STEPHEN HESS, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION:
After measuring this for five weeks, I find that it's the lowest five weeks in the history of the evening news. 1992 was the high-water mark; 1996 was the low water mark. Expected given the nature of this campaign, very close, that we were going to be somewhere between, but closer to 1992. Instead, we're still running, after five weeks, below 1996.
Strange part about it, though, is while the evening news programs are going down, if you were watching in September the morning news program --"The Today Show, "Good Morning America" and "The Early Show," you would have had 30 percent more presidential election campaign news than in the evening shows.
SHAW:
Why is that, given the fact that evening newscasts had a larger audience than the morning?
HESS:
I think in the sense you're responsible for that, at least in part -- cable, Internet -- the idea that people have probably heard the hard news by the time 7:00 at night comes along. So that the evening news shows are becoming something more of a mini news magazine, and the morning news show, 7:00 a.m. in the morning, you're getting the first crack at the news, and so there is this interesting shift from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. for hard news.
SHAW:
Does the age of the audience have anything to do with it?
HESS:
Well, in a strange way, I think it does. You get a larger audience at night, but it's an older audience, so that more of the pieces are about health and so forth. In the morning, you get a lot of people getting up and going to work. In fact, I find, when I interview the reporters, that many of them love to do that morning show, because now they're talking to their news source, the important people that they interview -- cabinet members, the White House -- they're getting up. At 7:00 in the morning, 7:00 at night, they're still in the office.
SHAW:
More importantly, is the coverage turning on the horse race, substance, coverage of issues? HESS: Again, it's the heaviest that I've seen on horse race. Horse race is good stories, I'm not knocking that; they're fun. But you want a balance between substance and horse race, and you're running way up on horse race, partly of course because it is a horse race; it's a close election. But in that case, there is some difference between the networks. For example, ABC has more of a balance than the others, but also less minutes than the others. NBC has more minutes, but less balance. So you pay your money, you take the choice.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SHAW:
We'll be sure to check in with Steve Hess again, as we enter the home stretch, and you can follow his research this and every Monday in his column in "USA Today. [see Weekly Reports on Main Page]"
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