In the month leading up to last year’s presidential election, local television stations in big cities devoted eight times as much air time to car crashes and other accidents than to campaigns for the House of Representatives, state senate, city hall and other local offices, according to a new study to be released tomorrow.
…”I think most stations fear that covering politics is ratings poison,” said Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School and one of the lead authors of the study. “Interestingly, they don’t seem to fear that running a torrent of political ads hurts them with their audience.”
Mr. Kaplan, who hosts a weekly program on “Air America,” a liberal talk radio network, and his colleagues found that in the 11 markets studied, the hours of advertising by House candidates eclipsed actual coverage of those races by a ratio of 5 to 1.
Why I Don’t Watch Local TV News
- Date: February 14, 2005
- Author: Bob Griendling