I worked in the news business so I know a thing or two about the internal happenings. Not a conspiracy, just laziness. I know quite a bit about the inner workings of Broadcast Television, hence the "TV" in my moniker.
First off, producers have almost zero time to put 24 minutes of content for a newscast. Certain segments are alloted time constraints. A few minutes here for weather, sports, top stories, the occasional "special report" or "weekly news segment" (like Ben Swann used to have while he was employed by MSM). I said 24 minutes because of an average of commercials that air during the shows. What the producers end up doing is scoping other headlines and pretty much repeating them. They dont have time to verify any of the facts as they come in. They are also allowed to listen to Police Scanners for topics of interest. Man pulled over for speeding is hardly newsworthy. Old lady calls ambulance for chest pains also not newsworthy. Emergency, All Units Respond: thats interesting, and they typically send out a Reporter / Cameraman when / if available.
Then you have Networks. Major News Outlets. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc. Networks dont own every TV station on the planet. They have Affiliates. They make deals with smaller TV stations to retransmit information and rights and permissions to retransmit Network material. For example, going back and forth between Local and National News.
Other sources of information depend on Contracts. Reuters and Associated Press sell access to News Stories they publish. Its easier for the producer to do this when trying to reference something thats going on nationally than to try to "fill" with fluff bits like Kittens for Adoption by local family at local grocery store. A lot is just Copy, Paste, and reword so they dont plagurize.
Once in a while, an Affiliate TV Station will pick up on a news story that goes nationwide. Plane crash at Denver Intl Airport would be covered initially by Local Stations. The local Reporters are segmented short blocks of time and are picked up by Network and other stations also affiliated with the parent Network. It allows the Networks to maintain coverage of ongoing events while network employees travel to the location, especially if the story is going to draw interest for several days. Floods, Plane Crash, things of that nature are types of stories that are covered.
The consequence is that many stories are not fact checked. Local reporters get info from cops or people they interview, but the stories are very soon forgotten. People that watch the news dont fact check either. Not fact checking is how news stories like Plane Crash with Captain Sum Ting Wong, Ho Lee Fuk, Wi Tu Low, and Bang Ding Ow hit the air.
Local TV and Networks are both getting slaughtered by the internet.
Many are trying to transition from broadcast to internet based one way communications. They still control all the content, accurate or inaccurate. Theyre just moving to where the people do the majority of their news observations. However, as the economy continues to spiral down the drain, they have less and less revenue to employ reporters and anchors. Weekend Anchors also typically produce their own weekend newscasts, and often even do weather reports. Thats where you see the Anchor also doing the news, but not standing in front of the Green Screen where maps of the expected weather are provided. That news is typically done by the Weather Person on a Friday, and if there is nothing major to report, they dont even bother to come in. Something like a hurricane, they call in available personnel to report as thats considered a major incident. Tornados and what not also qualify, but they are all intended to provide maximum viewership with minimal costs to the station.
When the economy took a digger, you may or may not have noticed a transition in commercial content. There are still people out there that dont have the ability to "fast forward" through commercials, so they are still relevant, just not to the same degree as they once were. Now what you see is more Promos for local content. Stations arent paid for self promotion. There is some compensation for promoting a current Network show during "Local Time Slots". Such as during Local News and you see a Promo for a Network show that airs during Primetime. Other types of content you see on Local Stations would be what we refer to as Syndicated. Syndicated is typically a show that the local station purchases rights to retransmit and are at least one season old. For example, watching Star Trek The Next Generation is a "Syndicated" show that the local station bought rights to from the original producers of that show. Thats also how you see a CBS show on an NBC Affiliate station. Judge Judy. Law and Order SVU. Oprah Winfrey (mostly ABC related and favored) and Olympics covered by NBC.
I keep getting sidetracked here, sorry about that. Commercials, if you observe them, will not be for local advertisers. They will mostly be for National products like drugs or major distributers. Burger King. Toyota. Bayer. Movies. Almost all of the revenue from local advertisers is gone. Toms Auto Body Shop. Bill Mayer Ford Dealership. Uncle Junkys Bar and Grill. Mom and Pop Carpet Cleaners. No one has any money to spend on advertising, even if it is effective at drawing in new customers.
Then you get into "Paid Programming". The half hour annoying Infomercials about how great their latest Vegetable Juicer is, or George Foreman Grill. Other types of Paid Programming are what we call a "Revenue Share". These are the types of two minute commercials that typically require you to "Order by Phone" and sell such garbage as Hair Removal Device. Stations that air Revenue Shares are NOT PAID to air these types of spots and ONLY make money IF someone calls to order the product. What else you may not know is that those commericals are frequently "Branded". The phone number you call routes to the TV station itself and the station handles the sale of the product or service. There is NO CALL CENTER for that phone number in a lot of cases. When there is, there is a parent company that handles shitloads of products all at once, but these are becoming more and more rare. If you have a product that ends up on one of those shows, you might go as long as two weeks without a single call to purchase that product. Since it doesnt cost those companies anything to air, they dont pull the product, they just keep running the ads.
The TV stations are desparate. You can tell by the types of commercial content they are airing. Its also a strong indicator of how well the economy is in your area. Are you seeing commercials for any Local Businesses or is it all National and Promos? The more National and Promos you see, the worse your economy is. The more Local you see, the better your economy is. Very few know how many of what to expect. During an hour long Primetime show, on average, three minutes and thirty eight seconds is the typical Local Station Break time. These "Station Breaks" are broken up into allowances for 3 to 4 thirty second spots, followed by a Station ID, a 4 second identifier. "Youre watching Channel X, where (local slogan)". The rest of the commercials are run by Networks or Syndicators. Syndicated shows allow for a lot more Local Time, which is why stations show as many old shows as they do. There is still interest in that type of programming, but instead of a Network show where you get 3:38, you can get around 8 minutes. Many things factor in. Length of the show, formatting, variable length, type of programming and when it airs. If anyone remembers old Satellite TV, you may have noticed that shows came down on satellites at very screwy times. Entertainment Tonight came down around 1pm, but usually airs between 6:30PM and 7:30PM. These shows that came down on satellite also had a lot of "Black Air". Just no content at all for decent periods of time. Those "Black Holes" are the spots where Local Commercials were expected to go.
Local Newscasts are also formatted but ALL of the commercial breaks are structured for about 8 minutes of local commercial content. But as MSM continues to die, so will the fact checking, quality, and relevance of the material they transmit. Its where a lot of the "sharing" of news stories comes from. However, when MSM expresses severe Bias, like the way they did by never mentioning Ron Paul, that is definitely an indication of an agenda. The type of Bias they do extends itself to not talk about the people that pay the bills. MSM isnt going to do "Investigative Reporting" against GMO when GMO pays a good chunk of their bills. Same thing as everyone knows that car dealerships screw people. Since they buy (well, used to buy) local commercials, very little reporting on car dealerships screwing customers ever occured. Certainly not proportional to the number of times that the dealerships did screw people out of money. Buying commercials damn near guarantees MSM immunity from any wrongdoings that they could perform. But for bigger stories like Ron Paul, the intent of not mentioning him at all during the last election was done with considerable Bias, and those types of orders come from the TOP. Same thing happened to Leno. Leno recently got canned, we suspect, for being "too heavy handed" on Obamas numerous failures. Leno did not want to go, they kicked him out. Now, how many other celebrity reporters are also getting the boot? From Piers Morgan (anti gun right asshole) to Judge Napolitano (the one we like). Even Dan Rather (CBS) was fired for comments that painted Bush in a negative light. No one is immune to the orders that come from the top. And bias does exist.
The producers in the market where I live were paid about $10 bucks an hour and required a 4 year degree. I've personally observed a producer getting fired for airing a Pro Ron Paul news story after only working at the station for about two weeks. I've seen a lot more than that, but point is, they dont hire anyone who is not pro status quo, or simply disposes of them if there are any signs of not falling for the rest of the propoganda they repeat. Cops are heroes, people (especially blacks and hispanics) are criminals, you should be afraid of guns and support anti gun bills. Nothing to see at the Federal Reserve Bank, now pay attention to Justin Beiber. The people at the top make sure that any thought violations are dealt with promptly. They'll tolerate some not supporting the Status Quo as long as those people are kept out of sight of the public and stand no chance of tarnishing the companies image. There is definitely bias, but it is a battle they are losing because they keep trying to repeat the same message that most people no longer believe to be true, as well as many other influencing factors, many of which are quite complex and only a few have been addressed in this wall of text.
All in all, I hope this provides everyone with a better picture of the inner workings of TV stations. Its only done with my perspective of what happens behind the scenes and in no way is able to show the entire complex nature of the business side of why stations do what they do.
