Printable View
I think (not 100 percent sure but close) I saw something in the last few days where the highest rated TV program last Monday was ESPN's Monday Night Football, even beating out all the fall premiere shows. It goes to show that people do care about sports, even though some TV news operations would like you to think otherwise but cutting out sports in their newscasts.
I'm not sure you can draw the line between people watching Monday Night Football and people wanting sports within a newscast.
That's a little like saying that American Idol is popular so obviously everyone loves karaoke.
Anyone who's had to sit through a research presentation or a focus group can tell you that TV viewers who want sports information get it from SportsCenter, not the local news.
But you can't get local sports on SportsCenter.
True enough -
So if your point is that people care about "local sports" meaning high school (since SportsCenter does have scores of college and professional teams), then the ratings for Monday Night Football don't prove your point, since high school teams aren't on Monday Night Football.
Rather than nitpick that, is there any evidence that any station that has cut back or eliminated sports from its newscasts has suffered any ratings decline as a result? If so, I'm not aware of it.
Drop weather and you'd hear about it. For that matter, drop traffic reports (ignoring the fact they are completely useless on television) and you'd hear about it. Drop sports and does the phone ring at all?
I don't knows what the numbers are but in Los Angeles both channel 5 and 9 do a pretty comprehensive sports wrap every evening at 10:30 or 10:45.