Breaking the (Cable) box

FIFTEEN years ago nearly all the television shows that excited critics and won awards appeared on free broadcast channels. Pay-television (or, as many Americans call it, “cable”) was the domain of repeats, music videos and televangelists. Then HBO, a subscription outfit mostly known for boxing and films, decided to try its hand at hour-long dramas.

But pay-television is now under threat, especially in America. Prices have been driven so high at a time of economic malaise that many people simply cannot afford it. Disruptive, deep-pocketed firms like Amazon and Netflix lurk, whispering promises of internet-delivered films and television shows for little or no money. Whether the lure of such alternatives or poverty is what is causing people to cancel their subscriptions is not clear. But the proportion of Americans who pay for TV is falling.

Read more at The Economist

Don't touch that radio dial — Arbitron is listening

In August 2008, the Arbitron radio ratings service (began using) Portable People Meters, or PPMs, pager-sized devices that automatically registered everything the wearer heard.Since then, the new, theoretically more objective measurements have made broadcasters question some long-held ideas and have led to changes in what their audiences hear. PPM made obsolete many broadcasters' ancient rituals: Incessant repetition of the station call letters, so Arbitron listeners couldn't possibly forget where their dials were tuned. Or starting a contest at 7:25 a.m., so the station would get credit in the diary for both the 7:15 and the 7:30 quarter-hours. Or having promotions reach a crescendo toward the end of the survey week — which ran from Thursday to Wednesday — knowing that many diary keepers would procrastinate until then to fill out all their entries.

Some formats with the most fiercely loyal listeners — urban, country and Spanish-language — suffered in the switch from diaries to PPMs. The new figures also showed that most radio listening wasn't in weekday mornings (6-10 a.m.), as had been thought, but midday (10 a.m.-3 p.m.): There was more at-work listening than previously reported. And there wasn't much drop-off at other times, or on weekends.

Kevin Weatherly, program director at KROQ and senior vice president of programming for the CBS Radio chain, said he has implemented other PPM lessons: Eliminate clutter, cut down on DJ patter and be judicious with new music.

Read more at the LA Times

Local TV Newscasts Expanding

Coming soon to (St. Louis) television screens: more news at 4 in the morning, again at 10, and at 4 in the afternoon. KSDK, the local NBC affiliate, is adding newscasts to those time slots next month, giving it six and a half hours of local news each weekday, its highest count to date.

This is what the rebound in local television looks like. The more popular stations in markets like St. Louis are adding newscasts and in some cases employees — though not as many as were dismissed during the downturn. Local TV news is consistently identified in surveys as the top news source for most Americans.

Because weather is consistently identified as the most important part of local newscasts, KSDK recently hired a fifth full-time member of its weather team and is adding dashboard cameras to its trucks to transmit live video via the Internet during severe weather.

Read more at the New York Times