The Audience for National TV News Programs

Abstract

Despite the vast amounts of data collected by TV ratings services, surprisingly little information about the composition of the audience for the evening newscasts of Huntley-Brinkley, Reynolds-Smith, or Walter Cronkite has come to light. The questions addressed in this article are rather mundane in nature, since there are more important questions about the impact of such programs in informing the public, increasing public concern about social issues, altering audience perceptions, and changing audience attitudes.' Nevertheless, consideration of these questions does bear on the likely effects of news programs and leads us to challenge certain other findings regarding the audience for television news. The data reported here come from television viewing diaries collected by the W. R. Simmons organization from a national probability sample of persons 18 years and older. The diaries were kept by 6,834 viewers for various two-week periods between October i2 and November 1i, 1969. These data offer unique advantages over alternative sources. First of all, the sample has a national probability base, but is over three times as large as those few previous studies of news viewing that were nationwide in scope. Second, considerable experience and care in collecting valid data on highly specific aspects of mass media use are built into the Simmons data gathering operation. Third, Simmons collects data on three media simultaneously; few organizations engaged in media research collect detailed data on more than one medium at a time. Finally, the data are collected by a commercial organization, a factor minimizing the likelihood that respondents would overreport their news behavior because it might be expected of them (as is to be feared when the focus of the survey is news and the respondent knows it). * The data reported here were analyzed for the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health. Further details will be contained in the final report of this committee. The author wishes to acknowledge the skillful guidance of Harold Israel of the Simmons organization in analysis of these data. tJohn P. Robinson is a Study Director at the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan.