In exchange for access to the publicly owned airwaves, stations promise the Federal Communications Commission they will present programming that's responsive to the needs of their local community.
For a study on local news, Martin Kaplan, director of the USC's Norman Lear Center, and Matthew Hale, a professor of public health care at Seton Hall University, examined more than 500 hours of programming from eight Los Angeles stations. They concluded that the channels were not fulfilling their end of the bargain.
On the heels of the study's release last week, Kaplan spoke to TheWrap about what went wrong with local news and why he's hopeful it can become about more than true crime, Lindsay Lohan and cute pets.
Do you watch the local news?
I do watch local news, but I don't watch it live. I like stories of three-headed fish as much as the next guy, but there's only so much you can take.
Were you surprised that Los Angeles news was as bad as the report found?
What I was most surprised about is how little actual local news coverage there was. Only a third of what gets covered actually happens in Los Angeles. I would have thought that during a recession, local business and how the economy is impacting people would get attention. Instead, we found that only 29 seconds per hour is spent on that.
There's shockingly little about local government. I'm not a dodo, I don't think that everything in city hall deserves air time, but we are in the midst of a huge fiscal crisis, and we're bleeding red ink. If it were real blood they'd cover it.
"If it bleed, it leads"?
Absolutely. One out of three broadcasts led with crime compared with one out of 100 that were devoted to the L.A. budget and one out of 200 that were about the economy.
Is all this focus on crime painting a skewed view of reality?
There is something researchers have labeled Mean World Syndrome. That's where if you're at home watching local news, you come to think that there is a non-stop gun battle going on outside. In fact, crime is down. All the fear and violence and mayhem keep everyone who watches scared to leave their own houses.
It's not just local crime. They cover crime all across country, from Maine to Florida to Oregon, with no more rationale than the fact that something bad happened somewhere.
Don't stories about bad things sometimes serve a public good?
On one hand, wildfires or a water main breaking are of civic importance, but a wave sweeping people off a pier in Maine is just eye candy.
Has the FCC done enough to demand that local stations air more civic minded programing?
The FCC commissioner himself has complained that they've been paper tigers when it comes to enforcement of these rules.
Up until the 1980s, the commission required some proof that the stations were doing what they promised to do in order to use the television spectrum for free.
