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the plugola problem
Benson and Alden are members of New York University's News Study Group, directed by Edwin Diamond. NSG member Michael Wasserman contributed to the research.
Promos have become as much a part of TV news as friendly anchor teams, weather reports, and, well, actual commercials by paying advertisers. From Katie and Bryant right on through the 11 p.m. news, anchors flog upcoming segments of their own programs, offer breathless previews of the evening magazine shows, and pass off unadulterated hype, disguised as "news features," about coming entertainment offerings.
It's happening all over, but perhaps nowhere more flagrantly than in the nation's number-one media market, New York City. And there, a stop-watch survey shows, Eyewitness News on WABC Channel 7, the ABC-owned-and-operated station, is the chart topper of tease.
Take WABC's 5 to 6 p.m. newscast of Tuesday, October 11 . . . please! In a single forty-seven-minute broadcast (one hour minus some thirteen minutes of paid commercials) there were eleven minutes and thirty seconds of plugola. There were eight bumpers (visual breaks between news segments and the real ads), plugging stories coming up later in the newscast, plus five plugs for the 6 p.m. news and two mentions of the 11 p.m. late news. There were promos for Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, ABC's complete prime-time lineup, Nightline, and the late movie. There were also reminders to tune in to Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, Rolanda, and The Oprah Winfrey Show the next day.
It was in the promos-disguised-as-news category that week, though, that WABC took the cake.
* Monday: a two-minute-thirty-five-second segment about the retirement of Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor's number, which would take place during half-time on ABC's Monday Night Football.
* Tuesday: a feature, running two minutes and thirty seconds, puffing the season premiere of NYPD Blue, which would be shown later that night on ABC. That particular piece was also promoed three times in bumpers.
* Wednesday: an interview, running two minutes and twenty seconds, with Martin Mull, a star of ABC's Roseanne, which ran at 9 p.m. that night.
* Thursday: a one-minute-and-forty-second peek at Regis and Kathie Lee's new project, a book on entertaining.
* Friday: some homeboy cheering -- WABC's 6 p.m. anchor, Bill Beutel, was featured in the "Eyewitness Newsreel" on the occasion of his appearance as keynote speaker at Pace University's Journalism Day.
While WABC might lead the pack, plugola is hardly an opportunity that WCBS and WNBC, other network-owned-and-operated stations in New York, have missed. In the course of the survey, WNBC's Live at Five worked in an in-studio interview with one of the stars of NBC's hot drama, ER. Over at CBS, David Letterman is mentioned so often a viewer could be forgiven for thinking he's a member of the news team.
A second week of monitoring produced similar results: a plugola-plus-paid-ad average of just over 25 percent of the newscasts at each of the three network-owned stations. WNBC's hour-long Live at Five, for example, offered just over eleven minutes of commercials and four minutes of tease. This was almost double the amount of time the station allotted to national and international news, combined. WCBS's News at 5 registered an average of twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds of commercials and six of tease.
WABC remained champ; twenty-two minutes, just over a third of the show, were devoted to commercials -- fourteen minutes of traditional ads and eight of plugola.
WABC's Eyewitness News, incidentally, is not only the most watched newscast in the area, but WABC is the most watched station in New York. It pays, it seems, to advertise.
