New York, Sept. 29 (US): For more than half a century, ABC, CBS, and NBC have broadcast the evening news every night on television. This fall, the competition extended to another medium.
The September launch of John Dickerson’s “CBS News Prime Time” means all three news divisions have unique streaming newscasts at night, a nod to the future and an effort to reach young people who don’t watch TV at dinnertime, the AP reports.
Dickerson’s Newscast first appeared about a year after NBC’s “Top Story” with Tom Lamas. Live Prime began on ABC with Linsey Davis in February 2020. Each broadcast is at least an hour long starting at 7 p.m. ET and repeats later in the evening. Everything can be seen for free.
“The revolution won’t be televised,” Davis said sarcastically. “It will be streamed.”
She and her opponents have big ambitions.
“We want to be the best news show, period,” Lamas said. “I don’t want to be just the best show in the livestream.”
Given their previous similarities, they both have interesting differences in approach, more so than the evening news programs broadcast by Lester Holt, David Muir and Nora O’Donnell.
Network news departments aren’t looking to replace broadcast television, which typically reaches about 20 million people combined each night, more during cold weather months.
Live broadcasts almost certainly don’t come close to those numbers, although anyone who knows for sure how many people are watching, they won’t tell. No single external source measures audience size, as Nielsen Television does. All networks say shows are going on, but they won’t share their own stats with competitors or the public – often a sign that levels are low.
Dickerson brings the most streaming experience to his role, having reported for “60 Minutes,” directed “Face the Nation” and hosted CBS This Morning.
Upon its launch, its live broadcast was quickly distinguished as the most interview-intensive of the three. It will tell CBS News reporters who have done TV stories to clear their books of additional details, and find experts for conversations about the day’s main stories.
“I’m interested to know who the person is who may not even be known, but who knows what’s going on,” Dickerson said. “It’s great being able to ask the experts yourself, whether the experts are inside CBS or not.”
Anthony Galloway, vice president of CBS News Streaming, said investigating experts to tell people more about stories they might have seen flash in the headlines taps into Dickerson’s strength as a journalist.
ABC’s most popular live broadcaster, Live Prime, takes advantage of what broadcast television has to offer right now: time. Davis’ show is best suited to extend reporting beyond what can be seen on “World News Tonight” on television.
After Muir travels to Ukraine, the streaming show gives him 10 minutes to report what happened in a village recently liberated from the Russians. This kind of length is a luxury rarely offered on evening television news shows that have roughly 22 minutes of news between commercials.
The OAR jam band’s profile stretched like a guitar solo, and reporter Phil Lipof even took to stage to play with the band.
“Live Prime” airs for an hour and a half, although the final half hour is pretty much a brief summary of what’s been shown before. CBS and NBC shows are one hour long.
Senny Tenabisu, CEO of ABC News Live, said internal research shows that Live Prime viewers value longer-form stories, more than they rely on speaking chiefs.
Getting “Live Prime” started before its competitors allowed more research time, said Rina Mehta, ABC’s vice president of broadcast and digital content. She said it’s not ABC’s goal to replicate the linear television model, and the program has the ability to broadcast live throughout the evening. However, the format of these programs does not come as a shock to TV viewers.
For NBC, Llamas packs its fast-paced show with as much information as possible.
“I believe in giving too many stories,” he said. “I think people are overwhelmed right now with information, but they are overwhelmed by the same kind of information, the same stories. I want to find things that aren’t really there.”
Llamas, a Cuban American, is keen to report on Latin American issues on every show. He travels frequently to news sites – Ovaldi, Texas and Chicago in mass shootings, from Ukraine to Scotland after the Queen’s death, and twice to Wisconsin. He talks about binge-worthy entertainment. Producers are integrating social media and local NBC stations for news, although there is an occasional reliance on eye candy – things like car chases being played because the video is interesting.
There is no evidence that live broadcasts reduce the viewership of the evening television news programmes. The networks show no signs of giving up, either: NBC, for example, quietly and successfully aired Holt’s “Night News” on YouTube, as part of a strategy to find audiences wherever possible.
News divisions say they didn’t build the live broadcast to replace the TV product. “I feel like it’s a nice sequel to ‘News of the World,'” Davis said.
Besides, television and broadcast audiences tend not to overlap much.
Although there are no exact numbers for “Top Story,” NBC says the streaming service in general gets an average of 100 million views each month. The pandemic brought in more viewers and people continued to cut cable TV wires.
Most of the new TVs being manufactured provide people with easy access to the streaming product, said Janelle Rodriguez, senior vice president at NBC News.
“There’s really no point in turning back the clock here,” she said.