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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…
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Tactics or strategy in running orders?
I‘ve lavished praise on CBS News‘ Public Eye site before. A recent post raises the influence of demographics on the content of the Evening News, and the dilemmas that poses – always, but always, in second-guessing story selection. My personal view is that it’s a mistake to break newscasts down story by story. You’re much…
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Disease mongering
BRIAN WILLIAMS If you watch this newscast with any frequency, then you’ve seen it – this ad … for a medication for something called restless leg syndrome. A lot of us had frankly never heard of the condition but we figured people must suffer terribly from it for there to be a medication to treat…
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Informed democracies, national conversations and YOU
Informed democracy meet your new friend the national conversation. NBC News anchor Brian Williams has this to say in Time, à propos ‘YOU’ – the person of the year: The problem is that there’s a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world… Does it…