News Execs Sing Demographic Blues

The young and the restless occupied the thoughts of many of the 2,500 news directors and executives gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center this week.

No, the attendees at the 51st annual convention of the Radio-Television News Directors Assn. (RTNDA), which winds up today, were not talking soap operas. But several participants expressed alarm during the three-day event over a survey that underscored the growing generation gap in the dwindling audience for network television news.

Participants at the conference also grappled Friday with the findings of another RTNDA-commissioned study that concluded that half of Americans believe television coverage of race and minorities does not accurately reflect life in their communities.

Part of that study concluded that African Americans were more than twice as likely as whites to believe that TV news coverage damages race relations in their communities, while most of the black respondents felt that TV news stereotypes African Americans.

Discussions of the two studies, as well as how to be more responsible to audiences, dominated many of the sessions at the conference. The convention is designed to help TV and radio news executives, anchors and reporters look as news trends and rapidly changing technology.

“This is the right time to look at the audience,” RTNDA President David Bartlett said. “I think there is this fear that we don’t understand the expectations of the audiences of tomorrow. We need to be careful to meet those expectations. There is so much more competition than there has ever been before.”

Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, told the conference in a speech Wednesday night that the combined share of audience of the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts is down more than 20 points in the last two decades--with the drop-off among younger viewers even more significant.

That was echoed by a survey released during the conference that reported that young adults, particularly females in the 18-29 age range, don’t have much interest in watching television news or keeping up with world events. The lack of interest does not stem from competition on the Internet or other online sources, the study said, but from the feeling by young adults that network news coverage often has little relevance to their lives.

One element of the study found that only 36% of the female respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 knew that Congress was controlled by Republicans. And only 20% of them knew that the Speaker of the House was Newt Gingrich.

“It is truly alarming,” said Cliff Zukin, research director of Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the survey for the RTNDA’s News in the Next Century Project. Zukin warned news directors that they must find ways to attract a younger, wider audience “or it will be bad for business and bad for democracy.”

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The findings prompted debate between attendees about whether watering down or pumping up news content to attract younger viewers would be a step in the right direction. Solutions were not readily forthcoming, although various suggestions were offered.

Lew Dickey, founder and president of Atlanta-based Stratford Research, talked in one session about how graphics and slick packaging have to be used. “We have a market-driven product to sell,” he said.

In another session, titled, “If We Build It, Will They Come? The News Consumer of the Future,” Mark Effron, vice president of news for the Post-Newsweek Stations group, recommended that stations develop sites on the World Wide Web that would encourage young people to explore news and information.

But others told the news directors and executives that they should focus on improving traditional newscasts. CBS News President Heyward said that too many newscasts are predictable, lazy and similar to one another.

“Imitation is comfy and cozy--it’s harder to second-guess than originality, I suppose,” Heyward said. “But in the audience, similarity breeds contempt.”

Erik Sorenson, executive vice president of Court TV, said being committed to covering issues and events that directly affect viewers would automatically result in larger audiences.

Another source of concern at the conference was the study about the coverage of race and minorities.

In the 2,000-person study, which was commissioned by the RTNDA and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, nearly 60% of blacks felt that news coverage stereotypes African Americans “a lot,” while more than 90% felt coverage stereotypes African American at least “a little.”

Nearly nine out of 10 respondents overall said that getting news from a reporter of their own ethnic group didn’t matter, but black viewers were twice as likely as white viewers to prefer an anchor or reporter of their own race, according to the study.

In addition, black viewers responding to the survey were twice as likely as Latino viewers, and more than twice as likely as white viewers, to say coverage of stories in which race is a key element is “almost never” fair and accurate. In contrast, whites were much more likely than black and Latino viewers to say coverage in such stories is “almost always” fair.

Roland S. Martin, news director of Dallas/Fort Worth radio station KKDA-AM, blamed news executives for not having enough initiative to take time to interact in minority communities served by their outlets.

“News organizations pay for tables at these functions for minority organizations, but the news directors never show up,” he said.

During a discussion on “The Ethics of Reporting on Race,” some questioned whether there was an overemphasis on covering crime in minority communities, particularly black areas.

Said Mike Cavendar, vice president of news at WTSP-TV in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla.: “That kind of coverage portrays blacks in a way that may be accurate but not always fair.”

But Willie Chriesman, assistant news director of WCVB-TV in Boston, said: “For most people, crime is not a reality they have to deal with every day.” He also said news executives should make more of an effort to find minority experts who can speak on medical, legal and other professional issues.