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Will Broadcast News Retreat After One Of Its Finest Hours?
Monday, January 14, 2002
(12:00 AM PT)
By Kay McFadden
Times staff columnist

"We don't make some kind of overt play for 18- to 34-year-olds, and I don't really think you can package the news that way, anyway," said CBS news division President Andrew Heyward. "You want to reflect the entire society you're reporting to and about."

Before Sept. 11, no piece of the media had it rougher than television news.

Distrusted by much of the public, crippled by budget cuts, forced to lowest-common-denominator programming by the success of newsmagazines and morning shows, TV news was on the downslope of ratings and image.

That seemingly changed overnight as networks and cable channels for the most part rose to a challenge unprecedented in its enormity, immediacy and complexity. Broadcast journalism simply shone.

Yet as news people met with critics in Pasadena last week, one glimpsed an odd mix of hopefulness and unease. It was as if those who have toiled and won acclaim for their recent coverage fear an unhappy ending -- that they'll awaken tomorrow and have to go back to trailing Gary Condit.

That could happen. News ratings lately have flattened or fallen. The effort to retain audiences has led to misguided moves, such as Fox News Channel putting Geraldo Rivera in Afghanistan to report and a recent flurry of hires stressing personality over substance.

Or take the news approach outlined by Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC cable. He told critics the big story wasn't MSNBC finishing a distant third behind CNN and Fox News Channel -- it was his successful packaging of MSNBC for boomers and slackers.

"When our ad people sell, they sell to 25- to 54-year-olds," he said. "There's not an advertiser in America, except maybe Viagra, who shoots for the 55-plus crowd."
(More: The Seattle Times News Source)
2002 © The Seattle Times Co.

Dan