Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exagerated

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear.
A few week’s ago we aired a story about car sales in Abilene. A local dealership was saying that sales figures this year were actually better than they had been last year, despite doom and gloom assessments of the economy. It brought to mind a book I recently read called, Mind Set! It’s written by John Naisbitt, the same guy who wrote the book, Megatrends. In Mind Set, Naisbitt discusses the new economic model and how the media presents a distorted picture of things because it doesn’t know how to report it. He specifically cited the sales of automobiles. We have seen a lot of stories about the dire straits the American auto industry is going through, but when you consider automobiles as a specific sector of the world economy, the news isn’t nearly as gloomy. To me, it points even more to the importance of localizing every news story you do because, in not doing so, we often paint a distorted picture of what’s really going on. It’s no wonder people don’t trust the media.
There was a story recently in the trade publication Media Week. A new study finds that when times are tough, people turn more often to local TV for news. Local TV? Wait a minute, isn’t the media suppose to be taking a real beating right now? The study, by Frank N. Magid Associates for Hearst-Argyle Television, found that 99 percent of respondents said they are turning to local TV news at least as much as or more frequently than in the past due to the troubled economy.
The study was conducted over two weeks in February in 24 markets served by Hearst-Argyle. including Boston, Baltimore, Orlando, Cincinnati, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.
Sixteen percent of the 2,500 respondents said they are following local TV news "more." The only medium surpassing local TV was the Internet, cited by 17 percent of respondents. Newspapers, radio and print magazines trailed at 10 percent, 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively, but it was clear where people are turning these days to get their news.
The news was especially good for television advertising. Commercials airing on local TV news engage consumers more than other traditional media. When asked which types of ads respondents pay more attention to, 57 percent cited local TV versus 43 percent for magazines; 64 percent versus 36 percent for newspapers, 72 percent versus 28 percent for radio, 81 percent versus 19 percent for yellow pages, and 55 percent versus 45 percent for direct mail. They also found local TV ads more engaging than all forms of online ads, on average 85 percent for local TV versus 15 percent for online ads.
Local news also got the high scores for trustworthiness and recall and, as the most important source of community information, it rivaled newspapers..
Although the audience to early morning news is growing, most respondents (62 percent) said that late news is when they typically watch local news.
It is a great story and one that bears telling, especially these days.