Opinion By Skyler of mychiller
The news that Katie Couric leaving the 'CBS Evening News' after her contract expires in June , makes us think about the future of the national network newscasts. Those 6:30/5:30c newscasts that only live in those 2 timezones have been losing an audience for the past few years. They are mostly the name just different graphics ,reporters, anchors and studios. Why watch the evening news , when your local news and cable news can do at more convenient times and live. Though the appeal of the evening news has also faced an audience shift the people who started watching it a long time ago , still are. It's hard to catch a new audience with younger people and with more people not on the east and central time zone part of our nation who wants. FOX, CW, and other local affiliated and independent stations have started local newscasts at the same time as the network newscasts.
Like in Los Angeles where the local stations are owned by their networks , they all air the Evening news at 6:30PM , 3 hours old, while KTLA has live local news at 6:30PM. Also more people go online to get their news and more than what the network newscasts can cover. So why wait till the early evening for something when you get it now, suffering the same fate as newspapers in this quick breaking news world. It's about the choice back in the 1980's there was less than now.
Is there away to fix the evening newscasts?
Well, my way idea is more extreme but why produce 1 live edition and have fixed with updates later when instead do atleast 3 programs one for the Eastern/Central 6:30/5:30c , one for the Mountain LIVE at 5:30PM , and one for the Pacific Live at 5:30pm , since most of those stations except for In LA air the evening news earlier than 6:30 any way.
The formats need to be readjusted too, focus on more of the country and find unique stories and don't try to be over hip with Twitter and Facebook , so keep it nice and classy. Change the style with shorter stories to fit more in and less all in-depth all the time. Figure out away to reduce commercials if you can.
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