Tip to L.A. TV: Maybe Crime Doesn’t Pay

TV columnist Howard Rosenberg expressed the frustration of many when he complained about “violent crime-and-misery stories” on the nightly news(“3 Days of the Newscasts, or Can Emmys Be Revoked?,” Calendar, June 10). L.A. viewers might be interested in knowing that a growing number of TV stations around the country are laying to rest “bodybag journalism.” Unfortunately, L.A. stations have yet to make similar funeral arrangements.

WCCO, the No. 1 station in the Minneapolis market, initiated the nationwide trend. A year ago, it launched a series of town meetings during which it discovered that violence was consistently at the top of the list of viewer complaints. It may be hard for L.A. station execs to believe, but viewers in Minneapolis really didn’t want blood and guts anymore. In fact, viewers wanted stories that reflected their community. They wanted to hear about schools, events, local businesses. Imagine, viewers even wanted stories about how local government does its job!

The most significant change, Minneapolis Star-Tribune TV critic Noel Holston told me recently, is not so much in WCCO’s toned-down crime coverage (since the station never favored splatter fests), but in that, by de-emphasizing crime, the station was able to find time for new community-oriented stories.

In a recent study, media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting/L.A. evaluated our own local newscasts. FAIR found what anyone who watches local news knows to expect--overkill. With an occasional exception, all seven L.A. newscasts open with a volley of the latest violent crimes. Depending on the station, anywhere from 25% to 50% of all news time is devoted to shootings, robberies and other mayhem.

Certainly, crime in Los Angeles is a serious problem. It’s a shame it’s not getting the serious coverage that would put it in an understandable context. Instead, the nightly pandemonium that passes for news exacerbates public fear, encourages people to seek drastic remedies and hurts our local economy by convincing tourists and businesses to stay away.

FAIR challenged Los Angeles’ news outlets to follow the lead of their fellow news directors and rethink the time they devote to crime and how they cover it. By breaking away from the pack, any station in Los Angeles could distinguish itself and build a competitive advantage.

The change wouldn’t even require a sense of public responsibility. It makes good business sense. There are an awful lot of Angelenos who turn on the local news, watch the first gore-filled five minutes and turn it off because they can’t watch anymore. That’s not helping any station’s ratings. Since the change, WCCO’s ratings have remained steady. In fact, their 18-to-49-year-old audience, the demographic stations most want to reach, is up.

Plus, the change made a fabulous promotional hook. I’d be tickled pink to see stations trumpeting their sensitive as opposed to sensational news coverage.

According to the FAIR/L.A. study, KABC, the station with the least crime coverage of any of the network half-hour newscasts, was also the winner of the May sweeps. Maybe that’s an early indicator of shifting public taste. Could it be that crime no longer pays--at least when it comes to ratings?

Privately, producers and news directors at L.A. stations have told me they agree with FAIR’s conclusions. They blame management and their colleagues in the field for a knee-jerk and intransigent notion of what’s news and how it should be reported.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, WCCO news director John Culliton says he feels more comfortable with what he’s doing than he has in years. He sleeps better. L.A. news directors could be sleeping better too, and so would a lot of us. Maybe even Howard Rosenberg.