:
"The Award is determined by one criterion – "Excellence.'"
That's pretty ambiguous and doesn't rely on any sort of objective data. Many valuable programs have received them, but it focuses on individual programs rather than networks. What I really care about here is evaluating the networks as a whole.
Emmy Awards:
Again, these awards emphasize individual programs instead of overall network quality. "News and Documentary" Emmy Awards are not considered "Prime Time" Emmy awards, but instead have their own ceremony, the "Annual News & Documentary Awards," and they are broadcast on C-Span, so obviously the whole world is watching.
The website does offer, however, a breakdown of which networks receive the most awards:
The numerical breakdown by award recipients, by broadcast, cable and broadband entities, as compiled by the independent accountancy firm of Lutz & Carr LLP, follows:
PBS
9
freep.com (Detroit Free Press)
1
CBS
5
mediastorm.org
1
Discovery Channel
3
National Geographic
1
NBC
3
pbs.org/frontlineworld
1
HBO/Cinemax
2
sfgate.com (San Francisco Chronicle)
1
ABC
1
VH1
1
CNN
1
WE tv
1
Documentary Channel
1
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As you can see, PBS won the most in 2007, a non-commercial network. I have been unable to find much other quantitative information about television news, at least from casual internet searches, though I have not yet looked in scholarly journals. Clearly, from most networks' point of view, what defines success for them is Nielson ratings. High ratings mean more advertising revenue. This means that it is in the networks' interest to put out attention-grabbing programs and news rather than important news. So what is attention grabbing? Often news about Britney Spears and other celebrities, also known as "fluff."
As long as we continue to consume the fluff voraciously, they will keep serving it to us. Given human nature, I'm pretty our interests in celebrities and such isn't going to disappear.
So what can we do to make networks be more useful, educating Americans on important topics? Well, one option is to grade the networks, particularly using quantitative measures. If you could give awards for "Most focus on news," "The Least Fluff," and "The Fewest Commercials," you might be able affect viewership to some degree, which would affect ratings. Even if you can't effect any real change right away, I think that simply having information out there about the quality of different networks would be of interest to consumers. Right now, for instance, I have no idea which networks have the most news, least fluff, and fewest commercials, but I'd be more likely to watch one that fit those criteria.
Part of the problem now is that no one really knows these things, so every network claims to be the best, most trusted, etc. No one can really argue since, apparently, nobody knows the truth.
I'll write more about this topic and media accountability in the future, in particular, comparing this grading system idea to what other watchdog groups do, such as Media Matters and Crooks and Liars, and even the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
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