News Is People: The Rise of Local TV News and the Fall of News from New York
2001; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 78; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2161-430X
Autores Tópico(s)Media Studies and Communication
ResumoIs People: The Rise of Local TV and the Fall of From New York. Craig M. Allen. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001. 372 pp. $49.95 hbk. Scholars and media critics have wrestled for decades over whether media consultants have been a blessing or the bane of local television news. In Is People, author Craig M. Allen falls squarely in the camp that considers them the salvation of TV journalism. The of broadcast journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona State University, Allen has written an important history of how the TV consulting phenomenon arose and proliferated into almost every television newsroom in the nation. Allen describes how the down-to-earth, close-to-home style advocated by the consultants helped local TV news surpass network news in audience appeal. He demonstrates how the statistical research gathered by the consultants influenced how local TV news is defined in American society. In essence, he describes how control of local TV newscasts shifted from gatekeepers in the newsrooms to viewers at home. Drawing from the research archives of the three largest consulting groups in the United States-McHugh & Hoffman, Frank N. Magid Associates, and Audience Research & Development-Allen has broken new ground. Though constrained somewhat by agreements to protect personal and professional sensitivities, he has gathered information that provides an important insight into the ways TV news has evolved into what it is today. He pulled from reports on audience research, focus groups, and market surveys from 1957 through 1995 to construct an insider's view of how consultants revolutionized local TV news. The book argues that this research enabled executives at local television stations to develop newscasts that appealed to a wider audience by better meeting viewers' expectations. While they did not dictate news content, the consultants did convince stations to shorten stories, increase story counts, and divide anchor duties between male-female teams. They showed writers in television local newsrooms how to transform newpaperese into conversational language and to focus on people about real things to other real people. The long talking head was out; the smiling anchor person was in. The results are most recognizable in the Eyewitness News and Action News formats seen today on stations across the nation. Allen contends that the consultants helped stations identify the wants and needs of lower-middle and upper-lower class Americans who were known in newsrooms as Joe Six Pack. …
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