Commentary
Ad Fontes TV Reliability, Bias Ratings Launches, Former CBS TV Prez Appointed To Board
- by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 25, 2021
Ad Fontes Media on Monday plans to release its TV Reliability and Bias Ratings solution that gives television news watchers and advertisers a way to evaluate the reliability and bias of more than 200 individual TV and video news programs across network, cable, connected TV (CTV), and other video platforms. …
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Laurie Sullivan is a writer and editor for MediaPost. You can reach Laurie at lauriesullivan@gmail.com.
Lots of odd statements in this one. local TV stations used to be owned by local business people but now they are run by hedge funds and corporations. Huh! Originally most stations were owed by newspaper interests and/or the TV networks in the larger cities. And TV news was always a business venture---not just a public service. Time buyers use psychographics to make TV news buys and go with what works for them----really? Most TV news buys are driven by the older age skews of the audience or by a desire to be associated with news content. The audience "currency" is adults aged 25-54---even though the vast majority of the viewers are over 50---absurd---but it's not psychographics. Many TV "news " shows have become opinion shows but their audiences haven't noticed the change from straight news to opinion. Really?
Anyway, despite this kind of babbling, I do wish these folks the best and hope that they are able to provide fair and balanced monitoring of the various TV news shows as well as news provided by other media.
To be fair, Ed, apart from O&Os, many TV stations were owned by local newspaper interests and radio broadcasters and not news conglomerates. That was later. In NY you had three VHF indies, who owned them? And as local broadcasters, they had to do what little was required to keep a license.
Much of what is offered here is about cable news programming and hopefully someday online too. If advertisers use this to create a whitelist of safe entities, you and I both support this idea.
Jack, that's what I said--- leading local newspapers, which often also owned radio stations in the same markets. As for independents In New York, you had WABD---channel 5---which was the linchpin of the ill-fated Dumont TV network---they also had an indie in Washington. And WPIX, the leading NY indie, was owned by the Tribune syndicate. That's why the FCC, after allowing about 95 stations to go on the air instituted a freeze on new stations as it was concerned about potentially monopolistic control of news content if newspapers, radio and TV outlets were owned by the same companies in so many markets. The freeze, which lasted about two years gave the FCC time to figure out a better allocation method but it also placed ABC in a precarious position as most of the stations that got the early start---- the few indies excluded---were primary CBS or NBC affiliates---in addition to the O&Os. As a result, ABC sponsors had to put up with very poor station lineups for their shows for about 3-5 years--until the mid-late 1950s. And ABC was mired in third place in the ratings on most evenings until it launched "Disneyland" in the 1954-55 season. It's all in my book---"TV Now and Then", 2015, Media Dynamics Inc.