If you had any doubt that network evening newscasts are dinosaurs - and totally out of touch with the needs of their viewers - all you had to do was to watch all three of them tonight.  It also made it perfectly clear why CBS and Couric are in last place.

On a day when oil flirted with $120 a barrel, and there were stories of people forgoing food to put enough gas in their car's tank to get to work and back, CBS inexplicably launched into ten minutes off the top of their newscast on tomorrow's presidential primary.  Why?  So they could show Katie Couric's one-on-one interviews with both candidates - as if it were some kind of coup America was dying to see.

Didn't CBS news execs notice that Obama and Hillary have been on every channel and every show possible?  Oh, and when CBS did get to the continuing rise in gas prices - it was brushed off in two sentences.

Meanwhile, ABC was leading with the the story of the horrible cyclone in Myanmar that may have killed 10,000 people.  This is a very tragic story - but based on my focus group encounters with TV news viewers over the past few months - Americans will feel for the victims - but still will be focusing on their own wallets and pocketbooks.

Besides, I believe that the only reason ABC led with the Myanmar story is because they had "exclusive" video - which is the way they sold the intro to the story.  So their purpose was competitive - not because of the loss of so many lives.  After 4-5 minutes of the Myanmar story ABC moved on to the presidential primary.  I believe NBC was the only one to get it right on this night.  They led with excellent coverage of the rising price for oil, and high gas prices - and how it affects the average American and small businesses.  They used special graphics to bring the story home.  Then, after the break, they came back with an interesting story on how airlines are flying their planes slower to save fuel.

In this era of instant gratification, the network evening newscasts are dinosaurs on the brink of extinction.  If they keep leading with stories like this evening, they will hasten their demise.

Jim Willi

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.