Local TV news audiences grew in all three...

Local TV news audiences grew in all three time slots in 2013, reversing a trend of declining local news viewership since 2008, said the Pew Research Center in a blog post circulated by NAB Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1hJ6pah). Audiences for morning newscasts climbed 6 percent, while early evening news shows received a 3 percent jump and late night news broadcasts a 1 percent increase for the year, said Pew. Late night news has “suffered the biggest decreases in recent years,” said Pew. In 2012, late night and evening news audiences each dropped by 7 percent from the prior year, while the morning audience decreased by 5 percent. The increases may be traceable to an uptick of viewing during the November sweeps period, when there were a “number of major news events,” Pew said, such as in November, around the time when the Affordable Care Act’s flawed websites started, and there were several large weather events in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and the Midwest. The February manhunt for former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner also “generated big audiences in the nation’s second-biggest TV market,” Pew said. “While it is impossible to know whether the 2013 numbers are a harbinger of a new spurt of audience growth, they coincide with a wave of consolidation that has seen bullish media companies -- from Gannett to Tribune -- buy up large groups of stations.” Despite the 2013 numbers, the overall picture shows local news on the decline, Pew said. “Even including 2013, the morning newscasts -- the most consistent viewership performer in local news -- has lost 3 percent of its audience since 2007,” said Pew. Since 2007, early evening news has lost 12 percent of viewership, and late-night newscasts have lost 17 percent, Pew said. But local TV is still “a top news source for Americans,” Pew said. Three out of four U.S. adults watch local TV news over the course of a month, while 65 percent watch network newscasts and 38 percent watch cable news, Pew said.