Mark_Giardina said:
The purpose of the early morning TV newscasts was originally designed to compete with local radio stations.
Thinking back to when I was a kid... it was great when TV started doing early morning news, especially in the wintertime. No longer did we have to stay glued to the radio, waiting 20 minutes between updates to see if the "one hour delay" would become upgraded to 2 hours or a closing. TV had (and still has) the closings on the screen all the time. Even if there are literally 100 closings or delays on a given morning, it's rarely more than a 5-minute wait for the crawls and tickers to cycle through the entire list. As an adult, I completely understand that radio stations have other things to do besides school closings. But as a kid, anytime it was snowing, school closings were all I cared about as soon as I got up. Morning TV news provides that instant gratification.
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As for the other survey points... the stations in Syracuse seem to do a decent job with local stories. The market went through a "breaking news obsession" a few years ago, fueled mostly by WSTM, which became notorious for calling stories "breaking" even if they happened several hours earlier or if they were out-of-town stories. The other stations in town jumped on the bandwagon to some extent -- mostly to avoid looking like they were out of the loop, if nothing else. But eventually, the fad ran its course, the boy who cried wolf stopped crying wolf, and the market calmed down. The same will probably happen in Rochester, sooner or later.
It's a no-brainer that TV stations don't devote as many resources to investigative journalism as they used to. We've all seen the stories, owners of all sizes, even the networks, have been hacking away at staffing levels. In all but the largest markets, the "investigative unit" (if a station even has one) usually consists of just one reporter. And in many cases, that reporter is expected to turn a story just about every single day. For most local TV investigative reporters, the era of getting several days to work on just one story are long gone. And the way newspapers have been going lately, it might not be much longer before they're in the same boat. At least newspapers have the luxury of not needing to go out and interview people on-camera... they can get all their interviews by phone or even e-mail if they have to. Newspaper reporters are the only reporters who can do their job without ever leaving their desks.
Concerning early-early news (5-6am) I think it's a good idea. In larger cities, you do have people getting up that early to prepare for a long commute into work. In smaller cities, you have rural viewers on farms who are up that early (or earlier) tending to their farmwork. There are always people up and about at 5am. Even if the audience isn't necessarily huge, you're still serving the public. WKTV in Utica is actually on the air at 4:30am, with a weather forecast that loops every 3-4 minutes until the actual newscast begins at 5:00. It's probably not getting enough people to begin the entire newscast that early, but there's enough of an audience that they've been doing it for quite some time now. If they weren't getting any audience, they probably wouldn't bother paying people to come in that much earlier to put it on the air.
On the other hand, I have to agree with rochnewsman about questioning the need for local news at 7pm. Then again, I'm not seeing the ratings books. If WHEC is pulling decent numbers with it, all the power to them.
Repeating stories from the previous day: again, agree with rochnewsman. Morning shows often do repeat stories from the night before, but I think that's acceptable. Most times, someone who's up at 5 or 6am was probably sleeping at 11, so anything that was new at 11, is probably new to morning viewers. Noon shows usually don't (or shouldn't) repeat too much from the previous night, as many noon viewers probably already saw the morning show and/or the newspaper with last night's news.
