NEW DELHI, August 29: Almost every second television station news operations in the United States has a news partnership with a newspaper and those partnerships exist across market sizes. These facts came to light through a study 'Television Newsroom Partnership Survey' conducted by researchers of the Centre for Media Design, Ball State University, United States. This was the first ever study of television news directors regarding their station’s convergence routines in the US.
Many of the results from the news directors mirrored data gathered by researchers during a 2004 study of the country's daily newspaper editors. Both studies suggested great variation in the ways cross-media partnerships operate. They also demonstrated the different ways in which television and newspaper newsrooms contribute to the partnerships.
For example, television newsrooms are more likely than newspapers to run their partner’s logos and to encourage their audience to view their partner’s enterprise stories. On the other hand, newspaper reporters are more likely to appear on broadcasts than TV reporters are to write stories for the newspaper.
Reflecting the previous study, news directors report their partnerships frequently perform many functions associated with convergence: cross-promotion of partners’ content and some sharing of daily news lineups. But some functions are performed by a relatively small number of partnerships. For example, a majority of the news directors say they never share a complete lineup of stories with their partners.
The findings suggest that, like their newspaper partners, a small percentage of television stations are relatively committed to their convergence efforts while others either are still trying to define their efforts or have adopted partnerships in name only.
The study also found:
- The number of partnerships exceeds 100 nationwide. Of the news directors who responded to the current survey, 114 reported having partnerships. In the earlier survey, 108 of the responding editors reported having partnerships.
- A majority of news directors say their partnership benefits their station: 69.2 per cent say that at least once a month they feel that working with their partner makes their broadcast stronger; 13.1 per cent say they never feel a benefit.
- Television stations and newspapers report similar reasons for not having partnerships: lack of a suitable partner. Almost a fourth of news directors who reported not having a partnership said the reason was that the only newspaper in town had an arrangement with another television station. Similarly, almost half of editors who reported not having a partnership said their markets were too small to have a television station.
- Stations with partnerships exist in top ten markets as well as the less-populated areas.
For the television study, news directors were contacted at 732 stations in the US. Results are based on 231 responses, a response rate of 31.1 per cent. The newspaper study was sent to editors at 1,452 daily, English-language newspapers in the US. The results are based on 372 responses, a response rate of 25.6 per cent.
