Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- We Interrupt This Newscast
- 1 A Prologue: What This Book Is For
- 2 The Knowledge Base
- 3 “I-Teams” and “Eye Candy”: The Reality of Local TV News
- 4 The Myths That Dominate Local TV News: The X-Structure and the Fallacy of the Hook-and-Hold Method of TV News
- 5 The Magic Formula: How to Make TV That Viewers Will Watch
- 6 Steps to Better Coverage
- 7 Putting It All into Action: Techniques for Changing Newsroom Cultures
- 8 The Road Ahead: The Future of Local TV News
- Appendix A Design Team Members
- Appendix B Quality Grading Criteria and Value Codes
- Appendix C Content Analysis Intercoder Reliability Analyses
- Appendix D Sample of Local TV News Stations
- Appendix E 2005 Follow-up Study
- Notes
- References
- Index
5 - The Magic Formula: How to Make TV That Viewers Will Watch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- We Interrupt This Newscast
- 1 A Prologue: What This Book Is For
- 2 The Knowledge Base
- 3 “I-Teams” and “Eye Candy”: The Reality of Local TV News
- 4 The Myths That Dominate Local TV News: The X-Structure and the Fallacy of the Hook-and-Hold Method of TV News
- 5 The Magic Formula: How to Make TV That Viewers Will Watch
- 6 Steps to Better Coverage
- 7 Putting It All into Action: Techniques for Changing Newsroom Cultures
- 8 The Road Ahead: The Future of Local TV News
- Appendix A Design Team Members
- Appendix B Quality Grading Criteria and Value Codes
- Appendix C Content Analysis Intercoder Reliability Analyses
- Appendix D Sample of Local TV News Stations
- Appendix E 2005 Follow-up Study
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The previous chapter showed how a series of demonstrably false myths and conventions about what audiences want from local TV news governs the medium and severely limits its quality. So that's what doesn't work. The obvious question is what does work? If so many of the conventions of the medium are wrong, what is right? We address these questions in this chapter.
Let's start with three assumptions:
Newsrooms want to produce the best-quality news with the resources at hand.
Newscasts have to be commercially successful.
Newsrooms have lots of choices about what to cover in reconciling assumption #1 (quality) with assumption #2 (profit).
Our five-year study of local TV news shows that newsrooms can do good journalism and still build profits. Stations don't have to choose ratings over reporting.
Using a broad measure of commercial success, we have identified a set of practices that are associated with bigger audiences, regardless of the topic of the story. Because these practices can be applied to any kind of story, we call them “The Magic Formula.” This Magic Formula of demonstrably successful journalistic practices consists of six steps. In brief, they are:
Step 1. Cover Important News – and give it resources and emphasis
Step 2. Invest in Enterprise – time and effort pay off
Step 3. Make Sourcing Authoritative – use data and consult experts
Step 4. Provide Perspective – get more sources and viewpoints into stories
Step 5. Look for Local Relevance – viewers watch if they know how stories affect them
Step 6. Make Important Stories Longer – but don't pad shallow ones
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- We Interrupt This NewscastHow to Improve Local News and Win Ratings, Too, pp. 94 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007