Outside Voices: Ed Bark Says Network News Should Serve The Audience It Already Has
(Ed Bark)
Whatever their dreams of audience expansion, the "CBS Evening News"
and its principal competitors keep running into two seemingly entrenched facts of life.
Three of the country's 10 largest TV markets, No. 3 Chicago, No. 6 Dallas-Fort Worth and No. 10 Houston, are in central time zones. For most people in the workaday world, that makes it nearly impossible to conquer rush hour traffic and make it home in time to watch Katie, Brian or Charles at 5:30 p.m.
So forget about getting the great majority of advertiser-craved 25-to-54-year-olds in central time cities. These millions of potential viewers are otherwise occupied at the appointed hour. And 6:30 p.m. Eastern time also can be a tough nut to crack.
This leads to the other hard truth. Whatever the time zone, who's actually home to watch the network newscasts? A lot of retirees are not only available, but receptive to sitting down for network news at the appointed hour. It's what they've been doing for much of their lives, either as children or as working-class parents in times when factory whistles blew at mid-afternoon. They didn't carry briefcases, they carried lunch pails home from work. And more often than not, their spouses were stay-at-home housewives.
Millions of autumnal baby-boomers now are joining this aging audience pool. My advice to all of the dinner-hour newscasts, but especially to the new Couric-anchored "Evening News," is to abandon any grand notions of "youthifying" your audience. Embrace what you have and give them an adult-strength dose of solid news without any artificial flavorings. We need it now more than ever.
