TV is Still the Most Common Way For Americans To Get Local News, But Fewer People Are Watching

Local TV is trusted and is still the preferred method of getting news (thanks mostly to people 50 and up). But viewership for local TV news continues to decline, according to research released by Pew this week. Pew also took a look at cable and network news.

Maybe

[RickyShade]

Is it possible that the same amount of people are still getting local news, but those fewer that are watching are now using the internetz? Maybe?

Re: Maybe

[peragrin]

Not all local channels can be streamed.

The thing is local news tends to be 60% or more national news first. And then the local stuff is filler and side pieces.

For the heck of I I subscribed to my local weekend newspaper. The ads aren't even all that great so far. And the news itself is often regurated national stories. Though there are enough local stuff that I am not upset.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Pew Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I believed Research done by PewDiePie?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

who?

Re:

[kackle]

See, I was thinking "Pew pew pew! I got 'em!"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible, agreed, but repeated meta-analysis from various journalism schools shows that this is minimized at most news orgs, outside of deliberately partisan reporting such as MSNBC and Fox, although both of those score reasonably well if you eliminate the programs that they themselves tag as "opinion", although they don't do a very good job of flagging that to their viewers. Go search the net for reports from the University of Missouri Columbia Journalism (the flagship J-school in USA), among many ot

Good

[Kohath]

Watching the news is bad for people. The entire news business is just a huge trolling operation with self serving delusions of grandeur.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

and bullshit agendas like "climate change"

It's irrelevant whether their agendas are bullshit. They shouldn't have an agenda. They should merely report facts.

But they don't care about facts. They care about money and about their own vanity. That leads them to troll the viewers and push an agenda instead of following their rightful mission and reporting facts.

Re:

[Can'tNot]

Your notion that there is no such thing as an objective truth is a contradiction to your criticism of news agencies pushing an agenda. What are they supposed to report on? Only the things that you agree with? Climate change is pretty close to an objective truth, it's certainly well established at this point, the fact that some people deny this turns it into an "agenda."

What if they run a story on some new development in biology, one which hinges on evolution? Some people think that's an "agenda" too - do

Re:

[bigpat]

Watching the news is bad for people. The entire news business is just a huge trolling operation with self serving delusions of grandeur.

It is hard to watch the news and not be manipulated into something. That's nothing new, just now there are competing interests trying to manipulate you which is creating conflict. It used to be just the Democratic Party (or Republican depending where you lived) and corporate sponsors trying to sell something. Now Republicans are in there with a few news outlets too. And foreign interests. And about fifty different shades of political spectrum. I think it is better than ever, but there are certainly

Re:

[EvilSS]

It's nothing new, but it's just so blatant these days. Cable news (both "sides of it") has destroyed reporting in the US. And you either play that game, pandering to one side or the other, with almost no news, just editorializing, opinion, even pure fiction from talking heads, or you sink as viewers (and revenue) flow away to those that do. I would gladly pay for an unbiased, well researched, no bullshit, here are the facts from all sides, you make up your mind about them, news source. But I'm probably in t

Re:

[Kohath]

They are still trolling. "Your children are in immediate danger, tune in at 11 tonight to find out what's going to kill them." (Spoiler alert, it's hype and the whole broadcast is meaningless at best.)

Well gee

[Anonymous Coward]

With a viewership that's old and getting older, that seems like a forgone conclusion. How many young people are willing to set up an antenna to get a handful of local stations that generally show nothing but local news updates (that they can get on the internet faster) and reruns of sitcoms that they already watch on Netflix in HD?

Re:Well gee

[pgmrdlm]

When I lived in Cleveland Ohio proper, I received over 50 stations from over air antenna. Actually liked some of the choices better then the cable subscription.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Holy crap that is bad where i live ( norvegian town kf about 40k big on noregian scale) i get sbout 20 chanbels and 300/ 300 mbps fiber for less snd it actually delivers thst soeed or realy close to it is it just me or is cabel rediculesly over priced in the us?

Re:

[ArhcAngel]

How many young people are willing to set up an antenna to get a handful of local stations that generally show nothing but local news updates (that they can get on the internet faster) and reruns of sitcoms that they already watch on Netflix in HD?

You sound like my wife before I forced her to start using the HDHomerun app on the TV for any local channel watching. Now I will walk into the room and she'll be watching one of the sub-channels. Right now she's watching Quincy M.E and Kojak and loving it! She works for a small city government and one of her guilty pleasures is watching Parking Wars and other reality law enforcement shows. And you're going to see more and more shows get pulled from Netflix as these shows owners start their own streaming ser

Re: Well gee

[Anonymous Coward]

I did. The cost is an antenna, a one time cost.

Re:

[stedlj]

Milwaukee Wisconsin getting over 50 channels, add in a Tivo and we can record all our shows. We did not pay for TV in 10+ years, until we got Netflix that is.

No news... is not good news

[rlauzon]

There is no "news" anymore. There is only media and the competition for eyeballs.

i dont watch or listen to the news anymore

[FudRucker]

because i rather be un-informed than mis-informed, its all government and fascist/corporate propaganda anyway

Local TV news is timely and unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

Local newspapers on the other hand are usually a disgrace. I think it has to do with two main factors: who owns it (local stations are affiliates and not wholly-owned by their controlling organizations), and how much time they have to present a story (less opportunity to editorialize).

PS: this doesn't stop things from being dropped from the news or investigative reporting being officially discouraged, which happens regardless of the medium.

Re:Local TV news is timely and unbiased

[PopeRatzo]

Local TV news is timely and unbiased

Yeah, about that.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/02... [npr.org]

https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo [youtu.be]

https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]

Re:

[EvilSS]

First of all, no, it's not always unbiased. Even when it is, or seems that way, it's usually because the reporting is so shallow there isn't any room for bias, or much of anything for that matter. Most local TV news stories could probably be completely summarized in a single sentence without losing anything important information.

Friggin babyboomers, I swear

[Dallas May]

This is their fault.

question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it better to not watch the news and be uninformed or watch the news and be misinformed?

Paywalls

[darkain]

That's because local "print"/"tv" media have worse paywalls on their web sites than comparable national news sources. In my city, we're allowed one "free" article a month, that's it. And considering how unstable their web site is with broken click-though JS to "read the full article" that usually doesn't even work, we lose our one and only "free" viewing just to try to read the one fucking article in the first place, and don't even get that. This is a REAL incentive to PAY THEM MONEH.... heh...

Re:

[EvilSS]

I don't have an issue with paywalls on newspapers. I get it, it's expensive to run one, and they do provide a service that's not easy to find. Local news isn't a huge focus of most of the online news sources and providing that reporting is important. But don't ask me to pay the same rates (or close to them as not to matter) as if I were a print subscriber. My local paper tried that and I just removed them from my feeds and didn't visit them for years. Looks like they figured out that wasn't working because

Re:

[darkain]

What I'm more particularly pissed about is that about 1 in 10 articles are ACTUALLY by the local news paper. And that is ALL I want from them, but I have to pay for EVERYTHING, which is almost entirely re-printed days/weeks old AP articles I've already seen elsewhere.

Re:

[tquasar]

Paywalls suck. If media wants a web presence, they should be required to allow enough visits to explore an issue and comment. I pay for the NYT and WaPo and two small local sites, East County Magazine and The Voice of San Diego. They report on issues the local TV news doesn't cover.

Re:Critical mass

[wolfheart111]

X.com paid 60 million for users to subscribe, after that they started earning money... alot of $. Up front money is needed before your site goes anywhere...

Maybe they should get with the times

[Praedon]

Perhaps if more local news stations offered streaming, on-demand viewing of their segments a week at a time, they would get more viewership. People don't work 9-5 anymore and watch the news exactly at 8-10.

CHP Traffic Incident Information Page

[Zorro]

https://cad.chp.ca.gov/Traffic.aspx

They know about it before anyone else does usually.

Big Fire? Closed Road? Car Chase? Yep that website.

Local news haters

[Anonymous Coward]

So you never watch the weather? You never have local stations interrupt programming due to tornado's. You don't watch sports? No college teams in town? Your local news station does not cover city council? Boil water notices? Traffic? Haters gonna hate I guess.

Re:

[PPH]

I have to watch the local news. No one else can pronounce Puyallup.

I watch no TV for news.

[pgmrdlm]

TV or video news is nothing but sound bites. I want to read as much about any given topic or news item as I can find. I also want non biased, verifiable links to support the topic or news item. Which is very hard to find.

Gossip?

[matthelm007]

Shouldn't it read "...where people get the gossip"

Marketing

[argStyopa]

I've wondered for years when TV execs (or more importantly, their customers) would recognize that the beloved 18-40 demo was a load of crap, considering that most of it (18-30s) aren't watching anything on TV any more.

But then, I don't understand the asinine amounts of $$ spent on advertising anyway, so what do I know?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why the hell would I watch local TV

[rsilvergun]

when it's like this [mediamatters.org] and this [businessinsider.com]

Journalists abandoned me, so I'm abandoning them. I'll stick with my YouTube Channels like Secular Talk [youtube.com] and Beau of the Fith Column [youtube.com] (even if I can only spell "Beau" like, 1 out of 8 times).

The problem is the format, not the politics

[MobyDisk]

While everyone focuses on how biased and sensational TV news is, we forget that the format is also a problem. When a video is posted to Slashdot, there is always backlash. We don't have time to watch a talking head tell us something when we can read the article on our own time, quietly, on our own schedule. I can't grep a video. It can't have links and inline citations (without being annoying), and I can't easily read ahead or skim.

But TV news is even worse than this, because if there's a 5 minute segme

Stop pulling the live streams!

[King_TJ]

We used to watch the local DC area news on their FOX affiliate via our AppleTV, until FOX made some recent change and blocked it. I don't have an antenna to pick up any OTA television out here (about 75 miles outside DC itself, so OTA requires a good rooftop antenna and possibly a rotator), and we cancelled cable TV a while ago. So if it's not available somehow via streaming, we don't watch it anymore.

Tuned?

[smoot123]

From TFA:

The average audience (defined as the average number of TVs tuned to a program throughout a time period)...

What is this "tuned" thing of which they speak? The only tuning I've done in the last decade was making sure my CPU and memory speed were compatible.

I mean, they can't be talking about finding the carrier frequency of a RF signal so I can watch a stream in real-time (and only real-time) as the streamer transmits it. That's stone knives and bearskins.