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The soft news season of the holidays officially begins. The last few shopping days before Christmas qualified it as the Story of the Day even though none of the three newscasts made Christmas its lead--and even though ABC did not file a Christmas story at all. To demonstrate that the holiday season had already descended on the networks' newsrooms, all three had a substitute anchor: ABC and CBS tapped their morning shows, with George Stephanopoulos and Erica Hill; NBC used its cable bench with Carl Quintanilla of CNBC. The lead story on both NBC and CBS was the clean-up from the floods in southern California; ABC led with unusually high wintertime prices for gasoline at the pump.

For Christmas news, NBC's John Yang and CBS' Elaine Quijano filed the predictable updates on the volume of retail sales this holiday shopping season. Yang reported from Chicago's Magnificent Mile; Quijano for Times Square in New York City. With warnings about procrastinating last-minute shopping and emptying shelves, both functioned more as promotions for the retail sector than reporters on the state of commerce.

CBS' Don Teague also tried to turn Christmas into hard news, surveying busier holiday travel volume in the face of costlier gasoline and airline fares. On Tuesday, we noted that prices at the pump only make news when they are rising not when they fall. The $3-per-gallon mark appears to be the threshold for attracting coverage. CBS' Bill Whitaker broke a near 18-month drought and now Linsey Davis does the same on ABC. She calculated December gasoline prices rising at a 13% annual inflation rate, a full 76% higher than the recessionary prices of December 2008.

Amid this insipid trio of news stories, why was the Christmas holiday Story of the Day? Look to the saccharine of newscast-closing feature series on both NBC and CBS. CBS' American Spirit found yet another toy drive: Jim Axelrod profiled Justin Martin, an eight-year-old teddy bear fanatic; Wednesday Barry Petersen told us about Dolls for Daughters, donated in memory of a miscarried pregnancy; Tuesday, NBC's Kevin Tibbles brought us Mark's Elves, distributing toys to pediatric patients in Chicago in honor of a boy who died of cancer four years ago.

As for Making a Difference, Janet Shamlian closed NBC's newscast with a home lighting ceremony in smalltown Illinois. The Decorate a Family program festoons houses of disabled veterans and separated military families with garlands, wreaths and fairy lights, "a holiday literally brightened by the kindness of strangers."

Andrew Tyndall 12/29/10 7:40:12 pm

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