Read More of the Same Day's Blog

For the first time since the ultra-heavy news environment of ten years ago, the audience for the broadcast networks' weekday evening newscasts is growing. Their seemingly inexorable decline in viewing levels was interrupted once in 2001-2002, with the saturation coverage following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. This year it has happened again.

Viewership has not quite returned to the levels of two years ago, when the agenda was led by the global financial collapse, and the historic election and inauguration of Barack Obama. Nevertheless, 2010-2011 surpassed the previous season, which was dominated by the earthquake in Haiti and the pollution of the Gulf of Mexico by BP's seabed oil drilling leak.

This ratings rebound defies the secular trend. The mass medium of broadcast television should, by rights, be in permanent decline as niches proliferate. A newscast created for the 24-hour cycle should, by rights, be losing relevance in a news-on-demand world. There are valid technological, socioeconomic, demographic and world-historical explanations for the uptick, which I will mention later.

There is also this fact: viewers are being offered a broader palette of journalistic styles by the three newscasts now than at any time in the last 15 years. This year has seen both ABC World News and CBS Evening News revamp their formats. So, taken together, the three newscasts cater to a range of tastes that is wider than at any time since CBS experimented with tabloid sensation with its Dan Rather-Connie Chung combo in the early '90s while Peter Jennings at ABC's then-aptly-named World News focused on the international hotspots of Bosnia, South Africa, Palestine and Chechnya.

Andrew Tyndall 10/7/11 7:16:10 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report