If the stories are going to be "in the can" even if they are being read LIVE, then there is no reason to watch "the nightly news" at night. You can time shift it to whenever you want. If you realize that apart from the top headlines, everything else is canned ("Eye on America" looks at an individual seeking health care, a product placement for a new placebo, et al.) crap that you don't even "need" (if you want to get science updates on medical advances, read a pharmaceutical journal or other such publication; most of what makes the news is nothing more than a promo clip of stock footage supplied by a corporation trying to sell the public on the latest "cure").
Heck, nightly tv lineups are old hat. TiVo and rebroadcasts have people watching "new" shows whenever they want rather than when broadcasters show them (only live sports/awards shows draw a live home audience these days).
Add to that DVD, Pay Per View, Theaters, movie channels, et al, and the "prime time lineup" faces a lot of competition.
If/when people download the programming they want to see (encrypted digital broadcast?), scheduling won't even matter.
We have already gone away from the "shared experience" of watching/listening to the same entertainment/news at the same time.
Would Elvis or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan mean anything today?
Breaking news stories (disasters and acts of war) are poorly covered by the MSM. They were able to cover the Reagan funeral alright (point a camera and let us hear what the speakers have to say).
People may watch a lot of news in a day, but how much do they actually know about what went on the world that day?
There are 31-34 wars actively being fought (some internal). We certainly don't hear about all the conflict in the world.
The lifecycle for information is a lot shorter now. The Houston Comical pulls wire stories and puts them online around 8PM CST. They will see print in a day or two in the hardcopy paper. If the "news" is already OLD by the time I'd get a hardcopy, why would I ever want to BUY it? Never mind the horrible biases in the editorial staff.
They need to clean house and re-evaluate bringing news to the consumer. Journalists need to report, not exploit/fabricate/lie/distort (especially to advance an activist agenda). They need to bring the news to the customer when he wants it and update the information as details emerge or are disproven (and they need to come clean with the audience when they are WRONG).
We give the MSM a lot of feedback on this site. Their response has largely been "Shut up and quit talking about our news" (cease and desist letters).