KTLA 5 NEWS @ TEN, Tuesday, March 7, 2000
Television is much criticized for its excesses, and people who watch a lot of television are suspect, as if they were wasting their time. Television has been criticized for not offering sufficient depth in its news analysis, but it is clear that television has become the major source of news and has brought information to millions of people who may not have had access to this much information in the past. The program to be discussed here is a news show that appears on local television one-hour per day, every night at 10:00 pm. The specific stories covered change every day, of course, but the way they are covered does not. The nightly news has a tight pattern which it follows each night, and much of this pattern can be discerned on one viewing of the program if the viewer simply assumes that what he or she is seeing is not unique.
Some of what is seen represents the iconography of a television news show, so much so that a viewer can recognize a news show instantly because of the way it looks. Some advertisers imitate this style when they are doing so-called infomercials, and what they are doing is trying to fool the viewer into thinking what they are watching is news rather than advertising. If a number of such programs are observed, it is surprising how many elements repeat. There are almost always two anchors, a male and a female, as there usually are here, though this evening there were two men covering the election returns. Additional personnel appear in studio for the weather--which may be a male or a female--and sports--usually a male, but a few female sports announcers are appearing today. The set is another icon of the genre, with the anchor desk that seems interchangeable from one show to the next even if they are slightly different in size or shape, and with the background which was once often a map but which more commonly today is some form of city scene, as if there ...