Who Has The Most TV News Minute By Minute: Channel 10, 12 or 6?
Saturday, January 07, 2012
This story comes directly from a reader who wanted to know which Providence TV station has the most news during a half-hour broadcast.
It is a good question.
We set out to analyze a recent broadcast of Channel’s 10, 12, and 6 at 6pm. Specifically we looked at the broadcast for Monday, January 2nd. Part of the reason for selecting that day was to see how each station handles a so-called slow news day following the January 1st holiday which fell on a Sunday but was celebrated or recognized on the Monday for most people.
It’s Really Not 30-Minutes of News
So to start off---as we see which station pound for pound has the most news---know this. No station has 30-minutes of news even though the slot is slated from 6:00pm to 6:30pm. Once you factor in commercials, weather, sports, chit-chat, “good evening” & “good night, thanks for watching” you have more like 17 or 18 minutes of what could be called news. Now, each person’s definition of “news” is different for sure. And weather in these parts has always dictated a pretty good chunk of time during a news cast. Weather, especially, when it is bad, tests really well among viewers and that is why stations often lead with it and really “crank up” the weather hype when bad weather hits.
Anyway, let’s take a look:
Channel 10:
The market leader at 6pm lead with a story about a Taunton fatal crash with a live shot. In fairness, Channel 10's news started about 8-minutes and 58 seconds past 6pm because of NBC hockey game. So they had the challenge of cramming as much news as they could into less than 30 minutes total before NBC News with Brian Williams started. The most news of any broadcast is typically in something called the “A” block. That is the first segment of the news cast –from the show open/news jingles etc to the first commercial. Channel 10 had 7 stories in their A block including live reporters out on stories and stories read by the anchors. The A block was about 6-minutes and 40 seconds long. Weather time during the newscast was just about two minutes but again on this night the Producer had to get a lot in with a much shorter period of available time. They managed to cover all the days news just like 12 & 6 but in less time.
Channel 12:
Channel 12 lead with a tragic story about a little baby that had fallen in a bucket of bleach and had died from the injuries. They had a live reporter outside RI Hospital. Eyewitness News had a total of 6 stories in their A block including a significant weather tease before the commercial break. The A block of news stories was about 9-minutes and 20-seconds long long before the first commercial hit. The total time given to weather on this night was 3-minutes and 30 seconds which is for sure on the heavier side for weather on this night when nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Channel 6:
The 3rd rated station started it's 6pm news cast around 6:01:05. They lead the broadcast with a Vote 2012 story and the Iowa Caucus. Not exactly local news--but they did their best to try and localize it and make it relevant. Channel 6 had a total of 8 stories in their A block which lasted about 8-minutes before the first commercial break. Weather enjoyed about 3-minutes and 30 seconds worth of air time --just about the same as Channel 12. Channel 6, on this night, had the biggest number of news stories in their first segment - but again Channel 10 was cheated out of a boat load of time and Channel 12 had more than 9 minutes of news before a commercial.
Who Got Scooped?
There didn't appear to be any one story or scoop that one station had compared to the others. They all had the story related to the baby who did not survive the bucket accident and a story about a bottle rocket bomb incident being investigated. In the A block---both Channel 10 & 6 had a preview story of the Legislature coming back to work.
If you notice, each station had a different lead story which shows each Producer at the different stations had a different idea about what was the "big" story of the day. Channel 10 used some of it's time to promote the fact they are carrying the Super Bowl game this year. A little cross promotion is always smart and if 6 or 12 had the game this year they would be doing the exact same thing.
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