The World Outside: Local TV News Treatment of Imported News

Abstract

This study sought to determine whether stations located in larger or smaller markets gave different treatment to news and to resolve whether disparities noted among small and large television market news programs extended to their treatment of news imported from outside the market. McManus's economic model of inexpensive, passive discovery held true over the journalistic model of active surveillance in smaller markets, where stations not only devoted less time to news than those in larger markets, but a greater proportion of their news content was imported, thus passively discovered. The larger the market size, the more active the discovery. Some evidence that imported news supplants strictly local news in smaller television markets was found. Furthermore, although major-, large-, and medium-market stations devoted higher proportions of their news hole to sensational and human interest news, stations in the smallest markets imported a greater proportion of sensational/human interest news than they originated locally.