10 Things Your Local News Won't Tell You

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).