Electronic News: Information As Entertainment

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Chapter OutlineHistoryIndustryControversies

Newsreels Short films, covering news of the day. ▪ 5-6 items of current news, human interest and sports

From WW I until TV became popular in the 1950s,▪ Shown with the feature attractions in movie theaters.

Covered expected events, such as parades and beauty contests, and Residual news▪ Stories about long-lasting events such as floods,

because of cost and time to set up a film crew.

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Radio News (Newspapers felt threatened) In 1933, the powerful newspaper industry forced radio networks

into the Biltmore Agreement:▪ No morning newscasts before 9:30am or evening newscasts before 9:00pm.▪ No breaking news bulletins from the wire services.▪ Newscasts could not be sponsored.▪ Radio commentaries, which were discussions about the news, were

permitted.

▪ Why would the newspapers seek out an agreement like this?

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The Biltmore Agreement lasted less than one year. Newscasters, such as ▪ NBC’s Lowell Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn at CBS,

▪ Gossip columnist Walter Winchell became radio stars.

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Radio showed use for on-the-spot news and eyewitness reporting of breaking news, ▪ Including the 1937 explosion of the German dirigible The Hindenburg.

Radio helped newspapers ▪ By building the audience’s appetite for in-depth newspaper coverage of

breaking news heard over the radio.

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Radio audiences heard live reports of ▪ Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria,

▪ The 1939 invasion of Poland,

▪ The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

▪ What was radios advantage over print in these cases

In 1946, 63 percent of Americans cited radio as their primary source of news.

As Students what is your primary source of news?▪ Why is that your primary source?

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In 1948, radio demonstrated its advantage over the slower-moving print media.

Early editions of newspapers erroneously reported ▪ That Republican Thomas Dewey had defeated Democratic incumbent

Harry Truman in the presidential election,

But radio accurately flashed the news that Truman had won.

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All-News Format In 1960, San Francisco area station KFAX (“K-Facts) began

presenting news 24 hours a day. KFAX followed a “newspaper of the air” format ▪ Like reading an entire newspaper from front to back, including ▪ Sports, ▪ Cooking features, ▪ A “comics page,” consisting of comedy recordings,

The format was a financial failure.▪ Why would a format like this would fail?

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All-News Format In 1964, Chicago’s WNUS (“W-News”) ▪ Adopted an all-news format with top stories, sports and features in regular

rotation. ▪ WNUS was a success and today all-news is one of AM radio’s most

popular formats. Can anyone name a Southern, CA All News Radio Station

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Television News After WW II TV executives believed people would still rely on

radio news, ▪ TV would be used as an entertainment medium. ▪ Edward Murrow at CBS believed otherwise.

TV news had difficulty getting footage until deals were made with newsreel companies

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By the early 1950s the television networks were maintaining film crews in important locations ▪ Relying on stringers (Freelancers) in other places. ▪ Film, however, remained expensive to process.

TV still relied on newsreel-type footage▪ News in places where film crews were not at wouldn’t be covered.

By the mid 1970s, videotape, which required no processing, ▪ Freed television news from its reliance on film.

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Coverage of Assassinations and Civil Unrest Kennedy assassination marked the beginning of a turbulent

decade▪ The 1968 assassinations of ▪ Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King,

▪ A number of urban riots that were sparked by protests against racial discrimination and the Vietnam War.

▪ 1965 Watts Riots

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Coverage of Vietnam Eventually, in-depth on-the-scene TV reporting from the

Vietnamese battlefield ▪ Began to include bloody footage of young soldiers being maimed and killed.

This created a credibility gap between Govt attempts to manage the news and what the public believed to be true.▪ Are you more likely to believe what you hear or what you see

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Cable News Ted Turner adapted the format of all-news radio and launched

Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980. Several 24-hour-a-day news stories made CNN into a true

competitor for the networks:▪ The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.▪ The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989▪ Comprehensive coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991.▪ Any CNN Watchers in here? What draws you to it?

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Cable News In 1997, Fox News was launched by Rupert Murdoch and

Roger Ailes as a conservative alternative to what they felt was a liberal CNN.

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Online News (What are the top online news services) The World Wide Web in mid 1990’s ▪ Encouraged papers to establish online editions to take advantage of▪ Search functions, Archiving, Linking articles, reader feedback.

By 1995 there were some 150 papers online. ▪ Today there are thousands.

Personalized news services ▪ Used bots (short for robots) to filter out news of interest for a reader. ▪ This was like an electronic version of a clipping service.

▪ What options do people have if they only want certain types of news information?

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Online TV News By 2000 most network and local TV news organizations were

online with well-designed sites. Were leaders in video on demand Enabled users to call up video clips of news events, both current and

archived.

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What is News?

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News is Information about events that are currently happening, Have happened so recently we haven’t heard about them yet.

Obsession with being 1st with breaking news, & pressure to make news “new,” ▪ often results in the reporting of rumors and incomplete information.

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News Has to have impact on its intended audience. ▪ Important because it will have some consequence on them or is useful.

Has to grab the audience’s attention, ▪ Professional will find a peg, or angle, to make it important, timely

information interesting to the audience.

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Everyone in the newsroom has to have some computer skills because everything is computerized▪ Copy to graphics, ▪ Footage, logos, ▪ In-depth audio visual databases.▪ Editing

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More than 50 percent of Americans get their news from TV. There are so many news sources that people can select ▪ Only news that interests them or expresses views they believe in. ▪ Many critics believe that this narrow perspective increases intolerance

and bigotry.

What are some specialized news sources you can think of?

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Television news has been guilty of creating news stories whose sole purpose is to promote entertainment programs elsewhere on the schedule. ▪ CBS, for example, covered its program “Survivor” extensively on its morning

news show.

The public’s reaction to perceived political bias and entertainment values in the news have caused the public to lose confidence in the news media’s credibility.

What news sources do you think are most credible? Least Credible? ▪ Why?