1. We re live, local and at a loss for viewers.

The audience for local news has steadily declined in recent years. When the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ),a research group, analyzed three commercial evening newscasts in 2008, it found that the programs had lost 300,000 compared to the year before. Over the last two decades, the same three newscasts lost roughly one million viewers a year, PEJ reported in its 2008 State of the News Media report.

The result: local stations are getting more aggressive in trying to hook viewers. Although local television remained the nation's most popular source for news in 2008, the segment also saw the biggest drop. Just 52 percent of Americans are now regular viewers, according to PEJ, down from 64 percent a decade earlier.

2. Crime wave? No, just sweeps month.

Broadcasters measure their audience four times a year-in February, May, July, and November, during four-week ratings periods known as "sweeps." Twenty-four markets get constant monitoring via Nielsen's "People
Meters"-devices installed in sample homes. This data, coupled with other measures , is used to help set ad rates and to stake claims in marketing: "Most watched!" "No. 1!"

That means stations have a lot riding on sweeps periods, which is why they roll out the big guns: flashy projects, like investigative reports and often stories that tread closest to the line of taste and propriety.

3. And now a check of the forecast with our weatherman, Chicken Little.

It s no secret that weather coverage is a huge focus for local news. But how reliable or scientific are the updates? According to Dennis Feltgen of the National Weather Service, your local weatherman may or may not be trained in meteorology, and the station probably doesn t rely exclusively on its own forecasts. Many tap the NWS or a private provider such as AccuWeather or Weather Central for a baseline forecast, then augment it with their own, much-hyped Doppler radar system (which tracks precipitation and wind velocity).

4. Our consultants in Iowa are calling the shots.

Ever wonder why TV news is so similar from city to city? The reason, many in TV say, is a handful of powerful industry consultants who sell station owners on their tried-and-true techniques, right down to stories that get repeated across markets.

Consultants argue they re not the homogenizing behemoth their critics claim them to be. Bill Hague is senior vice president at Frank N. Magid Associates in Marion, Iowa, the largest news-consulting firm. He says his company is an advocate for viewers: "Operators of TV stations must be vigilant in their analysis of their local marketplace." Conceptual ideas, however, do tend to spread. "Right now, social media (Facebook and Twitter) are the shiny objects that newsrooms are spending time and effort to understand," says Hague. "Because television is still the most effective mass media, is that where stations should be spending their spare time?" Hague's takeaway: Time spent understanding the mobile platform as a content and revenue-generating platform is time well spent.

5. Sources? We don t need no stinkin sources.

Journalism is all about gathering, interpreting, and presenting information, and journalists have evolved a set of principles to help consumers understand it. But TV news doesn t always play by the same rules.
Take VNRs. Video news releases are the TV version of PR, sent in from corporations or other sources but packaged to look like journalism.

VNRs can be useful, as they provide "B-roll," or secondary footage. But even when VNR footage does get credited, it's often vague and overused catchall footage.

6. This story goes out to all the ladies in the house.

You may have noticed lately a change in the sports segment of your local newscast. Perhaps it s shorter or seems to focus more and more on the human-interest angle rather than providing scores and highlights. Why? ESPN, for one thing. But it s also part of an attempt to cater to advertisers most coveted viewers women ages 25 to 54.

Less sports isn t the only way women are tweaking TV news. The quest for female viewers is changing coverage across the board and is a big reason for the increase in health stories. Women not only tend to control a family s spending, they re the family doctor, too, and research shows they re interested in information about health and well-being.

7. And now a word from our all-powerful sponsor.

Every news outlet that relies on ad dollars to survive must draw the line at how much influence it will allow advertisers to have on its content. TV news works the same way; its line is just a bit more flexible. The unwritten rule: If you re doing a nice story on an industry, pick an advertiser to focus on. It certainly doesn't help that local television is a "deteriorating" market for advertisers, according to PEJ. Final revenue numbers were 7 percent lower in 2008 than the year before, and profit margins had nearly been cut in half, says PEJ's report.

8. It s your fault we stink.

You might say you want your local TV news to be sober, responsible, and comprehensive, but research shows that the highest ratings go to news that isn t. Research by the PEJ bears this out: Its 2008 State of the Media report, which analyzed one day s worth of content, found that crime and disasters registered as significant topics on daytime cable. Stories about subjects such as Caylee Anthony, the 2-year old Florida girl whose mother has been accused of her murder, and the polygamy sect in Texas, lead crime coverage to account for 13 percent of the daytime cable newshole studied. That is almost three times as much as in the media over all, according to the report.

It continues to remain true: If it bleeds, it leads. TV journalism s finest moments are blockbusters big, breaking stories such as hurricanes and other natural disasters, when people turn to their television for updates.

9. Hard news is yesterday s news.

If the local news media have one job to do, it s to cover policy makers and those who spend the public s money state legislators, city councils, school boards. And yet the accelerated pace of local news broadcasts makes these types of stories tough to cover with any sort of depth.

Consider the Iraq war. PEJ found that one story that daytime cable lagged well behind the media was, in fact, Iraq. It accounted for only 1 percent of the newshole, or one-third of the coverage devoted to the story in the broader media.

10. That s infotainment, baby!

TV news anchors have been comedy fodder for decades, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show s pompous Ted Baxter to Will Ferrell s smarmy Ron Burgundy in Anchorman. Indeed, your local newscast can often be unintentionally comical. Ever snicker at a reporter standing on an abandoned street corner excitedly describing events that took place hours before? What about the weatherman dressed for the Arctic who is braving the elements of the station s parking lot to poke a pocket ruler in a snowbank?

It s all part of the mandate of a visual medium: Show, don t tell. The live-on-location gimmick evolved as part of a consultant-driven strategy to position the main anchor as the show s pilot. The live shot works as a debriefing on breaking news, with the anchor serving as the audience s surrogate, like a military commander getting news of troop movements.