23 Comments Add your own

• 1. Andrew Tyndall  |  March 1st, 2007 at 6:08 pm

  Certainly, 570,000 viewers seems like an awfully large number of viewers to have mislaid–but since Nightly was the first of the three broadcast networks to make a big deal about offering its broadcast newscast, in its entirety, online–so viewers did not have to watch on Nielsen-rated television–at least some of those 570,000 must be still watching, but at msnbc.com instead.

  Given Lost Remote’s party line that online is an opportunity for broadcasters rather than a threat of cannibalization, Bergman seems to be sending mixed messages to NBC here: implying that somehow offering viewers a choice of platforms results in the opposition popping champagne corks.

• 2. thetampachannel  |  March 1st, 2007 at 6:39 pm

  might the pending pushout of the mandatory a/d switch over be an indication that network tv realizes this stuff is all going online?

• 3. Cory  |  March 1st, 2007 at 6:56 pm

  I’ll respond to Andrew’s comment with a quote from NBC’s own chief digital officer, George Kliavkoff: ‘All of our research departments say folks who watch TV online are more likely to go watch on television… for us, it’s all additive,’ he said last month.

  MSNBC.com’s Nightly Netcast doesn’t cannibalize the newscast’s TV ratings, on the contrary, it allows new viewers to sample it and provides an alternative for TV viewers who missed it.

  So where did the viewers go? Sure, aging viewership is certainly a factor, but I believe people are watching less evening news because they’re reading more of it online during the day. National and international news is everywhere online, and the evening newscasts have become optional. In today’s busy lifestyles, optional TV viewing is increasingly a thing of the past

• 4. Steve Safran  |  March 1st, 2007 at 6:57 pm

  Andrew: First of all, thank you for holding our feet to the fire. You’re becoming a great gatekeeper here! AND you use your real name. Rarer still.

  You’re right - there is a certain duality here, but it doesn’t lie at the feet of my esteemed partner on the left coast. The fault lies in the ancient metric known as Nielsen. The data shouldn’t reflect how many people watched a TV show, but rather how many people are getting their news from a given organization.

  But as long as Nielsen continues to represent numbers the way they do and advertisers continue to make ad buys based on those numbers, then network news (and its execs) lives and dies by those numbers.

  I get your point - and it’s a good one. We should get the total picture from those who purport to measure it. But in this instance, I think you may be killing the messenger. And he’s the one with the admin password. I’d be in big trouble without him.

• 5. Dan  |  March 1st, 2007 at 8:43 pm

  Like Cory said, national and international news is
  available all over the place, video and text.
  Those of us in my age bracket (50) grew up with the
  anchor approach. There is something comforting
  about it, but even me, I get my news all over the place
  all day long, and I TIVO NBC Nightly and most evenings I get to watch it, but it’s optional. And I never set through the ads for all the pharmaceuticals.

  So, bottom line…
  Networks, local station, newspapers…. do your reporting, but make it so we can structure out own
  newscast as it were. Put some ads on the side of the
  page if you want to (not in the stream) and then
  you will get back to the glory days. It’s not that
  people, even younger people don’t want to watch
  news, it’s just that the idea that networks and local
  stations still make us watch it when THEY want us to
  and the stories THEY want us to watch, that’s the
  problem. Stop it.
  If I pick up a newspaper, I don’t have to read all the
  stories do I? It’s interactive.
  Go to naplesnews.com and their studio 55.
  They are getting there.
  But it’s still not what KING or KOMO or WNBC
  could be doing with all those stories in your server.
  You make it too complicated and cumbersome.
  Figure it out.

  Dan

• 6. Andrew Tyndall  |  March 1st, 2007 at 9:46 pm

  Bergman: you say “National and international news is everywhere online (not to mention cable news), and the evening newscasts have become optional.”

  First, there is little evidence that cable news is a valuable source of much “national and internationl news” unless you count Anna Nicole (buried in The Bahamas) as international.

  Second, your “optional” comment is precisely what is at stake here. If it turns out that a subtantial proportion of NBC’s lost viewers have “opted” to receive the same journalism timeshifted and online, then NBC’s “reign,” as you put it, has ended only to the extent that it is a figment of Nielsen’s methodology (I agree here with Safran) not because of any loss of audienced for its journalism.

  For the record, I happen to think that ABC World News at the moment is producing a more dynamic product than NBC Nightly News, so you may be on point after all. My argument is merely that the Nielsen numbers alone do not prove the point.

• 7. Nick Geidner  |  March 1st, 2007 at 10:05 pm

  Am I reading these numbers wrong or did the three network newscasts lose a combined 630,000 viewers from last year? And if I’m not reading them wrong, why isn’t that the story?

  Seriously?

• 8. Matt  |  March 1st, 2007 at 11:09 pm

  Don’t forget ABC was the first to produce any sort of video podcast and they still are the only one producing a daily news programing specifically for the internet.

• 9. Ian  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 12:05 am

  The bottom line is that the dinosaur media is continuing to lose relevance and deservedly so.

• 10. Anonymous  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 12:53 am

  As much as I’m loathe to credit it, could this be related to the campaign on the right against NBC News, led by Bill O’Reilly? If enough conservative viewers think NBC News is too liberal and tune it out, it will have an effect.

  Heck, CBS News may have gone downhill for the same reason — conservatives constantly complained that Rather was the most liberal evening news anchor.

• 11. discreet_chaos  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 6:03 am

  I’ll agree with many of the previous comments about all of the different news sources and ways to watch the network’s products. Heck, I don’t think I’ve watched over-the-air national news since Katie’s debut and I’m a news junkie. I do, however, watch CNN and am constantly reading updated headlines online, watching random news videos and I’ve watched all three of the network’s webcast products at one time or another and on a fairly regular basis.

  Though (and I used to adore Brian’s stream-of-conciousness narration of live events on the network and NBC), but I think a lot of the “credit” for the uptick in ratings has to be attributed to gravitas. Charlie Gibson has it, while Brian and Katie seem to be lacking and by that measure, their broadcasts feel like they have less weight.

• 12. David  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 6:10 am

  I find the earlier comment that the ‘anchor approach is comforting’. A very interesting word choice. I find anchors to be contempitble and arrogant.

  One person who expects the rest of the nation to translate his ability to read the news in to credibility on matters both intellectual and moral? I refuse to watch them.

  I dislike the local evening news even more with its ghoulish focus on death and crime and destruction.

  Besides, the bottom line is: I already know what ALL of them are going to say. They are going to report from the left. They are going to support democrats. They are going to bash Christianity. They are going to find reasons to undermine the war on terror.

  So, the evening news is irrititating, arrogant, biased and repetitive. Why in creation would I waste my time on it?

• 13. Brfian  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 7:24 am

  Why would I waste my time watching a guy read the news to me for 20 minutes, when I can read it myself in 3 minutes? And to find additional sources and to go into greater depth into stories that interest me, instead of the news anchor?

  Used to be the only way to get the news was to watch the evening news. It’s not the case anymore. I can Google news quicker then they can read it to me.

• 14. Anonymous  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 8:49 am

  I would tend to think that the web stuff produced by the networks is in fact additive.

  Look at the ABC News World News webcast which goes out on iTunes everyday (including weekends) at about 3:00pm. It offers up news, but also teases longer, updated versions of major stories in the main broadcast some two hours later.

  My guess is people may be driven more to follow up with the tv broadcast if they are interested in any stories they saw previewed on the webcast.

  And after all, many of them are probably seeing the webcast while at work, before they go home to their hdtv flatscreens…

• 15. ptsargent  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 8:58 am

  The beginning of the end for network news was when Walter Cronkite decided he was the news and that it was up to him to instruct and help everyone else understand the correct world view. His little acolyte Dan Rather continued in this vein until he imploded and now we have the little puppets regurgitating what their liberal, blame America first, one world producers put together daily and call the news. Want to see what an effective news program looks like? watch Brit Hume’s nightly news program. As Fax rightly promotes, it is fair, balanced and unafraid…and I would argue it is informative, lively and peopled by serious journalists with grown up opinions about events of the day. This is serious and good stuff. The rest of it is ready for the trash heap and dustbin of history.

• 16. thedetroitchannel  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 9:17 am

  go polish your pistol.

• 17. Nick  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 3:49 pm

  Those who think network newscasts are only declining because of technology change have to explain why Fox News is so successful.

  The fact is conservatives are more than tired of watching liberal propaganda served up as “news”. As the networks have moved to the left, the conservative side of their former audience has changed the channel. Fox now owns the right side of the political spectrum, while all the rest compete for the left side.

  NBC in particular has turned left, so it’s not surprising that its remaining conservative viewers are leaving in droves.

• 18. discreet_chaos  |  March 2nd, 2007 at 6:03 pm

  OK - I’m not trying to get political, but much of Fox’s “success” (which is only successful, if you compare it to other cable outlets), but much of Fox’s “success” is that there’s an audience that turns it on in the morning and who don’t turn it off until night.

  Once again, I’m not trying to be political, but FoxNews could more accurately be described as modern Muzak. It’s like the easy-listening station which used to play in the doctor’s offices, but in a corporate world, the easy-listening stations have mostly become “smooth jazz” and modern people want headlines and pictures to go with their background noise.

  Hence, the “success” of Fox News.

• 19. Steve Safran  |  March 3rd, 2007 at 12:23 am

  I think it’s marvelous how people who look for evidence to support their insistence that Fox News is somehow a triumph of the conservative will over journalism will find it in the most irrelevant places.

  Fox News is not proof that people are turning away from “liberal propaganda.” It is proof - excellent proof, in fact — that there is a market for what was once conservative talk show radio now placed on television. Good for them and all, but that’s all it means. (It’s also proof that they shouldn’t dabble in comedy.)

  I lament the watering down of the once powerful word “Propaganda.” It used to be associated with governments controlling people. Some governments ran whole departments of misinformation to spread those lies. Propaganda could be evil at its deepest, and its goal was often to disrupt society and bring about the deaths of entire races of people.

  “Propaganda” is now simply what people call an opinion they don’t like.

• 20. Steave  |  March 3rd, 2007 at 6:36 am

  You can listen to 25 of America’s top Talk Radio Shows for free at the Internet Radio Network. The link is above in the URL…

• 21. ptsargent  |  March 3rd, 2007 at 2:43 pm

  If you want to know why Fox has become news channel of choice for many, you need to look at the dichotomy that is now America. There are those who believe America is a force for good in the world (Reagan Republicans and Democrats), and those who think America is the problem in the world (Kerry liberals and Democrats). Supporting and promoting the “America’s the problem” crowd, in order of vehemence if not importance importance are:Academia (think Duke’s gang of 88, Norm Chomsky, Juan Cole), NYTimes, Washington Post, LATimes, NBC, CBS, CNN, Hollywood airheads (Jane, Barbara, Oliver, Penn, et al) and wealthy wierdos (think George Soros and Ted Turner). Until Fox News the only push back to this cabal was William F. Buckley and his handful of stalwarts at his magazine and a think tank here and there. Now, lo and behold, theres a “mass” media outlet that pushing back too and what’s more, finds its influence and audience growing while all the others are stagnant or shrinking. So the half (or more) of the country without much of a voice before suddenly has one. Naturally the incredibly shrinking elitist, used to having it their way all those years, doesn’t like this new development because it threatens their status, and sense of superiority. But, they better get used to it because this push back is real and its gaining in momentum.

• 22. thedetroitchannel  |  March 3rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm

  gaining momentum?

  they must install cable in caskets then, because fox’s average viewer is nearly 70 years old.

  i think you have “america’s the problem” confused with “this current administration is the problem”.

  they are hardly american.

  three branches of gov’t and bush is the sap.

• 23. ptsargent  |  March 3rd, 2007 at 10:08 pm

  the detroitchannal: i think you have “america’s the problem” confused with “this current administration is the problem”.
  they are hardly american.
  three branches of gov’t and bush is the sap.

  You are one wierd dude, thedetroitchannel…I think I’ll just leave it at that..good luck, god knows you’re going to need it.

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