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TV News 101 – it’s the lead-ins, stupid!
The sad secret of broadcast news ratings is what’s on before you. Many’s the night we’d pat ourselves on the back for a ratings win over our rivals when the battle had been won by John Thaw and his dark red Jag in Inspector Morse. In the U.S. two network news shows have just changed…
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A journalist’s assessment of the Libby trial
Rick Kaplan is about to walk in the door as EP at CBS News. Maybe the first thing he should do is beg Eric Engberg to come out of retirement. Engberg is an old CBS Washington hand, who is not best loved by people whose condemnations I tend to regard as commendations. In a more…
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Learning the hard way – CBS Pres on Couric
Here is the ever-to-be-repeated lesson: “I think in some ways we owed it to the industry to try new things,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News. “But we found at 6:30 with only 22 minutes of programming time, people basically want you to tell them what happened in the world that day . .…
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TV News 101 – it’s the erosion, stupid
The tectonic plates are shifting. The NBC Nightly News, which has held the number one slot in U.S. network news for a decade, is being overhauled. A little history. Once CBS News had the lead with Walter Cronkite. Then Dan Rather took the CBS chair and kept the lead, but Rather couldn’t keep Cronkite’s audience…