Study: TV rarely covers its own troubles
While newspapers have reported the story of their own declining circulation, national television outlets have "largely ignored" their dwindling viewership, according to a study released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications.
While newspapers have reported the story of their own declining circulation, national television outlets have "largely ignored" their dwindling viewership, according to a study released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications.
The researchers said that they looked at print, broadcast and cable-news stories run between Jan. 1, 2000, and March 12, 2009, and found that 900 stories on declining readership ran in major daily newspapers, but only 22 stories on declining news-viewing aired on national TV outlets.
The researchers looked at the top 25 circulation daily newspapers, including the Inquirer, and stories covered by the Associated Press and Reuters wire services and national news broadcasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox News, CNN and CNBC.
Of the sample newspapers, The Wall Street Journal carried the most stories, with 163, and The New York Times followed with 154.
The Inquirer ran 50 stories during that period.
During the nine years, the seven national networks, which broadcast more than 100 weekly or nightly news shows, carried only 22 total reports that were relevant to declining news audiences in general and only six reports that were relevant to the decline in network news-viewing specifically, the report said. *