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This is a brief clip from the film "Broadcast News" (1987), which is about the news media's declining standards. There was a lot of concern about it at that time, especially the news being dumbed down by the inferior standards of TV news, the public's taste for fluff, entertainment and infotainment rather than hard news, and corporate mergers. I don't watch Hollywood movies anymore, so I'm not recommending it for entertainment or as fine art, but I do recommend it for the historical value. It's of Hollywood, and so does conflict with my Christian beliefs in some ways, but it...

William Hurt, the Oscar-winning actor who starred in films like Body Heat, The Big Chill and Broadcast News, has died at the age of 71. Hurt’s son Will confirmed his father’s death in a statement Sunday. “It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday,” the family said. “He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time.

Bias? What bias? As Dan wrote earlier, “fake news” is the left’s newest boogeyman. The pretense is that it’s a battle cry against phony news sites that post absolute falsehoods. In reality, “fake news” is a catch-all term that can be applied to any news or opinion site that doesn’t toe the Democrat line. If they don’t like what you publish, you’re “fake news.” If you’re participating in the anti-Trump histrionics, you’re probably good to go. First of all, aren’t these the very same people who spent the last eight years telling us that “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert...

Preliminary Nielsen ratings show “NBC Nightly News” dropped -36% on Friday from last week’s Monday-Thursday average among A25-54 viewers. NBC’s competitors were down too, but not as much: ABC was down -16% while CBS was down -17% on Friday.

Brian Williams is taking a sabbatical until he’s no longer the laughing stock of the internet - this is HUGE! I can tell because even Maureen Dowd can’t seem to find the humor in it. It’s as if she senses something more existential (yes, I said it) is at stake here. It may be starting to dawn on her that the broadcast (and print) journalism franchise is flailing. Like Radio Shack, who continued to hang around providing inferior product and service long after they had lost sight of their objective.Here’s MoDo’s take on the situation: Although Williams’s determination to...

A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon. Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

Cable TV viewership is declining, local news audiences are growing, and the number of Americans watching the network's evening news broadcasts is vast and stable, according to the latest report from the Pew Research Journalism Project. Meanwhile, 36 percent of U.S. adults watch news video online. This is about the same audience percentage that gets its news from Facebook or cable news channels, Pew reported. Most of this demographic is comprised of younger people. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC were all down in prime time viewership though Fox still led the pack. Some 22.6 million viewers watch the nightly network...

At Big Journalism, William Bigelow writes, “According to a new Gallup poll measuring Americans’ confidence in television news, the level is the lowest since the poll was begun in 1993:” 21% of adults expressed a great deal of confidence in television news reporting. No wonder CNN’s ratings are in the toilet. Gallup tested 16 institutions, including newspapers, and TV news ranked 11th. Newspapers were ranked 10th. There was an interesting divide among those on the left; Democrats were the most confident in television news of all the groups surveyed (now there’s a shock) but postgraduates, who are more generally Democrats,...

The big three nightly news broadcasts, NBC Nightly, CBS Evening and ABC World, lost a combined one million viewers in the second quarter of 2010, according to TVNewser. These numbers are comparable to the first quarter, which saw Evening News and World News get their lowest average viewers ever, while NBC's Winter Olympics coverage helped it get their highest average viewers since 2005. (Snip) Polls going back to 1997 displayed a continued public distrust with the news media.

The media certainly is changing, and major network news outfits including CBS and ABC are loosing audience number as ratings for the first quarter confirm a declining trend. The combined three still have a lot of viewers. The Internet. I think the Net has quite a bit to do with it and as competition increases the big players who were once king of the roost are naturally loosing market share. I’m not saying the big networks are ignoring new delivery systems – they certainly are not – it’s just the nature of innovation.

With buyouts and layoffs in progress, the mood at ABC News can’t be good — and it was not likely enhanced by the ratings report for the first quarter of the year, which showed that the network’s evening newscast, “World News” had sunk to the lowest numbers the program had seen in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987. The same story prevailed at CBS, where the “Evening News” also hit a new low for the months of January through March. So what’s happening? Is this a signal that viewers are abandoning network newscasts...

Even as Copenhagen looms, broadcast news ignores e-mails suggesting warming alarmists 'manipulated' data, conspired to destroy information and thwarted peer reviews. It’s been nearly two weeks since a scandal shook many people’s faith in the scientists behind global warming alarmism. The scandal forced the University of East Anglia (UK) to divulge that it threw away raw temperature data and prompted the temporary resignation of Phil Jones of the university’s Climate Research Unit. Despite that resignation and calls by a U.S. senator to investigate the matter, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programming has remained silent – not mentioning a...

Legit broadcast journalism, so important yet nearly dead, last week took another hit when CBS News’ “48 Hours” presented an “exclusive” with the Gotti Family. Three days later, Victoria Gotti’s tell-all was released by Simon & Schuster, the publishing division of CBS.

ABC has Gotcha Gibson. NBC has Williams. CBS has Couric. Fox has............ Nothing. There is no national broadcast coming from Fox news. This needs to change.

Major television networks are considering curtailing coverage of the Democratic National Convention after Monday’s announcement that Barack Obama will accept his party's nomination in a Denver stadium. According to several broadcast executives, the networks will still cover all the major speeches. But beyond that, all options are open as they look for savings to balance out the anticipated costs surrounding the stadium event. The acceptance event is an unexpected departure from the traditional convention hall format they had spent months planning for. Network executives expect Obama’s relatively late-breaking decision to speak at Invesco Field at Mile High, a 76,000-seat football stadium,...

Decreases in Ads and Viewers Mean Change Is in the Air for Big Three NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The big three TV network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers last year, and advertising on their three big morning news shows fell to an estimated $1.03 billion. The average viewer is 60 years old, and the demographic marketers most want to reach is more likely to be facing a computer screen than a TV screen when the evening news comes on. Collectively, ABC, NBC and CBS's network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers in 2007, according to an analysis of Nielsen...

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams won the 2007 November sweep period in total viewers and viewers in the key 25-54 demo, barely beating out ABC World News with Charles Gibson. NBC Nightly News held a 100,000-viewer lead over ABC World News in total viewers and a 20,000-viewer lead in the key demo. The numbers for total viewers and demo viewers were the closest they have been in a sweeps period since 2001 and 1996, respectively. The sweeps win by NBC continues a seesaw ratings race that has been going on since early this year, when ABC World News overtook...

A year ago tomorrow, I did a post on the continued decline in evening news viewership at Big Three Networks NBC, ABC, and CBS, and made these observations and predictions about why that decline was taking place, and would continue (some of last year's text was slightly revised): All three nightly broadcasts most likely lose money, when isolated from their morning counterparts (Today, Good Morning America, CBS Morning Show) and their documentary shows (Dateline, 60 Minutes, 20/20, etc.). At a minimum, none makes an acceptable level of profit. BUT, the news operations of each of the Big 3 networks are...

Tuesday, Apr 11Evening News Ratings: Week of April 3 While the industry was focused on NBC and CBS last week, ABC was gaining a few viewers. World News Tonight edged NBC Nightly News for a win in the 25-54 demo last week. (90,000 viewers separated the two programs.) NBC beat ABC by more than 500,000 total viewers. CBS dropped from 7,730,000 the week of March 27 to 6,950,000 last week. For the week of April 3: Total viewers: NBC: 8,360,000 / ABC: 7,830,000 / CBS: 6,950,000 25-54 rating: NBC: 2.2/9 / ABC: 2.3/9 / CBS: 1.8/7 25-54 viewers: NBC: 2,740,000...

WASHINGTON - The building is far from finished, but Newseum curators installed their first artifact Wednesday _ an item so big they'll put up the rest of the museum around it. The world's first news satellite truck was gingerly lowered by a crane into what will be the new home of the museum dedicated to journalism and the First Amendment. The CONUS 1 satellite truck transformed local television news in 1984 by allowing stations to cover national stories without depending on the major networks, said Newseum curator Carrie Christoffersen. Hubbard Broadcasting and CONUS Communications used the first satellite truck. Four...