Being a student commuter in the U of M, I get very few opportunities to watch television, much less the news. Thusly, this project forced me to watch my first news broadcast in a few months. However, when I sat down to subjectively breakdown the newscast, I became rather shocked at some of the observations I germinated while watching the Tuesday 11/9 5 pm broadcast on WCCO (CBS affiliate).
By far and large majority, the weather broadcast took up the most time in the broadcast (outside of commercials). The broadcast had two different time slots dedicated to a weather update or display (one at 5:08- 5:10 and another at 5:19-5:23). In fact, the second weather broadcast took up the entirety of the act break between two sets of commercials!
One thing that did surprise me was that the gentleman that was the meteorologist was not a young, attractive person. Rather, the meteorologist was an older man perhaps in his mid to late 40s with greying, slicked back hair. My instinct would tell me that they would hire a younger broadcaster to appeal to the sex instinct in the viewership. If WCCO doesn't do this, then perhaps we can determine that the audience is not one trying to find sexual desire but rather someone with a reliable air about them (a characteristic I derived out of the news caster).
Our total time that commercials took up in the 5 pm broadcast was 9 min, but it is not the time that is the most interesting observation I found with them. Firstly, commercials would repeat in different parts in the broadcast. For example, Warren Stellan repeated in the first and second commercial breaks at generally the same point in those breaks (near the start of the commercial break). Most of the local ads were fast and aren't there to create associative imagery, instead the quick nature seems to indicate wanting for a viewer to retain details about local events (event advertisement being the focal point of local ads [Warner Stellan, Green Mill, and Clear Choice Dental). Also, surprisingly, WCCO advertised for their own future broadcasts in the commercial breaks. Why would the news need to advertise? Apparently, viewership is not a constant and needs people to tune in based on future, interesting stories.
On a side note based off these advertisements, towards the end of the broadcast WCCO broadcasted a story about that night's episode of the CBS television show "The Good Wife". Perhaps, it was noteworthy as a news story due to Michael J Fox's guest starring in it. However, one cannot escape the fact that WCCO is a CBS affiliate and it seemed like they made a story out of Fox's guest starring to obtain free advertising for CBS programing.
Most of the news stories seemed about right: short enough to get the point out so the broadcast could make way for advertising and weather. There were some other interesting choices the WCCO broadcast made. Firstly, there was a story about George W. Bush's new book hitting store shelves. The broadcast choose to focus on the part in the book where Bush talks about his use of waterboarding in his administration. I argue that talking about Bush's torture choices is a way to subliminally remind viewers of torturous feelings about the Bush administration. Why could the story not simply speak about the book's release or an overview of the book's content? A question here is one that perhaps cannot be answered, but proposing it is important. Later on, WCCO revisited the Bush book again, but this time they added viewer comments encouraged to be made online after the last Bush story. The comments chosen were about looking forward to reading the book, both those a fan of Bush and those who were not.
Another interesting observation is how they presented the Target coupon story. Earlier in the broadcast, they teased the story by saying that Target had made corrections to the faulty coupon. Then the reporter added, "we will tell you if this is true." A pretty obvious use of teasing and leaving uncertainty in the viewer to engage them to continue viewing. What struck me is the fact that they used a consumer visiting the Target stores to determine that the coupon problem had been fixed. There was no other way they stated the fix was finished. The investigative form was confirmed by simply an outside informant. To me, this seems like a weak confirmation.
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