• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

CBS Evening News Struggles

secondchoice said:
I am sure CBS "tested" these guys. Maybe the testing will show they will succeed in a quarter or two. If they were supposed to turn the ratings around in 6 weeks: who ever set that requirement and did the testing needs fired.

IMHO it takes years to build enough trust to switch news viewers at the local or national level.
Click to expand...
I’ll respectfully disagree.

Yes, it takes time to build an audience.

But anyone who has watched news or has been behind the scenes as the sausage is made could have looked at what they were planning and seen that it was boring.

They don’t need two guys—unless you’re gonna do something new and cool like have at least one of them out of the studio—every day—reporting.

A 6-minute piece like this”Why Johnny Can’t Read” is important. But on a day when there’s a lot of urgent news, it is not the lead. Maybe it’s at 6:50.

And longer pieces aren’t the answer, if it’s just to show they can do long stories. Just like 90 seconds isn’t long enough for many stories, 6 minutes is too long for many.
 
newsmark said:
But anyone who has watched news or has been behind the scenes as the sausage is made could have looked at what they were planning and seen that it was boring.
Click to expand...
Frankly, that was the point.

It wasn't a coincidence that the new show launched on inauguration day. The new format was aiming to step back from the day to day he-said/she-said in Washington. SNL recently lampooned coverage of President Trump by showing cable news hosts stumbling over themselves to read his latest statements on social media, and the approach CBS took was essentially the opposite of that. The appeal was supposed to be to people who want to be informed but don't want a panicked delivery every evening, like WNT with David Muir reliably delivers.

To you point that this ratings drop was foreseeable, I agree: This is a similar approach to what NewsNation used at launch, to extremely poor ratings. The PBS Newshour also doesn't have a meaningful audience.

So while those people probably do exist, they probably aren't watching any evening newscast.
 
The problem is people don’t want news, they want to be entertained. This is why Fox News is on top. They present entertainment masked as news. People don’t want to feel guilty when they watch how bad the world is. They want an escape and to be told how great things are. You won’t get that from straight news people.
 
Jean Luc said:
Who has been successful lately? This whole threat is about failure. To paraphrase Big A, success was 50 years ago.
Click to expand...
World News Tonight is quite successful. We get that everyone is bad, everyone is a failure…except that’s not remotely accurate. Context matters.

By the same token, World New Tonight is the obvious descendant of the Aldridge approach. It is anything but show and sedate in presentation.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom