Simpson Saga Aside, News Interest Falling, Poll Finds

Although a majority of Americans say that they closely follow the daily turns of the O.J. Simpson trial--including a “hard core” of nearly one in four who seem obsessed--the number of people across the nation watching television news shows or reading newspapers continues to decline, according to a new poll released Wednesday by a media monitoring group.

The Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press estimated that--based on its survey results--about 40 million people, or about 24% of the adult public, are watching “all or most” of the daily, live O.J. Simpson coverage and about 59% “watched, read or heard” about the trial coverage.

Nevertheless, the study found, network broadcast news viewing was down to 48% from the 60% who said that they watched the news “regularly” in May, 1993. Regular local television viewing dropped less dramatically during the same period, to 72% from 77% of those polled. And only 45% reported reading a newspaper “yesterday,” down in comparison to the center’s findings in February, 1994 (58%); in January, 1994 (49%); and in March, 1991 (56%). Radio news listening remained unchanged from earlier center surveys.

It is unclear whether the decline in network news watching and newspaper readers is a continuation of a trend or a result of Simpson watchers tuning directly into the live broadcasts on cable channels, the researchers said.

“So many people who are hard-core O.J. addicts are also typical news consumers,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the center. “They are getting their news from other sources than local and network news. They have gone over to the cable channel. It remains to be seen what they will do after the O.J. Simpson trial.”

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At present, however, broadcast television news has been hurt most by the national obsession with the Simpson trial, the study said. For example, people who say that they look forward to following the trial’s daily developments are twice as likely to watch CNN (32% versus 16%) and three times as likely to watch Court TV (15% versus 5%) as television viewers who do not look forward to watching trial coverage, according to the survey.

The national poll of 1,819 adult Americans, conducted March 22-26, found “little change” in the type of media people use, with 82% saying they get news and information “regularly” from television, 71% from newspapers, 65% from major network evening news and 54% from radio news. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Times Mirror Co. is the owner of the Los Angeles Times and other newspaper, broadcasting and publishing enterprises.

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Tuning in to the Simpson Trial

A poll by the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press found that more than half of the respondents watched a least some of the live coverage of the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial. And even more have watched, read or listened to news about the case.

Following the case through the news.

Have followed news coverage of the Simpson trial.: 59%

Did not follow coverage of the case.: 41%

Viewing live coverage of the Simpson case.

Almost all: 11%

A lot: 13%

Some: 29%

Hardly and/None: 47%